 I will call the meeting of the select board to order at 7pm on Monday, March 15th, 2021. I will run the meeting until we get through select board organization item A and then the chair can take over from that point. First thing we want to do is to welcome Danny, as our newest select board member Danny Kalman. Congratulations on your election. Thank you. And congrats to Mark and Katie for your reelection. And thanks to all of you really for serving the residents of Waterbury. So first for business is to approve the agenda. I would like to add a liquor license for the reservoir. And I would like to move the consent. Agenda item C, which is the newspaper of record, consider the newspaper record and alternate to select board business item B, because I think it will take like a minute or two of conversation. Does anybody else have anything. I was thinking maybe we might want to add the discussion on that river road. Is it river road. Yeah. Maybe just under C for select board business. Anything else. Okay, entertain a motion to approve the agenda as amended. Second. Any other discussion. All those in favor of approving the agenda as amended, please say hi raise your hand. Hi. All right. Next order of business is to elect a select board chair for the ensuing year. I will entertain nominations for select board chair. Dominate Mike prior. I second that. I'm taking up the same time. Do I hear any further nominations for select board chair. All those in favor of Mark prior. Serving a select board chair for the ensuing year. Before we, before we vote, I just want to make sure that Mark's comfortable with being the chair. In here and define. Yeah, I'd be happy to be the chair for the ensuing year. Thank you for the nominations. Just wanted to make sure. All those in favor, please say hi. Hi. I'm going to close. All right. I'll entertain the nominations for vice chair for the ensuing year. I nominate Chris Viennes as vice chair. Second that. Do I hear any further nominations? Chris, are you willing to serve as vice chair? Yeah, I'm totally willing to as long as you people are happy out of me. All those in favor of Chris Viennes serving as vice chair for the ensuing year. Please say hi. Hi. We'll suppose. And finally, I'll entertain nominations for secretary of the board. And I'll also let you know that. That means you really don't have to do anything. Like you're always good at that kind of stuff. I, I always could take minutes. If you want to nominate me. You know, I didn't have to do anything last year. And as secretary, but I'd be glad to do it. If, if, if, if, if bill or, or carler or not there. Or Karen. Get by a boss and nobody can do that. I'll give a second for that. Second. Do I hear any other nominations? All right. All those in favor of Mike Bards serving as foot board chair for the ensuing year, please. Hi. Hi. Hi. All right. Mark. Take it away. Thank you very much. We will move to consider conflict of interest policy, which was emailed out with the agenda. Has anything changed from the previous year? Sorry, my email. We're going to bring it back up. No. Both the conflict of interest policy and the rules of procedure. I'm curious, if we could consider gender neutral language. It refers to select board members as him or her. His or her. And I wonder if we could simply switch that to them or themselves. It's an easy switch and could be more inclusive. Go ahead. Okay. I have a question about the conflict of interest policy. I'm curious since we're, since we're reapproving. If we could consider gender neutral language. It refers to select board members as him or her, his or her. It's an easy switch and could be more inclusive going forward for our future select board members. Danny, could you clarify what you mean by that? Yeah, so should, should someone be elected to select board who identifies as non binary. Doesn't identify with a male or female gender. Generally the accepted term is they, them. And so we could eliminate the gendered language in the. In the case of gender neutral language, it refers to a gender neutral language. It refers to a gender neutral language policy. Where it says like, I'm scrolling now. It's like, you know, her spouse would be their spouse. Right. Or recuse him or herself. Instead of two words, we can simplify it to one and say recuse themselves. It's accepted, you know, as a singular. Pronoun. Now. I can certainly make that change. That's what you've all approved. Yeah. I'm supportive of the change. But I'm not. I'm not supportive of the change. There's quite a bit probably in here that would need to be modified. So I'm wondering if we want to. Adopt this tonight and then do the modifications and re-adopt the new policy. Is that possible? Yeah, that's probably the better thing to do it. I don't have it in front of me, but if you think there's quite a few things to change, just to make sure we get it all. Yeah. Yeah, because Danny, we would have to state every single change in the motion. Otherwise I think we're catch them all right now and make sure those changes are. So, um, yeah, if. Carla thinks that she can make those changes. We can approve this tonight and then prove the modified one. Okay. I can make changes and maybe we're not buying the day. Should the motion say that. With the intent to change or no. Um, I don't think so. I have in my minutes that Danny made that suggestion that the policy will be re-adopted once the language has been changed. So I think you just approve it the way it is. Okay. Can we just defer that decision until next time where. And make the modifications and just act on it then. I think we need a policy in place before we start even today's meeting. Okay. I moved to adopt the policy of conflict of interest. That's currently written. Right. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any further discussion and again, we know that we're going to be voting on this again, but we'll move forward with this tonight. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay. Next up is the rules of procedure. Bring that up. Danny, is this, I need to bring it up again. Similar. Is it rules of procedure as well? Okay. You know, I didn't. Make a note of it. So I'm. It might not be, but I'm happy to look it over. And then if need be, I could email you Carla. That works. Okay. I didn't make a note of it. So it might not be. I don't know if you have any comments or questions on the rules of procedure. I don't, my quick scan. I do not see that language in here. So. I don't either. I do have a question. So it says for public comment. Procedures in number nine. Rule should be made available at all meetings and procedures for public comment shall be reviewed at the beginning of all meetings. So I don't believe we've ever made rules available at all meetings. But as a member of the public, I don't believe I've ever heard those. Reviewed at the beginning of a meeting. So I'm curious about that. And I'd love some clarification about that number nine rule. I don't have it in front of me. I can read it. So Bill says these rules shall be made available at all meetings. And procedures for public comment shall be reviewed at the beginning of all meetings. So I don't believe we've ever not made rules available, but we typically are not. Telling public comment procedures at the beginning of each meeting. Right. And, you know, again, I don't have it right in front of me, but I guess a literal meaning would be that the chair should tell the public at the beginning of a meeting that. We have five minutes for public comment. You can make a comment now. Okay. There's always a public agenda item on there. And I think the board has been pretty liberal. Has not. If anything has allowed the public to have a longer period of time than the rule generally calls for. So it's something that. You know, we probably should look at have available. It's really a tool to help the board manage. The public. The public. These are select board meetings. They're not. They're not telling me. It's there. The meetings are designed for the select board to conduct business that it has to. Conduct. The public is certainly. Allowed at the beginning of the meeting generally to bring any issue up that they want to bring up. And typically. If the public brings something up. It's not a public meeting. It's a public meeting. It's a public meeting. Addressed. Usually it's set aside for. Being addressed at a later meeting. It's just the ability to let the public have a say. The board is pretty liberal about letting the public kind of chime in when there's a discussion going on. Sometimes don't allow that at all. I just say, you know, it's not a public meeting. It's not a public meeting. It's not a public meeting. It's not a public meeting. It's not an issue. And then from then on it's the select board's meeting. So. Yeah, thank you. Thanks, Bill. I should clarify. My question isn't about the time allotted or the actual rules for public comment. By question is that we have a rule that states. That the procedure for public comment should be. What's the word reviewed. Every meeting. So either. It's a rule that we want to have in place and then we, we follow that procedure or do we want to review that procedure? If that's not something we think should be done at the beginning of every meeting. Is that more clear? Yeah, I apologize. That's, that's up to the board. It's a board policy and the board can. It's the select board needs to make that decision. I'm wondering if that rule is not necessarily. Yeah, I think it's being read as we should be talking about it, but you know, we've had meetings where. We knew there was going to be quite a bit of public participation. And so. You know, there's been discussions between myself, Bill, and I'm sure there's been other conversations and other meetings, but when we know that we're going to have. A lot of public comment. I mean, I think we're going to have to come into the meeting and, and set some ground word for public comment. I feel like that's what that's referring to, but maybe I'm reading it. But, you know, I don't know if it necessarily we haven't typically talked at the beginning of meeting and I understand what you're saying. Yeah, we do try to give everyone an opportunity to talk during public comment without necessarily limitation if possible. We do encourage and participation in the meeting. So I think it's important that, you know, at least the previous boards we've, we've made sure that the public can chime in on certain topics, especially if there's time. Again, I don't think it's because I don't think the problem is, you don't allow ample time. I certainly believe that you do. But this says all meetings. So if we're not going to have to do that. And if we're going to have to apply to some, then we could change the wording to say, can be reviewed at the beginning of meetings, which gives that choice, but saying shall be reviewed at the beginning of all meetings. To me the words matter. So if it says all, and we're not doing it. Like, I don't mean to harp on it. I just, it's like, I don't think it's my opinion. This is the, this is how we, you know, if we go into tonight's meeting, we felt like public comment was going to be heavy that maybe we put limitations in it, but I think it's, there's a thought in every meeting, but if we don't think there's going