 October 20th, a town of Berlin slipboard meeting to order with us tonight on my far left is Joe Stahl, Flo Smith, to my right is Carl Parton, I'm Brad Town, and to my far right is Vince Conte. Additions or changes to the agenda minutes. No sir. Public comment. Hearing none, we'll move on to the approval of licenses, permits, vouchers, and applications. I make the motion to approve Payroll Warrant 23 G08 for Payroll FY22 union contract in the amount of $58,784.60. Also Payroll Warrant 23-08 for Payroll from September 25th this year to October 8th of this year, paid on October 12th of this year in the amount of $47,901.16. Also Payroll Warrant 23 G07 with checks 22349 to 22395 for Payrolls in the amount of $150,740.00 in one penny. One second. Any discussion? Hearing none, those in favor? Motion carries. Next is the approval of the August 1st 2022 minutes. I make the motion to approve the Monday August 1st 2022 minutes with just some spelling error to a name and just a couple type of practical issues which I can share with Vince after. Okay. Here a second? Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Minutes for August 15th 2022. I make a motion to approve the Monday August 15th 2022 minutes and again just not any spelling errors or anything of that nature but just some issues and they're small and they can be easily corrected. Motion? I mean a second? Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Minutes for 8th of September 2022. I make a motion to approve the Thursday September 8th 2022 minutes as presented with just a minor change to the spacing basically. Second. Second. Mr. Chair you missed one September. One September. All those in favor? Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. First is September 2022. I make a motion to approve the Thursday September 1st 2022 minutes as presented with just some spacing issues which is again very minor. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Minutes for September 19th 2022. I make a motion to approve the Monday September 19th 2022 minutes as presented with just some very minor changes. Here a second? Second. Any discussion? Those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Last October 3rd 2022 minutes. I make a motion to also approve the Monday October 3rd 2022 minutes and only changes it some spacing issues very very minor. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Round table Joe. What's that? What's that? Float? The only round table item I was going to mention is the Lover's Lane Bridge just in terms of checking on the status where that stands and if you've heard any more bits from the state. Yeah about two weeks ago I had a conversation with a gentleman from the state. He confirmed that it went through legislation and was on the list of projects to be done but no date was assigned to it yet. He said he thought that for this year probably the just the study would be done and completed they were hoping. He said it could still it could still happen in the next year or two but potentially out three to five years to get it scheduled and funded for the work to be completed. I'm going to talk with him probably once once a quarter now just to follow up for any updates or status changes on that. Excellent. Thank you. That was it. Thank you. Carol? No. Are you all set? I am all set. Motion to adjourn? Make a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. All right. We're adjourned. We'll take a ten minute recess. I guess I would like to open the public forum right now. Call it to order. The introduction of the Newtown staff. Rachel Giroux our Newtown clerk. I'll have you introduce your assistant and also with us tonight is Callie Streeter the assistant treasurer. Now to introduce the each board and commission. First off, Carla and Weasel can't be here with us so Tom? Tony Snow? Well just take and stand up and give the list of membership and a little bit what you do. So I'm part of the planning commission. The other members of the planning commission are Carla, as we mentioned, and for the big attack quality. We had Dave Kuber set off the commission and we gained two new commissioners this year. Amanda Smith and Brandon Weschel last week was his first week officially. Karen lay sleeper and then I'll be going over some of the other items that we've been working on as a planning commission over there. Okay thank you. The DRB, Bob? Yeah. My name is Robert Ornick. I'm chair of the DRB. We have some of the same members of the DRB. Carla and Weasel is our vice chair. Paula McBurthy is also on the development board. We have John Feverich and Tour Nelson, who's actually an alternate, which is one of the pitches I want to make, is that we do need, we have one vacancy and we like another alternate. So anybody's own client, the DRB could use some help with this membership. I've been on the DRB for 21 years now. I'll be able to explain what the DRB is. Development board, our goal is, our primary purpose is to enforce the regulations of the town of Berlin, the regulations meaning the land use regulations. I look at it more that our goal is really not to enforce regulations. Our goal is to help developers achieve their goals within the standards that has been set by the town. So we look to make it easier to get there as opposed to harder. We have typically not a large agenda, but every once in a while we'll have a major application come in that will take four or five readings. If we have questions about that, I'll read it in a second. Later on. Public Works, Rob Allen? Yes, I'm Rob Allen, I'm the chairman of the Public Works Board. We're a five member board of which we only have four members, Bob. So I also am soliciting for another member to our board. The other members are Ted Long, Tor Nelson is a member on our board, and Bob Mungin. So there's four of us on the board right now. And we have a part-time assistant from Tom Badowski, very part-time really, but he's a guy that does the day-to-day stuff for us. He's on the phone, he's making contact with vendors, he's working with consulting engineers, you know, and he's the guy in the office every day that gets our work done for us. So I'm going to probably call on Tom quite a bit later because I see the agenda is certainly heavy with Public Works projects. So just a little bit about Public Works in Berlin. Public Works is water and sewer in Berlin. We have a fairly new water system that's up on the Dodge Farm. It has a $425,000, $425,000 gallon concrete tank. There's four wells up there that fill the tank. The distribution line comes down Airport Road into the Industrial Avenue and Granger Road area, and that's where the network begins to service commercial properties and a few residents up on the hill. So right now the water really just services up on the hill. Our sewer system is a collection system. It's up on the hill where the water system is up around, you know, the hospital and the mall and over by Comfort Inn in that whole area. A few residents out Airport Road is also where the sewer system goes and we have a few pump stations. We've worked hard to eliminate pump stations but there still is a major pump station there. And then all of our sewer on the hill goes down a steep pipe down to down in the valley to Route 302 area where we have more collection system down there along the Route 302 quarter that collects from commercial properties mostly but we have some lines that go up a few of the town roads that collect residential areas. And then all of the wastewater goes to a pump station down near Otto's, is it Otto's zone? Anyway, across from Pizza Hut. From there it's pumped down about a mile. It's pumped to the Montpelier collection system and a manhole down towards Montpelier and from there it goes to Montpelier collection. So Berlin does not have any wastewater treatment facility. It's all collection and transfer and it all goes down into Montpelier for treatment. And that's it for me. It's the Conservation Commission. Tom Willard? I'm Tom Willard. I'm a member of the Conservation Commission. I guess Wendy is in here. Members of the Conservation Commission are Wendy Bowles. She's our chair. Phil Gentilly, Ellen Sewell, and sister Lauren. Now, forget what you just heard from Rob and Bob. We're recruiting too. We do fun stuff. Those guys are more like work. Some of the stuff that we have done and are presently doing, well first of all, Conservation Commissions are created by state statute. We're a statutory party before all Act 250 applications. We do more fun stuff though. The statute requires or gives us authority to inventory all the natural resources in town and protect those natural resources. And what we've been doing and what we've done in the past, we've purchased six acres, I think, to protect natural resources, five of which are up the ridge line up behind Berlin Pond. It was originally years ago. There was a high-end development. I think it was 18 homes proposed up there. Kind of energized us. That's