to be something that's going to bring a lot of public out and there's going to be comment, I think that's to me, that's, I don't think it's necessary saying that we're going to talk about how we're going to deal with public comment in every meeting. And maybe I'm reading that differently, but that's how I interpret it. Chris, I see you have your, your hand up. Yeah, I agree. I, you know, it's always been my thought that people are allowed to bring forward any, any issue during public comment that they are concerned about. And we kind of monitor how that conversation goes if they start to become really redundant and, you know, just keep beating the same horse to death. Then we typically step in and say, you know, we have to, we have to allow for other people to speak or, you know, we get your point type of thing, but it's always been my belief and I can't speak for the rest of the board that when it comes to any issue, I'm all years open for as much information about any particular topic that I can gather in order to make a best, best decision on any given topic that I can. So I think we're all missing, I think we're all missing Danny's part. The rule says that you're supposed to read the public procedure at the beginning of every meeting. So I think you could take her suggestion and say, change the word shall to may. And then if we don't read it, we haven't violated the rules. It's the procedure that she's asking about and, and we clearly don't do that. Right. So probably not a good idea that the policy says shall if it says that. So I think we can make this simple change that again. I don't have it in front of me if we need to wait until the next meeting to read out this, we can look at the language again. But I think her point is that it's just about reading the rule and reading the procedures. And we don't do that. And there's no need to do that at every meeting. The only reason we might want to do it is I attended probably six months of meetings before I approached Mark to ask this clarification. I thought after public comment, I wasn't allowed to make any comments. And so I had went to Mark separately and said, am I allowed to make a comment during a meeting? Cause I didn't know I was allowed as a member of the public. So it could be helpful. Maybe we don't need to say it. They could go in the chat or maybe we just make sure. I don't know that people know it. But, but just as a, as a member of the public, I didn't know the procedure. It had never been told to me. So it might be worth seeing very briefly at the beginning of every meeting. I don't know. It would be a good opportunity to say something at the public comment. Say, here's your opportunity for public comment. If you're here to talk about a specific item, you're also allowed to, you know, speak during those items. I think that would be a, you know, because I agree. There are people that come in and haven't attended a select board meeting ever or in years and might not realize that. So that would be fine. If we want to make that change and somebody wants to make a motion to approve with the change from shall to may. Sorry. Yep. Dana has his hand up. I'll be brief. I was just going to echo, you know, the feeling of confusion as to how you get recognized as a member of the public. I think it's super useful to have that preface at the beginning of meetings. And Bill, you and I have exchanged emails about, you know, the future of select board meetings going forward where there may be a hybrid sort of system on some level. You know, and I think that. There's an in person and an online component. Having a clear procedure for the public would be really helpful because. Ignorant of how these things should or can go. And so just having rules on the ground clearly stated at the beginning, I think makes a ton of sense. So that's all I've got. Thank you for considering it. Thanks. Thanks. You can adopt this one tonight just to move on. And then between now and the next meeting, I can look at this and maybe we can suggest some. Zoom's changed us a lot too, because before there was a microphone plugged in and you would just queue up. Yeah. And you knew someone from the public was looking to speak. It's a little harder now to. To make sure. So thank you, Dana, for that. Those comments. And yeah, if there's no other discussion. I think we can probably make a motion. Tonight on this and review it. And if there's any other changes we can, we can talk about. Anyone want to make a motion or. Carla has the words, right? And I can just say so moved. Then I'll say that. It's just all, all it is, is adopting this with a change in item nine from the word shall to may. I think would be. I'll second it. Then it's Katie. Motion. Okay. Moved and seconded any further discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Yep. Discuss process for signing warrants. You want me to take this. You want to talk about it. You can make it though. Okay. So this could have been under orientation for board members as well. And like everything, zoom has changed this a little bit. And Carla, if I, I'll get a little bit lost and you might have to fill in the blanks. State law provides that. And a bookkeeper for the town works, works directly for me. And we process bills for payment every week. We pay our vendors every week. We do payroll every week. Carla is the treasurer and has the ability to write checks on the town's checking account. But the law does state that the treasurer may not draw a check on the checking account, unless the select board signs what are called warrant orders. So every week there are, there are orders that get generated that go along with the bills. So for, you know, paying, you know, pike industries for payment or if we're paying, you know, bonds for heating fuel, a check it's caught, but there's also a register that lists who the vendor is and how much the payment is for. And before those checks can be released. A select board member has to sign those warrant orders. It used to be that they had to be signed that a meeting and the majority of the board had to approve the orders and then sign them. The legislature changed that. Well, about 10 years ago now. And the select board at this organization meeting, if they choose to. Can make a motion to designate one or all board members to sign orders. And we as staff have asked the select board. To make a motion to approve. Each and every one select board member to sign the order. Only one signature is required now. If that order, if that. Motion is passed. And before COVID. You know, we'd have the orders ready. The night of the meeting and, and somebody could sign them all on the meeting night and on the weeks that we didn't have meetings. Somebody would come in on. Say Tuesday morning inside the orders. Now with COVID. Carla's going to have to step in and tell me what happens. We send an email. I think. But. Yeah. So what we do right now is scan the warrants. I mean. In a perfect world, the board members should be looking at the warrants as. Compared to the checks that have been cut. I review the checks against the warrants. So since COVID, we scan the warrants to the board members. And I just ask one. And board members to review them. Sign them and scan the back. So when you do it in person, typically you'd have the bill. You'd have the warrant order and you'd have to check and you'd be able to compare all three. We do double check. And we do double check. We do double check. And we do double check. And we do double check. We do double check and check here. So a motion is in order to authorize. Each and every select board member to sign the warrant orders requiring only one. To allow the checks to be written. So if somebody will make that motion and pass that. That's, that's the big. Request for right now. You're muted, Mike. I've noticed. I make a motion to. To approve that the warrants be signed. Electronically by. One. Select board member in lieu of. In lieu of being able to do it personally. But every select board member is authorized, right? Right. That way it's not just one. Any one of you can sign it. And it's, I mean. It's not just electronically because somebody will go back into. In person. So it's just. One. You don't have to put the word electronically. Okay. Second. All right. It's been moved in a second. Carla, how's the motion? All right. Any further discussion? Just one statement. That's why I haven't signed warrants. But I think that's part of the reason. Because I won't. Maybe I'm stubborn, but I. Until I can go back to the office and sit down and look at those things. And their entirety. I just. Don't feel comfortable. I am. I mean, I know we've got a. Almost flawless process. But. I just rather. For me, I'd rather be sitting right there looking at. All the paperwork. I mean. Alternatively. I don't have any appointments. So. Somebody could make an appointment to come in and review them. I don't know how comfortable you are with that. Just pass this motion. Then. Yes. So we can deal with it. And if Chris wants to come in and look out, you can do that. Okay. That's all I got, Mark. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Yeah. Chris, I. I can probably help. I'd rather do that as well. So, um, maybe we can. Split some Mondays. Just, just as a comment, I know I probably. Do. You know, 80 to 90% of the approvals electronically. I know it's probably because a lot of you are away from the ability to sign something and then scan it and stuff like that. I look at things and if I look, if I look at something that just seems out of whack, you know, I'll usually email Carla and just ask about something and granted. I don't look at everything. I guess I'm one as, as a former manager. I try to trust people and their abilities and I, I have trust in both Bill and Carla's ability to. Have pay our vendors. Well, we appreciate that. And your trust is, we're thankful for it. We do make mistakes from time to time. There are. That's why I look. Times that we've made a mistake. And there's been times boards have caught it. But anyway, we hope you can pass this. Motion. Yep. I think it's been passed. Okay. We'll move on to consent agenda items. Remember item C has been removed. So it's minutes for March 1st meeting and then the liquor licenses for cold. Although cider milk, Jim's pizza, crossroads, beverage, outside consumption for best Western plus and the reservoir. I am going to recuse myself on this. I make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor, please say hi. Hi. Hi. All right. Moving on to general public. This is an opportunity for the public to speak on any items that are not in the agenda. You are allowed to speak through the remainder of the meeting on other items. And there is a razor and button on zoom. So you can use that. We'll try to get to you for some reason. We don't get to you. We don't. We don't get to you. We don't get to you. We don't get to you. We don't get to you. We don't get to you. We don't get to you. We don't get to you. We don't get to that window. So is there any public that would like to speak tonight? Glenn Anderson. I see your hands up. Go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to check and see if I didn't miss the, you guys didn't cover the. The topic. Up this way. Did you yet? Which one is that? I saw on the agenda. Actually, Debbie brought it to my attention. Something about the Anderson Grayson. You know, we haven't talked about that yet. And it's going to be very brief. It's not going to be a real discussion. Glenn. It's just going to be giving a little information to the board. Okay. Well, if you don't mind, I'm going to sit back. I just want to make sure I didn't miss that. So I appreciate it. Yep. It's a, it's a, the last item on managers items, which is estimated around eight o'clock start time. Yeah, I will keep myself muted and I might drift in and out, but I definitely appreciate what you guys are doing. And so probably just follow along and see what's the. Initiation processes legs. All right. Thanks guys. Thanks. Any other public comment before we move on to select board. Business. I don't see or hear anyone. So we'll move on. Select board business discuss ice center and senior center. Okay. So Bill, were you the one for the senior center? And if so, do you want me to go first? I didn't put either one of these on there. I think you asked for it. Oh, okay. Well, I think I just put on. Oh, okay. Anyway, so I've sent all of you the joint minutes that Nick and I have. Made together for all the ice center board of directors meetings. I think that's a good point because I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I'm going to get the crowd through those. And if you had any questions at this time, or if you had any questions, you would like me to bring. To the ice center board on behalf of the town. I see they have two representatives on the call right now, but I would still like to bring them before their entire board. And that's all. No questions. Katie. It was a good set of notes. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I mean, we met and we don't have to talk about it tonight, but I know it seemed like financially, there was concern of losing the. You know, peak of their typical business. How concerning is that? Ongoing and the ability to make. Their bills, I guess. So I'm going to jump in here for a second. If it's okay. If it's okay. Anybody else as well. The ice center is a not-for-profit private organization. It does not receive any funding from the municipality. From either. The town or. Or if I, it's. It's tax exempt. It pays. It pays no taxes. So it's a not for profit organization. Unlike the senior center and other not for profits. They have not asked the municipality for any money. They have borrowed money from. From the former village of Waterbury. They have a new that blown outstanding. half a million dollars. EFUD is the largest lender into the ice center right now. They have another loan with Community National Bank in the $350,000 range, I think. EFUD has lent some money the last couple of years to allow them to pay off some of their bank loans. They have a more favorable interest rate with EFUD. The money is not taxed money from the Edward Farrarian Tility District. That's from their UDAD fund. It can't be used for general government operations. So, it's money that is lent out to area businesses. So, when the pandemic struck a year ago, I recommended to the EFUD Board that all of the principal and interest payments that all of the borrowers from the UDAD fund be suspended and the interest rates were cut to zero because, you know, you can tell somebody you don't have to pay us, but if you keep the interest rate going and some of these loans that EFUD had were, you know, in the 4.5 to 5% range, the ice center loans were less than that on a percentage basis. But if you suspend payments but you keep the interest meter running, it just kind of piles up on them and it doesn't really do them any favors. So, EFUD suspended principal and interest payments and cut the interest rate to zero. They did that initially from March last year, right around this time until July. In July, they extended it out until the end of the year. And then just before December, they suspended it out through April and then just last week, and I haven't even shared this with any of the borrowers yet, the EFUD commissioners agreed to continue the suspension of payments and zero interest through the rest of this year. So, gets them all into 2022 before they have to resume payments. And the idea behind that is these businesses like the ice center, like some of the restaurants who borrowers from the EFUD fund, you know, they've been open, maybe the ice center has been under severe restrictions in terms of who they can rent ice to, how much ice that they're able to have, restaurants have seating limitations. So, we'll be informing all the borrowers from the UDAG fund that you know, just concentrate on your business for the rest of the year when the governor lets you reopen to a greater degree or even go back to normal. You can have several months, we hope, of just kind of getting your cash flow back the way it's supposed to be, and we'll turn these loans on next year. So, there's no municipal commitment to the ice center except for this loan. And I guess that's all I need to say for right now. If you have any other questions, the board members certainly can ask me. I see Jonathan, see you go from the ice center is on and Mike Thompson is on. I don't know if anybody else is here, but you're here to answer questions. Katie, I know just from the meeting that they had on Friday, you sent out your report to me and the select board reporting on what happened on Friday night. I think that the folks at the ice center would prefer if you would at least share those notes with them to make sure there's no errors in it. I think there was an error that I heard about today from Tim, who's the manager at the rink in terms of one of the things that you attributed to him. So, maybe you should share the minutes with the folks at the ice center before you send them out to everybody else just so they can make sure that you got it right. Usually I do CC everybody on that. I think that I just forgot last time, but I can share that with them or Timmy too. I know Jonathan's email has an issue and it always bounces back. So, other than that, I send it usually to everybody, including Carla too. It might be helpful if you just send it to the ice center board first before you send it to me and the select board just because it appears a concern or an error. It's a lot easier to fix it before everybody reads it as opposed to after. John or Mike, you have anything else to add? Well, I agree with that comment about we could if we could go over it with you first because once it goes out, if there's anything incorrect in there, it's tough uninforming people. I don't know what happens to these notes once they go out, but in a formal meeting like you're having right now, I mean the minutes are approved at the following meeting and then they go out after that. It's approved minutes that go out. It's not the draft. Well, for minutes like select board meetings, the minutes have to be published within three days of the meeting. They can be corrected. The select board does approve them, but just so everybody knows, the meeting of the select board or any public body actually have to be posted pretty quickly. And then if there's a correction, they're done at the next meeting, but the ice center is not a public body. So there's no reason why these reports can't be shared with the board first to make sure it's right. I think the idea is having Katie and Lefty from Lefty Sayer from EFUD and Nick Mado is kind of my liaison to the ice center board. The idea of this was to open the lines of communication and make sure that everybody was understanding what was going on. It's a difficult time for a lot of businesses, including the ice center. And they asked for a representative from the select board and Katie, you know, volunteered quickly for it. I'm glad that she's going and I think it can be very helpful. But the idea is to communicate well, not just quickly. So just if we can just make sure everybody's satisfied that we got it right before we widely disseminated, I think it's helpful. Excuse me, I got to get some water. You guys can talk. Yeah, so I don't really have anything else to add unless anyone else wants to comment. And obviously, with at least Danny coming on the board, maybe the representatives from the ice center can just talk about what their hopes are for ongoing from the select board and how we can help in any way. I know that financially, we don't necessarily have direct ties, but you know, we're happy to help if and where we can. Well, we don't really, we're not asking for anything from the select board. We were just hoping the point of the liaison, Bill and I were talking last summer about this. And we both agreed that it would be good considering we are a presence in the town, the village that we have a little closer relationship with you guys. Again, not to ask for anything, but just so that everybody knows what's going on. And it's a trying time right now. We're open with limited ice, as Bill mentioned, when the schools get done the end of this month in the youth groups. And we're hopeful that the governor will allow us to start hosting adult games. But at the moment, all that's happening is kids and school hockey. Sorry, John, adult games represent approximately 20 to 25% of our total revenue. And a lot of it is because it's year round. And part of the, that's based on what was before the pandemic. I mean, when we come back, there's going to be a lot of restrictions. We're still not allowed to use locker rooms. And I'm guessing there'll be some adult players who did play regularly, who may not be all that excited about coming back quite yet. So we're not expecting that all of a sudden, this is going to be full speed at the end of the month. And summer is typically our slow season. So we're kind of going into our slow season with both hands tied behind our back here. So it's not a great time, but the EFUD has been very generous with their financing terms for us, given us a pass for the year. And hopefully we'll get through this and get back to some kind of normal at some point. But it's about all that's going on. Bye, Chris. Yeah, I just want to let you guys know that I think the board, along with the municipality, are always concerned when you have private businesses in communities that to make sure that they can stay on financially stable ground. I think it's good. I read through the minutes that are sent out by Katie every time she sends them out just to kind of get my own gut feeling. And if I'm not stepping over the line here, I'll ask you guys, is your outlook for your financial future, are you optimistic that you're going to be able to keep this thing on the up and up? I know there's a fair amount of federal dollars out there. I don't know if that's helping you at all. If you're able to buy for any of those. We just had an email that was sent to us the other day. I didn't read through the specifics, but I did see that each town in the state is going to be allotted a certain portion of money. I don't know if you'd be eligible for any of that. I didn't read through the real criteria of it all. And I wasn't so sure that the criteria was there to be able to understand if what it's allotted for. Even though it's not our business to be in your business, we are concerned that your business stays strong. And we're happy to share information. We've