quite a lot to go. And so we have purchased and put construction easements on the land up there to protect it. If you haven't been up there, Darling Trail and then the Bass Trail, it goes across the top and down. You're really ought to do it. It's just a wonderful resource in town. We work with Vast and the Mountain Bike Association to maintain and properly locate, to protect natural resources, those trails on the mountain. We produced a really nice report. I think it's on the web page. We've got together a bunch of ecologists and biologists who produced the report on Coin Pond, which I just find is a fascinating report. Read that if you get a chance after you join. We started, we've been talking a lot about a speakers program where we can get, oh, Roger Hill had talked about climate change and Jim Andrews we had up here once to talk about amphibians and he took us on a tour and we looked for all kinds of amphibians. I heard about that kind of stuff. So we're talking about sort of energizing that kind of speaker bureau from not-to-resources focus. Presently, at the present time, we're working on planning some additional chestnuts up on ours. We're working with the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation. We planted about four or five years ago and they all died by one and that one now is about eight or 10-inch diameter chestnut. So we're talking about planting more up there. We're making a trip off this fall with forestry products and then perhaps some plant hopefully in the spring. You've done a lot of invasive species removal, buckthorn and those kinds of things that don't serve our not-to-resources real well. So anyway, so I guess that's my pitch. We had a lot of fun. At one time, the One Conservation Commission was designated the State of Vermont Conservation Commission of the Year back when we were doing a lot of our land work. So that was kind of part of my self. So sign up and select a board, won't you? How many acres did you say you purchased and preserved? It's about 800. I don't know the exact number. And also the Dog River, by the way, has an absolutely gorgeous piece of land. It's where the, depending on who, the jacuzzi has kind of a historic swimming hall and then there's this beautiful gorge that goes down through there and there's some hemlocks. It's got to be listed right on the very edge of the cliff. It's just gorgeous, but a little hard to get to. So that's the Dog River Natural Area, too. How's the Vermont Conservation Africa going at the South End? The land deal for South End. The land is, there's a family, the Crandall family. The heirs all have the right of first refusal. So we have a grant for $120,000 to help purchase that. It's the South End of the pond and it's about a half a mile or more of a riparian land on that beautiful wetland there. And it was on the market and we stepped in and thought that it ought to be preserved to protect the weapon and the pond. And the grant that we have, one of the grants, the $120,000 grant, it's through the Vermont Housing Conservation Board and they need to subordinate the Crandall family right of first refusal to the easements that the Vermont Land Trust is going to hold. And so right now the legal work's being done to identify which members of the family have that right and then to get them to give up their right of first refusal. No, to give up to subordinate their rights to the easement that we want to put on the land to protect it. So do we have enough money to buy it? We have enough money. We've raised $15,000 from the town and $80,000 from other fundraising efforts. $120,000 from BHCB is the big one. So we can't purchase it without that. Any other questions? Thank you, Tom. The Recreation Committee, Tim Shea. Hi, I'm not Tim Shea. Tim is our chairman. Our secretary is Hannah Conner. I'm Jeff Farrell along with other members, Chris Zabrinsky and Mike Goya. Tom said he did fun stuff and he does, but we're the Recreation Commission. So I don't know, are we hiring anybody? Do we have a space? I don't know. I think we're full up right now but we're willing to talk with you if you want to come and hang out with us because we've got other stuff that needs to be done. Some of those things that we do, we work with the school to enhance, develop, better our youth recreation programs. It's a difficult environment and so we work with them as best as we can. We also are working on developing some adult activities, adult recreation activities, for instance, a broom ball league at the ice rink. We manage the ice rink. If anybody wants to come out and help with managing the ice rink, we can always use help managing the ice rink. Dustin is still off in the wintertime to help with his creation of water. Do you want to tell people they may not know where the ice rink is? Oh, the ice rink. If you don't know where the ice rink is, it is at the end of Shed Road right next to the town office in the police station. It's got a full-ish size hockey rink. A little smaller. A little bit smaller but pretty good size outdoor hockey rink with boards. I should mention is the Tom Willard Memorial. Tom Willard Memorial is an existing ice rink. Tom's our guy who has been running it like a champ for decades. Yeah, so we can't have Tom be the only guy who's out working on the ice rink. So the rest of the recreation commission will be out there with Tom. And like I said, we can always use more help. There are lights. It is a lighted rink. It is open. We like to, yeah, midnight-ish. If we can shut the lights off, then we drape the neighbors' lights and lights to go out earlier. But I always say that because the light shines in my window. But I'm also probably the number one customer for this game, right? So I don't mind the light so much. Beyond that, we collaborate with the conservation commission to make sure that we are, that the users of the trails and the public lands are being responsible and respectful of our public lands and that we are maintaining good usage of those public lands in recreational activities. We collaborate with the democular area and not the bike association. So far, the conservation commission has mostly done the vast interactions, but we're there if they need any assistance with those kind of things. We got a new scoreboard up at the Berlin Elementary School. Come on and check it out. It is mainly a baseball scoreboard, but it's set up so that we can use it for soccer too. Or any other thing that might be happening over there. Let's see, new scoreboard, youth programs, adult programs, working with the conservation commission. We'll be working with the planning commission to help us figure out some things that we can do with our expansion of trails and multi-use paths around the community and how we can best use those and make sure the community is getting what they want out of those things. And we are here to represent you as a community in the field of recreation for all of our community members, whether they are this big or this big, we want everybody to be able to have some enjoyment of our space here in the town of Berlin. Emergency management, Chief? That sounds good. Good evening. I'm Bruce Richardson, and I am the emergency management coordinator for the town of Berlin. The emergency management committee or team of Berlin is not like a lot of these other boards and committees. We're just a group of volunteers who are there to help support the first responders of the town. In the event of a very large incident or a disaster or that kind of thing, think Hurricane Irene, think Superstorm Sandy, those are the kinds of things that we would normally be involved with, but also things like flooding that can happen with bad thunderstorms or ice jams like the Stevens Branch or the Funnesty, things where we can rapidly spiral out of control of the incident commanders, excuse me, if they need some help. Now, the emergency management director is a state mandated position that's in state statute. That is Chief Poimbran, our current EMD. He can have support staff, including EMC, who helps discipline the normal administrative side of things. And then we have a fairly small but good staff. As far as the Chief and myself, we have Val Sier, who's been on the team for a while anyway. Tour Nelson, a name you've heard quite a bit. He was our first EMD for the town way back in 2007. We also have a number of members who may or may not be as active with the team as they had been in the past, but are still available when we had potential activation for a need for a shelter. We had several people show up. Corrine and some other former members showed up to help us if we had to open up a shelter. So that helps us out a lot. And we have liaisons with other organizations that do disaster-related stuff like the American Red Cross, the Central Vermont Disaster Animal Response Team, and also there are liaisons from the Central Vermont Medical Center because they have their own whole emergency management