got two PPE loans, plus we've got the State of Vermont grant, and the first PPE loan was forgiven. We expect the second one to be forgiven as well. So between the relief from the payments and the grants that we've been able to cure, through half the year, our numbers are actually the same as they were last year. And as Jonathan mentioned, the next big critical part is getting the adults to come back in another month or so that will sustain us through the spring season. So we're in good shape. We have a little bit of a reserve that we've had for years that we've been hanging on to for if we need to replace a Zamboni or something major happens. We have a little bit of cash that we've set aside and we don't use that for operations. And so at this point, we're fine. We just want to get back to business as normal. What about your tank leak that I've seen that's been in the minutes here a couple of times? Are you getting that under control? Well, I wouldn't say it's under control. I mean, it's leaking. So that's out of our control. But just to give you a little bit of background, first of all, I wanted to say we have a guy coming in as soon as the ground thaws out and it turns to real spring. A guy named Dan Bronner is coming in. I can't remember the company, but Tim, our manager, found him. He supposedly has experience with this. So he's Hogan, right? Oh, Hogan, right. Jay Hogan. Yeah. He's the company. In the past, we've had this problem since day one and the guy who sold it to us, John Meade, supposedly had a 15 or 25 year warranty. We're not clear on, we can't remember. There was a sticker on the side of this thing. It fell off real quick and there was no warranty apparently. But we've had Brad Oaks from Vermont Refrigeration. He's our refrigeration guy. He handles a lot of the rinks, if not most of them in the state. He told us, we've tried all kinds of things. There's gaskets that are leaking. So we replaced those gaskets twice. It didn't do any good. We went inside there and Charlie Barber went in and ground the inside of it and lined it with ice and water shield. We figure a lot will do it. That didn't work. I spoke with a guy named Jerry Marshall from Pearson Engineering. This is back in 2015. I can't remember. I found his name. I was looking through my emails just to see who, if I could find all the people we've talked to on this. I don't remember how I got in touch with him, but he looked at it. He said he'd make some phone calls. He said he knew John Mead. I mean, we went back and forth on this and then came with it. So, I mean, we have never taken this lightly. We're not dismissing it. It's definitely something that we want to deal with, but we can't afford $100,000 to replace it, at least not at this time in these circumstances. But just to set everybody's mind at ease, there's no chemicals in the water that's leaking. We don't add anything to the water. It's just waterbury tap water, which we're paying for. We're not happy about it, but we're paying for it. It's not really a waste. According to Bill, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no water shortage right now for the reservoir is full and you've got a good supply of water. Unfortunately, it's an iceberg there in the winter and a mud puddle in the summer. So, we're not happy about it, but if anybody has any suggestions or ideas, we're open to anything. So, I might have a suggestion and this is only because I know the history somewhat of the history of another hot water reservoir. Is this tank, is it just cold water, just tap water? There's no heated or anything like that? What it does is, without getting too far under the weeds on this, we circulate refrigerant and after it comes out of the ice, it's got heat in it. We have to cool it back down. And with one of the ways they send it back under the ice, there's a heating system underneath to keep the frost from going down and then what doesn't, if there's still heat in it, which there is, then it goes out to this cooling tower where there's a fan and it just, like it's like a shower. It just pours water on these pipes and that cools it. So, it doesn't run all the time, but when the heat is present, when it calls for the shower, it does the shower and it just leaks. It just goes right through and we've tried plugging the holes. Like I said, we replace the gaskets twice and it worked for a little bit, but a year later, it's still pouring out of the promise. There's this, all this expansion and contraction because of the temperature variation that goes on and it's just, it's a really bad design. I wish they had built something that was designed for this, but apparently, and I'm told by this guy, Brad Oaks, our refrigeration guy that he said they all leak. He said ours leaks pretty bad, but John, is it supposed to, is it supposed to be a closed system where, you know, this showers onto the pipes, cools them down and then gets recaptured and yes, it's not supposed to leak out of there. Right, but it's, so it's, if it works right, it's not supposed to use a lot of tap water, right? Because it's going to recirculate this water until you need to. Correct. I'm not an engineer and to be honest with you, I mean, a lot of what they explained to me, I have the basics down of how all this stuff works. It's a pretty complicated situation. I mean, you're welcome to come down for show and tell anytime. I mean, anybody who's got any ideas or knows somebody who has some, you know. Yeah, that's what I pointed out was getting to, you know, Joel Baker, right? Yeah, I love him. You should maybe talk to him. I think he built, if I'm correct, I'm pretty sure he built a hot water storage tank in his own house out of ICF blocked. You know, that's what kind of rung the bell there when you were talking about this tank leak and if it were ICF blocked, of course it's a concrete center. It may endure these temperature changes or, you know, without seeing this tank, I can't give you a better idea. But you know, it's a shot in the dark, but it's better than what you got right now. And he may be able to fix you up with something of his concoction that might do your, might do the trick at a lot less cost. Okay, well, anything's worth a try. Mike? The other person I would recommend you, Jonathan, is to reach out to is Larry Westover. He has his own plumbing company. He's a pretty sharp individual. And, you know, in terms of, you know, any kind of, you know, water kind of issues, he might be someone to, you know, he might tell you, you know, I don't know anything about this, but at least it's a suggestion for you. So I'm going to reach out locally. So if any of you are down in the ice center area, you don't have to go in the rink, the cooling tower we're talking about, it's out behind the rink. You can't miss it. It's up on stilts. It's probably, you know, eight, 10 feet up in the air, probably eight feet up. And if it's running, it's a fountain. You can't miss it. So, you know, those are good suggestions that we can reach out to them. I'll take a look next time I'm down that way. Okay. Any other items to discuss? I just wanted to introduce myself to Michael and Jonathan. I'm Danny. I'm the newest Blackboard member. So good to see you. Good to meet you. Yeah. Likewise. Congratulations. Alright. Jonathan, Michael, since we have you, anything else before we continue on? Thank you for the support. Thank you for coming to the meeting this evening. Okay. Thank you. Good night, everybody. So it looked like there wasn't anything for the senior center. It was just nice discussion. So it was just an error. So we'll move on. I believe this is where we move to move the Consider newspaper of record and alternative. Yeah. So you have to adopt a newspaper of record. The state law still requires many public notices to be actually published in a physical newspaper, even though more and more people aren't reading them, and all the physical newspapers still have some online presence as well. So I would think for this year we can, staff will recommend that the Waterbury Roundabout be the newspaper of record and the Times-Irgus be the alternate. Once in a while, there is a need to be able to publish something that's in more or less a daily paper. The Times-Irgus is published five days a week, not every day, but it's published Tuesday through Saturday. And for the Times-Irgus, if you're going to have a bond vote, for instance, you have to publish it in the newspaper on the same day of the week, three weeks in a row, and it's easier to do that sometimes in a daily. But the Waterbury Roundabout right now gets mailed to every house in Waterbury from what I understand. Reader, I'm sorry. I keep saying Roundabout. The Waterbury Reader is mailed to every resident in Waterbury. It also has an online presence. So we would recommend the Waterbury Reader for the newspaper of record and the Times-Irgus as the alternate. Right. Anyone want to make that motion or discuss it further? I move to have the Waterbury Reader as our paper of record with the Times-Irgus as the alternate. Is there a second? I will happily second that. I'm just going to add, abstain as they are one of my employers. All right. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. I believe I added the discussion, the email we all received about the, I think it's the abandoned house. I was just hoping we could discuss that really quick. And if there's anything we should be doing as a board right now. I'm going to go to Charlie Astley's old place here on River Road. First place on the left. Little River Road, yeah. Yeah. So unfortunately, there's not a lot that can be done about this right now. One time in my career as a municipal manager, we actually sought legal advice and the select board declared a building of public nuisance. And we ordered that it be removed. That was a building that was where the parking lot is right now between the steel block where the Waterbury Sports is and the bargain boutique. There was a building there up until about 1990 and Peter Albert owned it. And there was severe problems with it. The board was able to get, make a motion to call it a public nuisance and that allowed him to then evict the tenants from the building and he took the building down. The town didn't do anything. This house is on Little River Road. It's pretty much abandoned. I think there might be somebody living in a camper in the driveway. The bank that holds the mortgage on it for whatever reason, even though from what we understand, nobody's making payments on the mortgage. Every time we put it up for a tax sale, which could ultimately result in somebody buying it for taxes or the town deciding to buy it for taxes, the bank. Every time it's gone to tax sale in the last three or four years has paid the taxes on it. So we don't have the ability to get the title that way. And I think that it's not so easy to just declare it a public nuisance and demand that it be torn down. There are a lot of falling down buildings all around Vermont. I mean, there's a farmhouse on Route 100, pretty prominent place that is in no better shape than this place is. And if you're going to get in there and try to declare it a public nuisance, you might be opening the indoors box. I have forwarded the email that I got today to the zoning administrator. There may be, through the zoning process, the