set up there at the hospital, and we've done some drills with them. And it's good to know how they have plans a lot of, like, decontamination for bad kind of things that they practice for. That's basically it. I guess I can't compete with the recreation, the conservation requirements for recruiting, but we're always looking for people. It's not a huge investment of time. We meet once a month, and there's a little bit of training involved, but a lot of it can be done online. So, again, we're there to help. Oh, and also send out Vermont Alert messages. I know how many have heard of Vermont Alert, signed up for it. We, the team, can send out messages to the whole town in the event of an emergency or need to get out information in a quick manner. So, highly endorse Vermont Alert, and I'll sign up for a suggestion you do because this is a way to get information to you very quickly by whatever method you prefer to get it by. I would only like to add that I haven't been on the team for very long, so I really rely on the experience of the team members for a long time. I do have frequent contact with the state on that end of emergency management, and I've heard back that the emergency management plan that the team has to do regularly was one of the best they had seen. So, that speaks highly of their work and their dedication and their professionalism to that particular subject. It's probably not widely known, but Berlin houses a lot of critical infrastructure. So, in addition to any random act of nature that can happen anywhere in time, we have the train station, we have the power station down the road, which would be a nightmare if something happened down there. We have the hospital we have assisted living on, so we had an incident not that long ago where there was a propane leak at the nursing home, and we had to figure out, where are we going to put all these people, because bad weather is coming that way. So, things do happen, and that really shows the need for this team and for people to actively participate in the team. That's my question. I'd like to open the floor for discussion on the town division. The Planning Commission was one to speak to this. I'll see you there. You're welcome. So, I'm going to start with the Planning Commission. I just want to talk a little bit about the things that we've been working on towards the town division and some of the projects we've been working on as the Planning Commission, and we're really looking forward to public participation in it. Most of you probably know about the new town center. When you officially received the town center designation, I believe we're only the third town center designation in the history of the state's program, and also, very recently, we just approved a new name for the town center. So, if you're not aware yet, the town center is going to be called the Berlin Common, with the street officially named as well, entering into the town center called Gateway Avenue, or Gateway Avenue. We've also been working closely with the school for a land transfer. We had a vote in March that we were able to put together a media campaign with the school and with residents, as well as members of the board of the Planning Commission, to promote the town center as well as the land transfer. The vote was approved by all five towns in the school district. And just recently, Tom informed me that they were able to work with the school board to get language approved to officially have that transfer take place very soon here. So the property that is near the current Berlin mall, just behind the school, that we were looking to transfer, I think it's 3.8 acres, will officially come into our possession. And that was a huge thing for us to happen, because it's going to allow us to make the new road into the town center into Berlin Common, a lot more safe for the residents that are going to be housed there, as well as for traffic that we expected to be coming through that area. We've also been working with the community on a community rec path. You've heard this mention before. And that's one of the great things about, I'm noticing about our towns with a lot of overlap between the different committees and commissions that we have. The rec path currently in discussion. And there are a couple of phases currently in place for a possible future rec path that I'll be wrapping around. Hopefully the entirety of the new town center. We've also recently been approved for our neighborhood development area. And Tom, can you explain a little bit more about what the neighborhood development area does for us? It includes the new town, it includes the new town center and a quarter mile radius around it. And what it does, it affords developers, particularly those developing a housing for credits from the state of Vermont to help defer some of the costs and alleviate some Act 250 requirements. And it also allows the development of a tax incremental financing district which is a way to pay for future infrastructure in these places. And I just want to say, I came on to the commission after learning a lot about the new town center. It's something that I'm personally very excited about. As a former community planner and transportation planner, it was something I'm really looking forward to helping to influence the change that's going to be occurring in our community. In the future, if all is able to work out with the new town center, we're going to be able to provide a big new housing, invite new residents into our community. We're going to be able to bolster the funding for the local school district as well as have a lot more. Hopefully kids run into our community as well. So something I'm really, really excited about as well as adding those new recreation pieces as well. And in thinking about this, one more piece that I want to touch on was our community was recently just approved by the Vermont Council on Rural Development to be included in their community visit program. And this is something that I'm really excited about. They are going to be doing all the late work and providing a community organizing effort for us to have, we're going to do as a commission help fund some community meals and it's going to be an opportunity for people to come together. I'm under the impression it'll take place in different areas around Berlin to include as many residents as possible. And the goal is to have a lot more residents participating in what future projects might look like in the town of Berlin as well as a priority projects as well for us to take on moving forward. I think this happening in conjunction with the New Town Center is going to be huge for building and continuing to build identity for the town of Berlin. Thank you. Any questions for him? Sure. I was just wondering, is this the housing stuff or is this including affordable housing? I mean is that built into the plan that you're looking for? I might get the impression the newest development that's going to occur involves affordable housing with a fresh background. That's correct. So there will be affordable housing as part of it as well as new commercial space, giant spaces in the model that individuals currently have or the town of Green as well a place for community events. So the goal is to have affordable housing mixed with affordable housing. Thank you. Yes, Tom. I just have one quick comment that is I don't want this well first of all I want to thank the select board for hosting this. It's pretty nice. But I don't want the planning commission to forget the historic four corners area. I support the New Town Center. I understand we need a municipal presence over there. But I think maybe in terms of the town of vision we can spend a little more time thinking about protecting what we already had which is the historic I know the historic preservation has gone around a lot of the homes from Louis Plood's Queen Anne's porch. There are a lot of really nice things like we cut the church and it's right next to some pretty useful commercial properties as well. So I haven't seen a lot of really a lot of work to make sure that we protect this part of town. For everything from sidewalks to trails I know by the culverts I hold my breath every time I see somebody with a baby carriage going across there with no shoulders and their cars are going it really needs some sidewalks it really needs so I guess my pitch has spent a little more time spent time with the town center but don't forget what we already have in the four corners of the story. Yeah Tom. Tom I could appreciate that the planning commission in 2018 got two sections of town the village center one of them is the four corners of early corners area and so that opens up the opportunity for funding to four sidewalks for facade improvements there's tax credits available from that the other one is down in the village of Riverton part of it is just the lack of people to do the work so if we can get the neighborhood together I think that's what's needed to start some of these other things so I would encourage you to do that. In that designation in a town vision you couldn't picture all of these historic homes as doctors' offices or more attorneys' offices or something else and I'm not sure I appreciate the designation but I'm not sure that designation goes quite far just a thought. I would add an addition to that because it's always a hard conversation I have is someone who works in a local school and having seen a lot of the planning history that's going on is in the work we've done with the mall since it's not our property and it's working with the mall in addition I think one of the really cool things about the town center is the area that we are transforming is a parking lot and we're turning it into a place and so it's going to be amazing but I'm really excited to hear more about that because that I think is definitely should be a future part of what we're doing I think that should be good and we'll be coming up with the neighborhood visit program it's a really good opportunity for that discussion getting more on this discussion the fire department merger Joe good evening my name is Joe Stop I've been on the fire department since 2009 been the corporate president for the last six years and your current chief I'm the deputy chief Matt Romia in the back I'm a firefighter Janet Richardson we currently have 27 responders all volunteers and they all work in the community or outside the community and we talk about daytime coverage that's kind of a tough one we are I guess fortunate that we have a couple people who are either semi-retired or in the city to leave their work I don't necessarily know if the fire department merger is really the right topic here but what we're looking for is we need to change we need to grow and pick up our pace to catch up with all the development we're just talking about you know I don't care if it's the utilities of planning you talk about fun nothing's more fun than the fire department I get an invitation just before dinner to go out on the interstate at 10 below to dance around all the traffic out there pick up dead deer parts to allow the rest of the traffic to safely go through but anyway so that's a true start two dead deer three downed cars and the interstate down to a long lane anyway we're in a kind of an interesting position right now where we have a number of Norwich students so we have about six or eight people coming from Norwich and they are wired for this we also have a number of them in classes taking their fire one certification 230 some odd hours volunteer hours mind you the same certification as your paid department and multiplayer just to let you know they're getting paid to do everything EMS we have seven that are either EMS or above now they're 13 that are just a lower level cert you know this is this is new for the town of Berlin but still we're volunteers it's really tough and I think the commission anybody who's dealing with volunteers can really understand that what is the town looking what do they need I can tell you in the last six months we had three structure fires in West Berlin your volunteer fire department we can have a truck on the road somewhere around 13 to 15 minutes on the road we're in Alteria are we good with that should we be good with that all the development happening here up on the hill I should say is you know all that commercial they need us more often than the residents they do in fact all those power accidents up on the interstate people who are not even town residents use us more than the commercial you know we are going out on at the end of September we have around 208 calls fire calls that's power accidents, alarm activations structure fires 444 fast water calls so that's your GMS your medical calls these are your volunteers I think I came up short and I didn't bring my applications I saw all the I said oh man I missed the opportunity okay so what I'm looking at is probably no one wants to put fire gear on but there's a lot of administrative work to have so if we're talking about merging with the town what would that look like what that would mean to me is I would have less work administratively and able to put more focus on trainings and being you know equipping the young people coming in that's what it would mean to me but again it all goes back to the residents what are you what are you going to be happy with are you good with 15 minutes before you hear those trucks coming down the road 15 minutes of your house on fire you're calling your insurance company okay so I'm not really sure Matt would you have something you want to share so I thought I'll help you out and I'll come over here with you sorry I'm Matt Theron I'm the Don's number two dance partner for those that don't know kind of what we do we have two fire stations in the town of Rolando one up there across the mouth of these one down here on route 12 in Riverton there was a nasty rumor a couple years ago that that fire station down here in Riverton which is the old heart of the residential section in Berlin was closed that's not true in case anybody thinks that the first truck that went out the door that got to the scene on Channel Road last week came out of that parking I was on the Berlin Fire Department back in the 90s when I was a cadet at Norwich and joined back up a couple years ago I'm not sure COVID okay I blame all my dates because they're all buzzing because of COVID but it takes a lot to do what we did we currently have two fire engines a rescue truck that also works as an engine a ladder truck a utility vehicle all of those have to be checked out routinely we have I don't even know how many thousands of dollars worth of air packs that mean the difference in life and death for our firefighters and for our town residents back when I got into the fire service in the 90s we were just getting into this new era of construction where the fires in residences residential structures went from doubling every 10 to 15 minutes to doubling every 2 to 3 minutes because the way houses are built because of the way that the contents of the residences are made what we're building things out of the life that we used to the other thing we are constrained with 2900 9-time residents a daytime population of 12,000 to 15,000 and so we really have a different fundamental problem than an East Montpelier or Berrytown or Williamstown or Northfield we'll have a big residential community that's going to be a big problem I'll tell you, if you alluded to it earlier I got something that will beat every one of these boards and commissions I'll just drive a fire truck and you can drive down into Montpelier at 3 o'clock in the morning run the lights and sirens we are the turning point though honestly we've been at a turning point it's hard to recruit and retain full-time public safety personnel and it's not limited to women it's not limited to the fire service it's not limited to the EMS service it's not limited to law enforcement we're state-wide truthfully New England-wide in trouble with public safety and we've got to figure this figure this game out because the forecast is not real rosy don't mean to be debited but we've got to figure out where we're going to go because it's not a bad thing then it takes us 10 to 15 minutes to get a truck out the door it just is it's you probably need to do better but we can't do better in a volunteer model especially with the way our area is working there's also the bigger kind of the bigger picture we're also a decon-unit for the state hazmat team so we get called we've been to Northfield we went to Williamstown we've been to Marshfield we've been to Middlesex that's just the past couple of years so we have folks that are trained and can take that to those hazardous materials instances and this goes right into conservation and recreation committee land we're going to see Washington County double the number of recreational trails mileage and the next before the stone melts there are going to be some areas of mountain biking trails not in the town of Berlin but in the greater Washington County area that are just going to absolutely blow those lid off of the number of available trails challenges when you go up on Irish Hill and you hit that rock the wrong way come off your bike and break your shoulder we're the ones that come and get you so we're working now part of a regional effort with the district 6 EMS board to coordinate efforts because it's not just Berlin it's just Middlesex and Montpelier and Waterbury this is now becoming a regional impact if you will to public safety we just did a back country in Northfield Saturday night it was a two and a half hour effort and that was easy so these are labor intensive manpower equipment intensive events that we have to that we have to deal with so I know we've been talking about what's on the thing here is to talk about the merger with the town we're not unique in that we're not a town