ability to chase away the person who's maybe living in that camper. But it's not an easy thing to do and it could cost the town a lot of money. So I have mailed letters to all of the mortgage holder banks. For whatever reason, the mortgage keeps being moved from different banks. I think it's on the third different bank that I'm aware of now. I have taken pictures of it. I've written letters to the banks and said, this house is burned. You should send somebody here to at least forward it up. Nobody's taking any initiative to do anything. So that's my report. I'm not sure what more we can do. I think that's all I was hoping for is just to hear what options we have and what we might be doing. Go ahead, Mike. I have a bit of experience with the whole condemnation process having been in banking. It is very cumbersome and a lot of banks don't want to go forward with any because they don't want to take the properties back because they're very concerned about their financial liability. You have anything from hazardous ways to all kinds of other issues that can come about if they take possession. So that's why a lot of times banks, if anything, will sell a property by absolute auction just to try to get rid of it so they never really take possession of the property themselves. I think we want to be very tenuous how we want to be because we could also be have a lot of liability. Who knows what there's hazardous waste and materials. It's not like years ago when you got the fire department in to do a controlled burn to get rid of the property down to ashes and stuff. It's just a very difficult process and I think we really want to think before we and as was said, this might create a precedent. There are other properties in disrepair that we just want to really think about what we're doing just with my comments. Okay, anyone else or Carla? Go ahead. Yeah, I would just add that on paper the property is privately owned by Frank Sandborn although abandoned and that a complaint for foreclosure was filed I think like seven years ago but nothing's become on it. So it's essentially private property. They never they they notified that there there was a foreclosure action that could take place but they to Mike's point they never initiated it. I don't have anything else anyone have anything else on that we can yeah I'm just wondering if if if there was a tragic death or something like that from let's say a child bit into the building and then acted it happened. Who's at fault bill? Is it the bank because they keep covering the butt on the taxes on this thing? I mean it seems like they're showing they're showing the liability of the property because they're putting the bill every time it goes up for tax sale. Yeah, I'm not a lawyer Chris I I can't really answer that question. What I can tell you is I don't think the town is got any responsibility for it. All right, Chris it's the deep pocket rule it's if in the case of a lawsuit they'll go after every party that they possibly can you know usually it's going to be the the bank but again you know they don't own the own on the property and you know if the property owner doesn't have a lot of assets you know they may go after a mortgage holder but right and you know to that point Mike is exactly right I mean it's if something happened there um you know the town has I say the town has no interest and no liability it doesn't mean the town can't be sued if a private property owner you know they suffer a loss there's damages they can sue whoever they think is responsible our insurance company would defend us and I think based on what I know that you know the judge would say this isn't the town's responsibility I can't guarantee that but I think we get into a much deeper problem if we try to do something without having title to this property. Look so can I ask us maybe a dumb question here is it does it behoove the town to maybe put a send a letter to the bank obviously the fired chief doesn't have access to the property is there something that we could do proactively on to help ourselves to say to the bank you know we're in fear that this property is you know could endanger people we want to make you aware of the fact that our hands I can do that again Chris I've already done that I I've sent that to the to the banks already I I've been there taking pictures of it I took the pictures I wrote a letter I sent it to the bank and said you have the mortgage on this property the you know as far as I know the property owner is incarcerated somewhere and you know they've basically thrown their hands up so I've reached out to the banks I can do that again but I have tried to do just that to say hey you know if something happens here you have the mortgage on this maybe somebody's going to come after you maybe you can send somebody out there and board the place up take the property back but for whatever reason nobody wants to touch the place I didn't know if it switched hands that the new bank didn't get that memo but that's not as far as I know we can look but sounds like you've done what you needed to do anything else all right we will move on to managers items I don't think there was anything else discuss board email address okay so when Danny was elected last week and we reached out to her she asked if there was a possibility that we could assign to her a waterybt.com email address which is the town's domain I have been talking about this with our IT contractor Bob Butler for about a year now and have not really pulled the trigger but since Danny asked about it it probably makes good sense for all board members all elected officials in the town and even some of the appointed boards to to have a waterybt address assigned if that's assigned then the town server would would capture all the emails that are sent to and from those waterybt addresses if there's ever a public records request for emails you know right now if there was a public records request you guys and women would have to potentially go into your own emails try to find everything that they're looking for so I've talked to Bob about this it's something that can be done I don't know how quickly we just had a big over the weekend I think I mentioned it to you in my email this afternoon there was a hack into our email system that shut it down over the weekend so this is something I think probably makes good sense and I appreciate Danny bringing it up and if you want to say something Danny certainly go ahead thank you covered it it makes the request for records really simple it it keeps you know personal and official business separate and seems very clean it also increases accessibility for the public it's just a lot easier if it's you know streamlined and is the same for everyone versus looking for personal emails that folks may or may not check so unless there's objection I think I'm going to be working with Bob to to start moving forward on this he will probably have to contact you as individuals there's there's a few things that he's going to need but it should be a fairly straightforward and simple process I'm not a tech person so I can't tell you exactly how it will be done but it's it's fairly straightforward and should be pretty easy how do you check your email from a web browser parola what do you mean I'm just wondering like you know for me personally I use Gmail for everything I just don't know you know I if we end up in a private server potentially it means that we would need to have a software it's a way that there's like a web email right so you do would require the use of Microsoft Outlook yeah we will Bob will work with you on that we'll try to make this as seamless as possible he talked to me a little bit about it the other day and explained some of it and as I said I I'm not a tech geek I really don't accept for when I'm working I don't use computers at all so it kind of goes over my head I don't pay a lot of attention to it but he'll he'll have a conversation with you mark and we'll try to make it so it's as easy as possible for all of you to use it without a lot of complications and you know it should be at no no cost to you folks and stuff like that so we'll have him talk to you and I'm sure you'll understand it better than I did but like good that's um what mark raised was my biggest concern you know I know you know having different email addresses sometimes you know I'm I think it's a good idea on some levels but it's going to be the ease of us being able to access it I know all of us have our email our current email addresses posted on the town website and probably other places and you know so I think we're pretty open to that if Bob's able to get we're able to access that easily on the road etc that's going to be the biggest concern and I think probably every one of us are probably going to have that concern another option is you can you can have that forwarded to your personal email and I'm sure it sounds like Bob is I don't know and that's where it can happen that'd be great yeah I'm sure that they can help us with any of those I think it can be pretty seamless so so it seems like everybody's agreeable and then I'll take the next step and and you know I think with the select board will be the first group that we move to this new new platform if you will and I'll be speaking with Bob in the next couple of days and hopefully he'll be out to you pretty pretty quickly sounds good anything else on that all right we'll move on a new board member orientation okay so Katie was new last year and I think had one maybe two meetings in person before COVID struck and then there was a meeting where a whole bunch of people showed up at the steel room and I kind of got frustrated with you and said don't ever come back again until this is over so Danny's the new person on the block so to speak in the past especially there was a couple of times where we actually had three board members out of five who were brand new so I did quite a bit of formal orientation at the meeting we would take 15 minutes or so at several meetings in a row to just bring up some new information I don't have anything specific to share tonight I think that I will try as things come to mind I'll put them on the agenda and we'll be able to talk about them a little bit I think Danny you said that you were signed up for the VLCT training yes it's on the 24th okay that's fine and as I as I sent to you an email I'm not sure how much they will talk about the town manager form of government there it is significantly different than towns like Duxbury that that are just select board towns Waterbury has chosen the manager form of government the select board appoints a professional manager that's me and the select board has no role in personnel matters except for basically setting policies personnel policies as a role in setting pay through the budget process but the manager recruits hires supervisors disciplines and if necessary terminates employees the select board has no role in the day-to-day administration of the town through its employees that's the manager's responsibility the manager is also the purchasing agent for the town in essence the manager in a town manager form of government has all the authority invested in the manager that is typically invested in the select board in the other communities there are a few exceptions to that the zoning administrator