department it's pretty common around here to be honest with you it's a little weird but it's pretty common we also are kind of like that's taking Tuesday night usually another night with a board meeting that's pulling out of our ability to look at the board and come to the meeting so when I got this 20 year old that wants to go out and drag osas around and spray water that's what we need to be doing not paying the bills in the usual expedient manner so that's kind of where at least we've talked about internally where we're going we also have the capital needs just like every other town department we just bought a ladder truck let me back up ISO insurance to services organization our ISO rating it's a rating the fire department undergoes about every 10 years it directly affects every one of your wallets because our ISO rating governs what you pay for homeowners insurance it governs what the mall pays for commercial property and casualty insurance which in turn affects the rent for the stores of the mall which in turn affects what you pay for groceries at Walmart so it all comes some of that all comes back to that ISO rating we were forecast to lose a grade in ISO this year we weren't alone, my peeler was forecast to lose one too so we're working through those issues to see if we cannot lose that rating they give us a warning and tell us what we need to do and honestly on our end it's mostly what we need to do in order to meet ISO requirements we have to have end date trucks that are tall enough that reach far enough pump enough water that do all these other things so we took the step this year as an apartment we bought a ladder truck that if we had written the specs forward about brand new would have been a million and a half and just to put that in terms of our annual budget that's $75,000 a year into the capital fund to buy that we were able to find one that was in pretty incredible condition for $180,000 so that's the efforts that we go through to try to be frugal but at the same time to have the equipment on hand that meets ISO regulations and that will serve the town so I think that after questions we end up probably dicing through a merger discussion in the next year if nothing else to relieve us of the burden of trying to run a business in addition to running a fire department we have to post 30 hours a year in continuing education that includes a hazardous materials model that includes some other model requirements but getting those two hours a month with maybe a couple extra days so it's a tough reach so who picks up that work that you don't do for logistics and administration when it goes to the town I would expect it to be the town administration but remember that where we have to sit and look and work our budget and decide to pay the bills and that comes here something to say about 6 years ago we outsourced our account we used to do it in house but now we are over a quarter million dollar budget and I can't afford to have my volunteers be that treasure and miss something the decimal went the wrong way right? we sent it out and we went with a firm who took care of the accounting we were paying $900 a month we put it out as an R&D and now we are paying $1200 a month so this is something that could happen if we were to merge we have an accountant we have an assistant accountant nothing else is going to supplement somebody's income on the town side it's kind of like a bonus for the town we're still paying it but I'm paying it to somebody else not a town employee so I see that as being a win there and like you said it's the administrative and the money is the big profit I do have a volunteer, the treasurer with an assistant treasurer who collects the bills and turns around and puts the right line item and sends it off to the accountant there's more to it than that there's taxes and such there is a stipend that they turn around and we do get a stipend once a year so there are taxes as well that they take care of not just yeah that's all I'm just curious it's all like we're dealing with the city of New York the population for the town government they're sitting here like Vincent, Tom and the three folks back here are they the folks who pick up the word for the fire department then and can you guys handle that can you do that alright is that oh no they're not oh they're not no I pay I pay fat shelters in very town to do our account or I should say yeah I work with fat shelters we all pay fat shelters $1,200 I guess the plan would be to try and let the staff know right you know we've talked about it I think this is before Vince even came on board toyed around with that and it wasn't necessarily the right time we only had you know Diana was the only account or the treasure and she had more than enough and that's why we got an assistant treasure is this the right time I don't know I'm just saying we're at the conversation do these new buildings have impact fees that are they're charged to help fund some of the stuff like that interestingly enough you know multi-unit apartment buildings so we're missing the vote I think the found missing the vote on that but how do we get on the vote for that I think what it has is grand list right so that's how these guys get funded from the grand list so I think if you have so much impact fees you have no development it's a fine line I don't know I've lived in central Vermont long enough I remember the farms that were up here and the few roads that there were when I was going to my grandmother's house this right here is the hub of central Vermont I don't care what you put out there they will build here and I think they're getting a I think they're getting a pretty pretty decent ride it's pretty easy but I took the fun out of it I'll still let you drop fire drums but I will take the calm when you're ready to do that ice rake I guess some guys will help you the hose training I can mark that off as hose training right there pump training you got to give it up sometime just note that you were out at the MoZero we would be very happy to have them well are you aware of the Blackbeard's hockey program? so I'll in case y'all didn't know I'm from Alabama all three of my under 12 year old dollars play hockey I don't know where they got it from but they scale pretty wonderfully but they merged all the youth hockey programs in central Vermont one big group this year with the Blackbeard's and if you're close enough to regulation I can see an outdoor game coming this one they don't want to play on our ice but you'd be surprised I can see that I can definitely see we have the Norwich kids playing on the state house right now anything else for Joe? thank you town office building requirements as we grow I'll speak to that one as you I don't know if everyone was aware but we have had to rent a trailer office trailer for the for the listers for the assessors I should say between the police department and the town administrative departments unfortunately the town clerks the town offices are getting a little tight I'm not saying we need to build anything tomorrow or the next day but I'm just trying to put it out there so that people or you have a chance to think about this the we do have some land that was we got from the school over on the entrance to the mall that is when we took that on we were talking about having that as the town presence in the mall in the new town center other than that any questions I don't know there was briefly a talk I remember about the mall offering up property in the building for the town offices the trouble there is is that it would it would still cost us rent services the other problem is accessibility disruptions on that type of thing we were talking some about putting me putting the list over there but the cost for square foot it didn't make sense so but we may have offered the square footed for free but everything else is going to cost anything else okay so would that mean what the PD would have the old buildings well again that's one of the things we need to discuss if the police department takes over the present town offices we build new for the administrative part where I was just a little while ago I was talking events about this and that's why you put it on the agenda and I just wanted to get it out there so people could start thinking about it or what's that sounds like a great opportunity for recreation expansion over there that may be coming up and then you could probably build new the fire department and give it a public safety building and the presence over there PD great location just a thought and then the rec department has their building okay let's see here the highway garage needs I'll put some can you speak to that Vince? sure if any of you have been by the town office and seen the existing highway garage you'll see that it's in it's pretty old and in a pretty rough state again this is on here just for information to get people talking and thinking about it at some point in the very near future we're going to need to probably invest a little bit of money in that garage just to not not melt the snow in the parking lot in the winter with all the heat coming out of it it's in really rough shape so it's again that's why it's on the list just similar to the town office building we're going to have to have some discussions about that in the very near future on what we want to do there whether it's remodel it take it down and put up a new one all kinds of options out there obviously but it's something that's coming up so in the last 10 years we have had efficiency Vermont in there and they did do a lot of insulation and upgrades to the windows and closing some windows off and just putting insulation over them but again we're still as fuel prices go up energy prices go up we're seeing that budget there start to increase again and I don't know how much more you can do to that building to make it energy efficient one of the problems of the garage like that is when they open doors to bring the trucks in or take the trucks out you lose all your heat whether we could take and put up a new building that had some way to trap it I don't know but it's just like you've been saying a lot of these items are for people to think about and get into the idea that some of this is just the buildings are getting old and antiquated that's the only way I can describe it anything else on the highway garage needs police department growth chief good evening my name is James Pompground on the Chief of Police I've been on the job now for about two years a little more than two years I've been in law enforcement for about 20 years when I came on board the department I was in fairly rough shape there was a history and a lot of turn over there we had five out of eight officers and we're allotted two of them were level two certifications and for those of you who don't are familiar with the certification process we had three levels of certification one basically you're a road come on the interstate monitoring traffic level two you have quite a bit more responsibility what types of arrests you can make and what type of authority do you have and then there's level three two of the officers up in that five were level two so that was a bit concerning to me is there are a lot of restrictions on what they could do now it's I don't know if you've been monitoring the news but in addition to everyone facing kind of labor shortages law enforcement has faced unprecedented departure from the field and the inability to get people interested in getting on the job so it's been a grind over the last two years but we are currently on paper at least full staff we have an officer who is out with an agent and so on is at the academy we're also all the officers are at level three which is good for us because the state is really looking at those certifications and making sure officers are as highly trained as possible in addition to facing a staffing crisis we have faced a lot of reform over the last two or three years a lot of that's kind of internal reform on how we deal with things supervision of officers and how they're trained and how we deal with complaints and transparency that requires a lot of level, a higher level of training but also internally how do we track those things to make improvements to our software and to our training process and tracking that training I'd like to say we're in really good shape but it's we're kind of having to grow more than the traditional grown over the last few years I think we are in the states for a long time the town's changing there's a lot of new stressors on us between the hilltop and the Good Samaritan on the Barry Montelia Road which has increased our call volume significantly we're looking at growth with this town square that's going to put a significant increase on our call volume as well and we need to look forward to the future the town select board is grand and we need to hire an additional officer and we were able to do that there's no one else here Vermont that is fully staffed so this is like kind of ground shaking ability for us to do that and I think it speaks to the professionalism of our officers the town itself it's really well known that the town is a good place to work my next agenda would be to find a better facility and how we can do that because we're starting to outgrow our facilities it's kind of a pet peeve of mine they're really in poor shape if any of you ever want to come over or take a tour I'd be more than happy to walk you through the place and introduce you to the officers but we're in a dire need of a new facility for sure both to kind of keep up with the growth but also to keep up with some of the demands that the state is putting on us does anybody have any questions what the new state police barracks in town can they help you out they are absolutely no help in fact and I'm not trying to be disparaging at all they're also in a staffing crisis that's created more workforce because they're designated as opposed to when they're in middle sex that was always known as the middle sex barracks so there was a clear differentiation between the two of us now they're known as the Berlin barracks so there's constant confusion people are showing up to our office asking questions about a state police case that's being worked on paperwork's being sent to us bills are being sent to us that are meant to be going down the road to the state police barracks it's not staff regularly the officers are out on the road so when people go over there and they don't get an answer they come to us so it's been no help whatsoever and because they're so short staffed they're very often they're unable to assist us if we have something going on we'll talk chief you mentioned how the two years department has grown and you gave accolades to your officers and stuff and you gave accolades to already two years you deserve much of the credit that has improved this department and everybody understands where this department was and again I was on the team that hired you thank you for coming to the tent thank you for having me any other questions we were speaking in theoretics earlier of a new town office moving the idea was thrown out of the police department using the entirety of the building is that something you could see as a possibility in the future or is that something that's like the location or the building or whatever isn't going to suit the needs of the future of the police department the location is fine it certainly used the space that that would allow am I concerned to be the condition of the building because it's an older building there's a lot of need of improvements there would you find in theory if the town office moved to the new town center and a police department was located there would that make sense or would that be more complicated or would that be better and the new location I would prefer that we were attached or adjacent to the fire department and like a public safety building that would make the most sense it really works down in the very city but we'd be happy to have any new space is there a room for expansion in the fire department so I think interestingly enough when the schools were being redistricted the fire department is sitting on lease land and so there was a select board meeting on this and this is back before Vince was there I think the plan was for the town to buy that two acre parcel is it owned by the school it's still owned by the school what they ended up doing is they extended the lease I believe it was probably like a 50 year lease with an option for another 50 or something like that so they extended the lease to the extent they could and was happy with that because it was maybe a little short-sighted on all our products so could they expand on it I think that's a discussion that has to happen now with the school we share a lot of the same issues that the fire department shares so they only have 2900 residents that might not seem a lot but during the daytime it goes way up there we're dealing with products and it's in retail fasts and frauds and all those other stuff but we don't have a price value which I'll tell you there's three times as much of the population as Berlin so we're busy our options are absolutely busy any other questions thank you overall town development and growth opportunities do you both remember we want to speak to this okay the growth and development in the town as far as the opportunities go I'm not one to talk to it really but what we're trying to do is make it so that we can get businesses in here that will help our grand list in other words try to hold your taxes down I think the DRB the planning commission they've all been trying their best they are doing a great job it's going to be hard to entice brick and mortar stores in because of the internet the mall and their plans the town center plan are looking at more small boutique style shops in the new buildings and it was on the second