for instance is is nominated by the planning commission and the select board actually appoints the zoning administrator the manager does not appoint the zoning administrator that's one kind of quirk in the in the law the manager is given the responsibility to prepare a budget for the town and the select board has the authority to approve that budget and to submit it to the voters at annual meeting or a special town meeting if necessary once the budget is approved it's the manager's responsibility and authority to execute the budget we talked about the orders already so all all payables are put on a warrant order and the select board gets to review that and has to sign off on that before the treasurer can draw checks on the on the town's bank account it's a pretty collaborative process I've always gotten along very well with the select boards that I've worked with I don't try to hide anything there's you know every opportunity if the select board feels that there's a concern or an issue in a particular department uh in terms of operations those things are discussed routinely at select board meetings obviously personnel matters are not discussed in open session there are occasions where if there's discipline going to happen which is very rare fortunately here that the select board might have to be involved in executive session private discussions about those issues but I just want to state to you directly and to all of you as well and I think the rest of the four know this you know if you have any questions about anything if there's something that you think is unusual on you just have a question about how how a particular program runs or you know what the town is responsible for certainly you know I encourage you to reach out to me anytime if there are any issues that you want on the agenda this is a select board meeting uh much of the agenda is put together by uh parla and and me but select board members have have the ability as individuals to just say I want to talk about x y z issue just let us know we'll put that on the on the agenda and I guess that's it for right now we and we usually ask for agenda items by noon on Friday thank you okay any of the other board members have anything to add nope welcome to the board welcome it's a learning process you'll have fun yeah I just wanted to say that you know bill you and Carla and the rest of the staff have always been real accommodating when it comes to assisting any of the board members with any other questions and concerns one of the most important things came up a little bit in an email maybe you were already on but we have to be very careful outside of the meeting how we gather to discuss anything you really can't gather three if three of us are going to attend a public meeting it really has to be worn so if there's a hot topic and we think more than two board members are going to show up we should really warn it and then in emails you shouldn't we shouldn't be trying to email each other as a group outside of meetings and even outside of meetings discussing three of us standing in a group I believe breaks open meeting loss so just be aware of that really could could yeah I mean you know if you're standing on the street watching the independence day parade in your together that's probably okay but you have to make sure that you don't talk about business while you're while you're there on the street but the emails is important it's kind of counter-intuitive and antithetical to how we all operate now and you know you saw it today probably I did send an email out to Mike who had a question about you know election of officers tonight you really should not send emails to the five select board members because once you do that you're really conducting a meeting so it's not how we operate most of the time today it takes a little bit of discipline but I would ask you all to refrain from doing that and when you do it you shouldn't copy me on it because if you do I'm going to send an email it says you're breaking open meeting why don't do this so so when we have I'm sorry when we have emails from the public like we you know do to all of us what's the best protocol um would it be like if if there is something to discuss to make sure that you respond privately just to that person and not reply all or is that still not okay should we come to you yeah you should definitely not reply to all if if there are more than uh if there are three or more select board members on that email so my advice to you if someone if someone emails you know Dana emails you and says hey I've got an issue about speeding on on Stosbury and he sends it to all five board members there's nothing that prohibits him from sending an email out to everyone but what you should do is to just say respond to him say thank you Dana and got your email I'm going to put this on the agenda for you know the next meeting and we'll talk about it then that's really how you should handle that if there's something that somebody emails to you and you believe that it's something important that the town should address uh you should respond to that person and also include me on your response or email me independently or call me and say you know Dana's brought up this issue there's a safety concern uh you know there's a sign that you know is missing or whatever you you know communicate those things to me and we'll try to take care of that I mean we I try when I interact with people as much as possible not that I'm trying to cut the select board out of uh anybody's uh correspondence because you are their elected officials and I'm I'm not an elected official I'm appointed I work for the board but you know I do try to encourage people if you have an issue you should contact me directly contact the manager's office contact the clerk's office we'll try to address it because the select board no one select board member has any authority you know mark is the chairperson but he's the chair of the select board to just run the meetings uh no one select board member can direct an employee to do anything so those types of things you should let me know about and I'll address them and then if we have to talk about them at a meeting we we'll do that all right anything else or we can move on right uh investment portfolio okay uh Karla can you let me share my screens please I think you should be able to okay you try I did yeah there you go so I emailed this out to you all this afternoon uh it won't take long to go through this um and I apologize that I wasn't able to get it out last week I had worked on this on Friday morning and as I told you the email server was was infiltrated by a bot robot and we had to take the email down and it didn't come back into service until way yesterday and I didn't I didn't work yesterday so I sent it out today Danny for your information and you may know this if you read the town report but um the town has uh we have one checking account and we operate what we refer to as fund accounting I don't know how how familiar you are with uh gas being accounting standards or accounting in general but uh we we account for our spending and for our revenues through a variety of funds all of the money really is held in one checking account and uh the general fund is the main fund I I did not I don't have up here a uh uh financial reports or balance sheets for all the funds I will send those to you at some point here in the next couple weeks just so you can familiarize yourself with it um and the spending that happens in the highway fund or the library fund or the cemetery fund all the bills are paid out of the general fund but each of those funds uh has a separate income and expense statement and a separate balance sheet we have four funds that we actually have investments in uh and the biggest one of those funds is the one that's up here on the screen now it's the tax stabilization fund the tax stabilization fund was established in around 1997 uh waterbury elementary school and duxbury elementary school at the time the two town school districts formed uh what was referred to then as u45 uh we were already in the harwood union um but uh the harwood union high school was for our students from um seventh grade through twelfth grade at the time when u45 was established in the mid nineties that's when crossing brook middle school was built and watery and duxbury began educating their pre-k through eighth grade at both what's now thatcher brook primary school and cross at brook middle school when that happened the old elementary school in duxbury closed and pre-k to four was those students were sent to thatcher brook here in waterbury and then fifth grade through eight was sent to cross at brook and in um duxbury and the middle school was built new in the in the mid to late nineties uh and at the time i suggested to the select board and to the school board that well duxbury is going to be using watery elementary school to send their k to pre-k to fourth graders uh we're all building the cross at brook school together but duxbury should buy into the water very elementary school and uh that was agreed to and uh duxbury ended up paying watery about 635 thousand dollars to buy into the water very elementary school at the time so that money came to the school district at first and it was going to be used to benefit watery taxpayers in the school district and after a year or two i said well if the school board has control of that money and it's going to be used to help water very students how can that be done if watery and duxbury students are being educated together it would seem that it would be best if that money was uh owned by the town of watery and under the control of a select board so around 1990 we had a town meeting in the town transferred the responsibility for this tax stabilization fund from the watery school board to the watery select board and uh what we've done with that money since 1997 there was 644 thousand that was uh that duxbury paid to water very not 635 so that 644 was invested and uh if you look at anyone you have time at page 45 41 on the town report you'll see the history there so we have uh grown that fund to over a million dollars now and uh in the 24 years since we've had that fund uh we have used about 680 thousand dollars to uh send to the general fund of the town to help uh stabilize the tax rate so this money is uh held in cash and investments you can see there that at the end of February there were 415 thousand 296 dollars worth of money in investments um actually 20705 of that 415 is now in a money market and 394592 is in securities and you can see there under my handwritten portfolio we have some good fixed investments here that we bought a number of years ago uh we have uh three corporate bonds two of them are paying over seven percent one of them is paying 6.45 percent uh you can't get anywhere close to that on corporate bonds today we have an annuity that was purchased in I think 2012 and it runs through 2025 or something like that that's that six percent there's 208 thousand dollars in that now and then as I said the money market and the mutual funds at the end of February were worth about 161 thousand dollars so every so often I share this information with the select board uh we do have an investment policy I will get that out to you it might be on the website but we do have an investment policy that guides me as I manage this money along with Carla as you can see here in February at the end of February because the stock market was then at close to an all-time high it has continued to go up since then but I did sell as I put in my email today out of the a little bit of more than a million dollars that we actually had in in uh equity securities in these four funds we sold about 103 thousand a little bit more than 10 percent and 20 thousand dollars of this 415 was sold on February 25th and it's just in a money market fund now and we'll leave it there for the time being and then you know if the market has a correction and drops we might put some of that back in um the next fund is the cc fisher fund this is a much more modest fund it's uh 32 thousand four hundred and 45 dollars this is a fund that was actually originally a private fund of the waterbury village fire department uh cc fisher was uh a chief in the village fire department back probably in the 70s it was before my time here um this fund is named for him in the late 1990s the village fire department merged officially with the town fire department and this money was uh at that time just before the merger the village fire department asked the town if it would manage the money for them um and then when the village fire department and the town fire department merged this became a town fund um this money is when it's used it's it's usually used from an off-budget perspective to provide some training for firefighters we've actually sent a few of the firefighters to a firefighting school hasn't happened in a while so i share this information with the fire chief every so often but it's a fund that this money has to be used for the benefit of the fire department it can't be used for anything other than that but we haven't used any of it for quite some time now this is the cemetery fund the waterbury cemeteries are governed by elected officials they are town elected officials there are five cemetery commissioners um this money the genesis of this money was from two cemetery associations uh until about 10 years ago uh the waterbury cemetery commission did almost nothing except cell graves uh there were two cemetery associations uh one in waterbury center that basically took care of the cemetery that's on maple street and then the hope cemetery association that took care of the cemetery here down in the village um unfortunately over time and because volunteerism is diminishing for a variety of reasons um the majority of the members of these cemetery associations are actually under the ground now in the cemeteries and and the older folks who were still dealing with these cemeteries came to the cemetery commissioners commissioners and said you know we really don't have the the capability any longer to maintain these cemeteries um the town's going to have to do it so the cemetery commissioners now have a pretty hefty budget it's about a $80,000 budget on an annual basis and uh you know the the town is actually taking care of mowing the grass and planting trees and the like in these cemeteries but when the associations disbanded while they were under no obligation to do so they turned over their money to the town and they turned over uh probably in the vicinity of maybe $400,000 between the two funds they had that money just in cash for the most part the town has taken that money this money is under control of the cemetery commissioners not the select board but um you can see I did the same thing here we sold off about $70,000 of these equities at the end of February and you know this this fund has grown nicely over the over the 10 years that we've had it so if you have questions about that you can ask me about it there is a budget in the town report for the cemeteries and the town the town does budget has budgeted in the past $15,000 a year to transfer into this cemetery fund from the taxes of the general fund we budgeted that $15,000 last year but because of COVID we pulled the plug on a whole bunch of projects including some fairly expensive cemetery projects so last year the town did not send that $15,000 to the cemetery fund and this year because we're trying to keep the tax rate at 53 cents or this year we transfer we budgeted to transfer only $5,000 from the general fund to the cemetery fund so I can answer more questions about that in the future if you want Danny but this is mainly under the purview of the elected cemetery commissioners the last fund is a veterans monument fund again the VFW veterans of foreign war had a small fund of about 50 or $60,000 that they had accumulated over time they had that money set aside for you know just general use the VFW was losing membership and they didn't have the membership that they wanted to continue to to have an active post they merged with the American Legion but before they merged with the American Legion the VFW post members came to the to me and then ultimately to the select board and said that they would like to donate their money to the town to be held in trust to be used to maintain and clean and repair the veterans monuments that are around the community so that would include the civil civil war monument that's at the Patrick Brook Climory School and the monuments that are at Rusty Parker Park we use this to if there's a new name that has to be engraved on the monument if we've had some unfortunately some vandalism to the monuments that we have to repair them we clean the monuments with them and again this money was all in cash when we took it over we've invested it mainly in mutual funds and we did sell off some of those just to take some profits if you will to guard against a big decline in the stock market so that's what this fund is for so with that unless you have any specific questions Danny or the board members I'm done as far as budget reporting Danny typically I try to do a a budget update and a review of the financial statements with the board on a quarterly basis so the first quarter is about to end at the end of March so probably the second meeting in April we'll have a budget report and a report on the financial statements if you have any questions you can ask me at any time I spend a lot of time on the financial you know it's it's a big part of my job is to you know manage the money in the budget of the town so if there's some question that you have you can certainly ask me at any point if you want information on the agenda you can ask but pretty typically we review it in April and July and September or October and then we get into the budget process at the end of the year okay good thank you thank you bill any questions god chris just a quick question bill did you uh the monies that you took from each fund was it done based on just a flat percentage on each each yeah basically basically I mean it's it's a little bit of a variable but for the most part you know about 10% from every fund that's all I got okay and you know if if the market continues to go up I might I might take a little bit more off the table again and then you know if it drops down then reinvest at that point at the next meeting we're going to talk a little bit about the refunding of the of the five-year note the $1.3 million note that we took at the end of December and we reviewed that pretty heavily in the budget process I've been in contact with our bond council in the last week or so and he just got back to me today it was I haven't had a chance to digest it so it's not on tonight's agenda but probably when we review that it might be the first meeting in April that I bring that to you but yeah I'll report on what's happening chris but at the very least you know we may we may start to reinvest you know kind of dollar cost averaging you know five or ten thousand dollars a month as opposed to dump it all in I mean if the market goes down 20 percent then we're probably you know push a lot of it back in there but at some point we'll get it back towards being fully invested it's pretty tough to predict this over inflated market right now I tell you you don't know whether to you know it's pretty crazy yeah anyway okay any other comments questions all right uh arbor day tree planting grant which was emailed from bill right yeah I don't need to share the screen I sent you the email Steve Watts speech came to me last week there is a we we try to incorporate all of our grant requests for the year into our budget but occasionally there are programs that come to our attention outside of the budget cycle Steve came to me with this one just last week there's an opportunity to apply for a thousand dollar grant from the department of forest parks and recreation this grant has no match to it so it really doesn't have any budget implications and it's a tree planting grant if the grant is awarded they're going to try to plant some two trees at the at the hope baby park and watery center in the vicinity of the picnic shelter if you look at those maples that were planted there around our parking lot they're pretty stressed and we think that the groundwater table is too high there for that particular species so they'd be looking to plant something that can tolerate having its feet wet a little bit better than those maples can so our recommendation is to authorize the submission of this grant application and authorize me to to sign it on behalf of the county I move to approve the submission of the arbor day tree planting grant and the amount of one thousand dollars being offered by the vermont department of forest parks and recreation and authorize the municipal manager to sign the application for the town okay is there a second Chris you are muted but I think you were second yeah I seconded it all right um maybe a second in any further discussion all those in favor please say aye hi hi great moving on to discuss zoning appeal Grayson Anderson possible executive session so there's no need for executive session here this is the issue I think Len Anderson was asking about and I would encourage the board to simply listen to me if you have questions and I can answer them I will and I would ask Glenn you know he should really refrain from commenting this is just really to bring the board up to speed and then the recommendation is to have you make a motion to authorize the Tulpage and Flesher to put an appearance in for the town so there's a subdivision up on sweet farm road on the same side of the road that the hunger mountain trailhead parking lot is in it abuts uh plan anderson's property and a person by the name of Grayson has applied for and received a permit from the drb to develop that subdivision and mr. Anderson has appealed the decision to superior court so in essence uh mr. Anderson is appealing the drb's decision to issue a permit to Grayson now the way that appeals are heard by the Vermont Superior Court in a town such as waterbury these appeals are heard de novo by the judge which means it's a new hearing completely so watery is not an on-the-record town so the decision that the drb made and all of the testimony that was presented by the dr to the drb and all of the documents that were presented to the drb uh if it if this were done in an on-the-record town the the appeal would be on the technical issues and the judge would be using the testimony and the documents that were submitted to help make a