floor it was going to be housing so that's the if any of you have not seen the plan from the mall get a hold of Tom or somebody on the planning commission and they can help you out they'll go through it with you not that I want to give them more but that is pretty much my take on the on the requirements as far as the growth opportunities here in the town most of the growth we're trying to keep up here on the the area there is there has been some talk it's just rumors as far as I know about some larger housing developments going in but we don't know for sure until they happen we're just waiting for any questions on this I might be able to help you with do you want to add Ben? yes sir I'm going back two decades but when I first moved to the town of Berlin it seemed to me that they they gave incentives for these people to commit taxes and they said at the end of like 10 years they'd be paying full taxes and the grand list would go down our taxes would go down when they simultaneously pay full taxes I don't think that would happen well one of the troubles with that is the grand list grew but so didn't all the expenses look at it as it helped keep your taxes from going worse than they did the economic the tax abatement program is a five year program it starts off that they don't pay any taxes on their improvements the first year but they still pay their property taxes and then it's an incremental increase over the next four years to whether on the fifth year they're paying their full share so it's not it has worked some the requirements are quite strict coals when they started building then they came to the town and we refused them the the increments because one of the stipulations is they come to the town before construction starts so coals or the mall right from the get-go had to pay the full boat on that one but there's been it hasn't been that many that really have taken it into account the housing unit there by Walmart they did and I don't know if what was the name of the housing units going in Fox Run, I don't know if they've come to the town yet for that or not we'll jump that bridge when they get there any other questions on this it seems to me that the town is old the town I mean we're getting developing things that are going to increase our grand list we're increasing our liabilities greater than we're doing that and so we've got a police department that doesn't have enough money the fire department doesn't have enough money the town doesn't have enough money and we don't have the people to support it it seems like we've got to start slowing down some of this affordable housing development we just don't have enough but I'm sure the schools are in just as bad position as we are fortunately we're going to address that a little bit later on the program any other things on this connection to CMD's Central Medical Center for the water system so the hospital, Central Medical Center buys their water from the city of Montpelier they actually get it directly piped from the water treatment plant that's down on north pain term pipe in the world to get it directly from that water treatment plant when we built a new water system for Berlin we have a water line that goes right down Fisher Road right in front of the hospital but the hospital is not connected to it they wouldn't be a great customer for us if we could they use a lot of water obviously and so we've got into some very very preliminary discussions with the hospital about buying their water from Berlin rather than Montpelier we've had a consulting engineer look at our infrastructure to see if we can handle it and it appears it could but it's be better to have some more infrastructure to make it work so those discussions are going to be ongoing for throughout the winter I think we'll have to see where we are Tom I think you can probably add some more yeah I can thank you Rob so actually Central Vermont Hospital approached the public workforce to inquire if they could connect to our system it wasn't the other way around the public workforce did not solicit Central Vermont and the reason they because they they get water from Montpelier and they in turn you may or may not know this but they pump it to a 300,000 gallon storage tank off of the industrial avenue and then from that storage tank that pressure what they use in their facility and because they do that and they do some treatment in house for GRD and things like that they are classified by the state of Vermont as a consecutive water system and what that means is they are just viewed as any public water system so they have to have a water operator they have to do all the testing they have to do all the reporting that based on how early it has to or the city of Montpelier has to so there is a cost involved in that significant cost and now their 300,000 gallon storage tank is at its useful life and so now they are contemplating a fairly substantial capital investment to add to that that tank so they mentioned us Chief mentioned ISO before when this water system was put in 2015 were later benefited by a half a point reduction in ISOs everybody got a benefit from that water system being here and so the hospital and the Public Works Board agreed to do a study and those results have just come out and now we're to the point where rubber is meeting the road and discussions are being had I'll take any questions Chief without digging real deep because the water systems up there are complex to say the least the hydrants that serve the mall we're on that system at one time and are they talking about doing the way with that storage reservoir up there and the malls still live there they're talking about either replacing that storage tank or if they would come with the kind of relief they'd do away with that storage tank but we wouldn't lose any of the water supply hydrant wise they would disconnect is that related to that next topic in there that 600,000 gallon it is I'll come back when you get to that one I think we're there so Tom so when the hospital went to the mall here it's my recollection I was on the planning commission at the time or the DRV I could deal with the city of mall here put in a 12 inch line of their filtration system to the hospital which is what they required was a 12 inch line so if that line extends up to our system do we then become a feed system to the city mall here as well no that that city mall better line be redundant and be taken out of service because we've done that line because the mall here has a pressure problem on the other side of the city and having our storage tank would solve that pressure problem is there any other questions I don't want to speculate about things that I have the numbers back in my office it's like 50,000 gallons of days I think so how much water does this system run 30,000? so more than what I think I may have the numbers they wouldn't double our capacity but the question is on the water system does the water system have the capability of keeping up 20 years from now 5 years from now we just drilled a 412 I'm on the Scot Hill road so our hydrologic studies say that we do I'm their relio on the experts telling us that they don't chlorinate I'm sorry it's good to know town doesn't chlorinate the water we do, we touch it with little bit of chlorin how's that going to help the hospital do they have to do a lot more testing they have their forgeardy and all that they will run those systems we would oversee those systems with our operator their employees will do all that so Roland doesn't have to pick up no testing they will do all the testing so you're saying that Otter Creek has done a study and these wells are adequate to support this additional draw because we're aware that there's been some issues with wells in that neighborhood and we ourselves have noticed a decrease in the static level in our well we look adjacent to Dodge Hill property I can appreciate that but Vermont and the Holmore piece has been in a 4 year drought it's easy to point to a well system I really think it's more what's actually happening with our climate again I don't think it's the well system we're in a dry spell likely to come out of that dry spell there's issues it just seems like an awful lot to draw on that aqua board again I'm going to rely on the professional hydrogeologists yeah is there a report coming out to see that? yeah we have a draft for that now yes the question is one thank you thank you now the addition of the 600,000 gallon fire protection storage tank yeah the 600,000 gallon storage tank would be up on up on the Dodge farm it would be in addition to our 425,000 gallon tank it's actually off Scott Hill Road now the consulting engineer that worked with us on the hospital said that we would be and looking at our additional development with the town center and all that they would recommend adding more storage up there and so we would they said go with 600,000 gallon storage tank and it would provide the fire protection