determination whether the permit should be upheld or not library is not an on-the-record town so in essence the the judge will be hearing this application from the applicant Grayson on the record de novo and the judge will be acting as the drb so there'll be a essentially a new drb hearing except instead of before the drb it will be before a judge and um in cases like this while the town needs to file an appearance because it is our drb's permit that is being appealed uh pretty typically the town will have a very minor role in this appeal process the town's lawyer will essentially be there to try to inform the judge about what the bylaw means and how it should be interpreted but our attorney in general in these cases will not be advocating necessarily that the drb's ruling be upheld he'll just be there to inform the judge about what the bylaw means and how it informs the town plan uh the the applicant Grayson in this case really has the burden of defending the permit that the drb has issued and the appellant mr. Anderson in this case bears the burden of explaining to the judge why the permit should not be issued so that's really all i want to say today about this process so that the board understands that we have an issue we have a permit that the drb has issued that's under appeal but it's really at this stage of the game going to go before the judge but it's going to be the applicant and the appellant that are before the judge and the judge will ultimately make that decision so with that i would recommend that the select board some select board member make the motion that i sent to you earlier today to allow stichel page and fracture to file an appearance on behalf of the town and we'll go from there so the motion should be made first and then if you have questions you can talk about i moved to approve representation of the town and filing of an entry of appearance by stichel page and fletcher professional cooperation in the grayson subdivision permit appealed before the environmental division of vermont superior court there a second a second any further discussion can can somebody tell me when that subdivision was approved we don't have that it wasn't very long ago that the subdivision was approved and then grayson missed the recording deadline to file a flat and stuff like that so essentially the permit was voided they came back presented the same information and got the same approval from the d rb so my guess it's within the last month or so because obviously the appellant has a certain number of days after the permit is issued so it's a it's a recent issuance of a permit that was issued prior but it's being appealed and that's where we are right now yeah the reason i asked is because i was asked to look at some of the infrastructure work on that project a year ago and so that's i kind of wondered if there was a statutes of limitations on that but you just gave me the reasons why it it came back to play so i answered my question thanks yeah okay we have a motion that's been moved in second in any further discussion favor please say hi hi hi mark i i didn't add it to the agenda but it is a zoning appeal can i just update the board on what's going on with regard to the um the uh jason wolf uh erin flint property on stow street which is for the court now under appeal that's the issue we had the discussion about the interim bylaws on can i just bring you up to speed on that yeah i know i know um you mentioned um limiting discussion on the last topic but i was wondering if we could just understand what exactly the basis of the appeal is or i i i don't know um what the basis of the appeal is right now i have not you know the uh what i've just seen from the court is just a very brief you know this matter is under appeal um after the after the um attorney um files its appearance then i'll have access to more information so i don't have it right now man thank you um yep uh so you wanted to do this stow street yeah so just just very quickly um you remember when we had the meeting a couple weeks ago and discussed the interim bylaws that steve had uh drafted with some input from the planning commission we had a pretty uh difficult meeting that night with some of the planning commission members it was a little contentious and the select board decided not to adopt those interim bylaws um asked the planning commission if they could uh make some recommendations by may first and as you knew from that meeting uh the the drb's the drb upheld the zoning administrator's decision uh that indicated that particular use that the property owners flint and wolf wanted to proceed with perry hill partners uh was not permitted in the district so uh perry hill partners has appealed that case to court uh we have filed an appearance on that i heard from our attorney last week so the judge we have had a um a uh status uh meeting on that case uh that was a week or so ago the judge has directed mediation as a first step to try to resolve this issue the parties have to choose a mediator by April 16th and i'm working with the attorney now on uh making some recommendations to the select board which we'll probably talk about at your April 5th meeting and then the mediation has been ordered by may 21st so pick a mediator by April 16th and start mediation by may 21st um in the interim the planning commission at your request has uh met twice already this month and they have another meeting in march they are working uh right now um the majority of them anyway towards providing some input to those interim bylaws that uh you looked at at at that hearing a couple of weeks ago our hope is that by there uh by the end of this month that they will transmit to the select board um updated interim bylaws the ones that steve wrote will basically be the the spine and the skeleton if you will of of the interim bylaws that they will be presenting uh the planning commission is trying to put a little bit more flesh on the bone so to speak some of the issues that the planning commissioners mentioned that were a you know that that they were incomplete uh lot size uh square footage in the light they're working towards getting that done i have talked to our attorney in light of this order to mediate from the judge and uh the hope is that the planning commission will transmit to the select board uh new interim bylaws that you can maybe have for your April 5th meeting and at that meeting if we have them in place uh the select board can warn a public hearing for 15 days later to have another hearing on the interim bylaws our attorney still believes that the better way to resolve this is through interim bylaws just as the select board had indicated at the last meeting that you would prefer to do this not as spot zoning so the hope is that the planning commission will get something to us so that at your April 5th meeting and the second meeting in April at the very latest that you'd be able to warn a public hearing on interim bylaws and get that public hearing to be held before the mediation has to start around May 20th and if that happens then you know we might be able to actually avoid the mediation and avoid you know going going to court so I haven't said anything now tonight uh with that it's just process it's nothing that has to be discussed in executive session but that's where we are right now and staff still believes that resolving this particular case on still street through interim bylaws is better than resolving it at court even if it's through mediation because court or mediation is only going to deal with that property and no other properties in the district than the interim bylaws we discussed last time will be more broadly applicable to all of the properties in the district as the planning commission decides so anyway that's that questions comments concerns I'm curious I know communication was one of the struggles through this whole process I'm curious if you have an indication from the planning commission that they do feel prepared to present something in April and how they would communicate with that that with us yeah they're working on that now uh Danny they they scheduled three meetings in March as opposed to their normal two um the after after our meeting there was some hope on my part and I think Ken Bellows all the chairperson of the planning commission shared it was that um maybe that they could Ken wanted to try to present permanent bylaws to the select board um and he wanted to try to get that done by May 1st that was the deadline that was kind of self-imposed at that meeting when I asked do you think it might have something by May 1st Ken the chairperson was really hoping that um permanent bylaws could be transmitted to the select board by that point and I thought that if those permanent bylaws were transmitted to the select board it still takes about 90 days from the time the select board gets the permanent bylaws from the planning commission to get them adopted so I was hoping that the the select board could take those permanent bylaws and then warn them as interim bylaws that could be adopted in a much shorter period of time within a 15-day time period but in talking to the attorney our attorney he advised that the process of going through um permanent bylaws and then having the select board warn those as interim is really not something that he would recommend uh because of the planning commission's process and the public hearings they have to go through so um the planning commission I hope is shifted gears and and they're trying to inform uh and make comments on the last interim bylaws now uh when I talked with Steve Lotspeach the community planner last week he was pretty confident when we were he was on the call with me with the attorney he was pretty confident that the planning commission would have something to transmit to the select board by early April and those can be discussed I hope at the April 5th meeting they can be reviewed but then the select board would have to actually warn the public hearing for later in April so that's what I hope it goes Danny um but uh you know we'll we'll see what they what they come up with but from what I've heard they're they're striving they're a little best to get back up Katie and I attended the last planning commission meeting um I think that was kind of the consensus at least that I could date to them because they were at one point wanting select board's input and I said that you know to go through the motions of interim and then turn around and make substantial changes for permanent didn't seem to make sense that they were close enough now do what may be considered permanent just to save I'll say save the effort but try to hit that mark as close as possible so that there were little or no changes you know once the intrams if they use that set of laws as an interim there wouldn't be much if any changes after that to make them permanent so um yeah I think I think you're right Bill I think they're I think we're gonna we're gonna get it okay that's all I have for information there's no action necessary thanks for the update um anyone have anything else to discuss tonight or we can end the meeting and I'll take a motion to adjourn is there a second or all right have a great night everyone thank you thank you all good to see you again like always good night everyone stay have a nice sunny warm weekend