additional fire protection it would eliminate that current 300,000 gallon tank that the hospital has there and up by industrial avenue so that would be the reason to have the 600,000 gallon tank is to to be to service the development coming in with the town center and put this in a good position if the hospital should come out I think just for future growth of the town yeah just for future growth of the town just on water system being designed to in the future be able to design sewer systems where the water lines aren't going to impact any like so people can get off of septic tanks and onto like a sewer system like you said the water lines being designed so they aren't going to impact any future sewer work that would need to be done for these buildings and do you Josh do you mean where they're laid in the ground where they're laid in the ground yeah I mean the engineers would look at that and they know what projects are planned and and sewer lines and water lines can be engineered so that they can be close together or across a little bit I feel like a sewer is more go with gravity or drive to as much as can be as much as can be and then water is a little easier is pressure you know I was just curious if this has all been thought out for like say you know you're going to run the water line now you've done it down across down in other areas so these places now it gives them the opportunity to build the sewers as well well water and sewer are different you know just because we might provide water to an area that doesn't mean that sewer is going to fall if necessary I don't have any specific questions anything else? well so I'm looking at the 600,000 gallon fire protection storage tank and we're talking about possible connection for the hospital and the future growth of Berlin so we are using that as future growth and not necessarily adding to the fire protection is that fair to say? well that would be the we're looking at the future growth of the town center and everything else and then possibly if we went into an agreement with the hospital that's going to be taking a good chunk of that but this is storage so between these two tanks you have a million gallon of storage for firefighting instantaneously no one's using a million gallons instantaneously that's about five hours of our town regulated fire clothing how long will we be down in Berry City of that shed? yeah we drafted out of the river we're on all the hydrogen from Berry City plus drafting out of the river what is the I'm sorry what is the production capacity or the production volume of our wells up there how much can you produce an hour or a minute roughly almost 800 gallons a minute so our fire flow by ISO requirements for the town of Berlin is 3500 gallons a minute now we don't use that but that's the fire flow we have to meet and honestly ISO is pretty happy with our water system where we have hybrids so it's not a negative by any means but I did the math while we were waiting given the new if you put the 600,000 gallon tank in assuming no input which we'd have to take advantage of the input but assuming no input we're just under five hours it's not with standard fire flow the one tank or both tanks but you do have input you do have input but taking into account if we had no input and you had full tanks and nobody else was drawing water on we're just under five hours of our fire flow so are you saying we're under your capacity now that we should desperately build the 600,000 gallon tank oh I would never turn down more water in the tank or more hydrants on the road or anything like that it is a concern going forward especially with the new development that we adequately stay ahead of that would you agree that the 600,000 will improve oh sure I'm not saying this is a bad thing at all I love it can we keep the old one too yeah I think that's what it is keep the old one at 600 yeah for keeping both tanks okay so we're keeping the ones that the CBAs currently no both tanks being the 425,000 tank that's already up there and doing away with the one and doing away with the one more water than the other are you going to renovate it into the police department? yeah early fire department anything else on the 600,000 gallon tank completion of the Scott Hill road water loop yes the water loop if you remember when I introduced things that we have the water system up on the Dodge farm and it comes down airport road it crosses south of the airport over to airport road and then comes down airport road serves a few customers around the airport then down to industrial avenue and ranger road where it really starts to network with other pipes but from the from Dodge farm to that point it's just one line that comes down so if there's ever a repair needed there or first if you had to shut off the water for some reason the rest of the system is shut down so a loop we really need to have a loop for the whole system and since it's such a long run to get to where we got loops so the loop would be coming down Scott Hill road down to Berlin corner and connect into the water system there so if you had a problem on airport road you had to shut that off you have this other loop that can continue to serve the community so that's one of our top priorities that's a long run coming down Scott Hill road Tom I don't remember the rock estimate right now but the water line length or dollars what do you call it what is the length of the water line there's a cost 4.5 million 4.5 million to put in that water line to complete that loop so we don't have almost a disaster if we had to shut down the line coming down airport road so and what's the length that's from dodge firm road it's a mile ahead a couple miles what size line is that what size coming down the airport with the current line I'm not sure it must be Tom do you know what size 12 inch 12 inch 12 inch coming down Scott Hill road and then that's with no caps or anything off that's just bearing a line from the water system up as a tank and we have a few customers if they wanted to connect coming down so that's just the one but that's all a separate cost to the customer that would be a separate cost to happen to that 12 inch line they could have put like keys and shutoffs down through with each property as they go putting that line in for the 4.1 million I don't think we have those details yet Jonathan I can only speak to Scott I can only speak to that the original line that there was a campaign to solicit customers and if you signed up there was no connection fee and then they would put something shut off curbside after house but if you didn't sign up you didn't get it so if you wanted it in the future you would have to pay for that yes ma'am so I think last week or maybe the week before there was an issue with the line it looked like it was at the intersection maybe of Granger Road industrial like what is that like what caused that you know is that part of what you're sounds like part of what you're talking about there are loops there so nobody got I don't think anybody got shut off with water but there was a repair that had to be done on Granger Road I saw the count of guys working on the line popping the cap off there right at the end of Shed Road a couple days ago did the town guys work on the water line? no we have a third party you have a third party for minutes for that I saw them popping the cap off the shut off they have a program of exercising the bells I was just curious if it was aging infrastructure or anything like that I I thought it was aging infrastructure but I hope not anything else on the Scott Hill loop people have the opportunity on Scott Hill to get the current stops but it didn't charge at this point what's that? initial we're a ways from doing any construction we don't have a plan where do you come up with the four points whatever it's a rough estimate it's not if you know how long it is usually twice per foot you can kind of get a rough idea if there's Langer next next item is additional water source well yeah this is all related this would be we would have to we'd drill another well if we were going to add another tank up there and you know it would be we'd go to our consultant again and they have they've identified some locations for that would be good locations for wells so they don't know if it's the same aquifer they're keeping on and you know they're looking at fractures aquifer might not be the right term they're looking at fractures and bedrock and stuff I don't know how they do when we first had the wells the test well drilled and the wells drilled that was the best site that engineers came up we had I think it was the choice of three sites and so if there's more wells to be added they may not necessarily be at the site there are now they'll have to do another survey of it and there is a four should it get or all four are connected four are connected now and so the contemplation would be a fifth which may or may not be in the same location and we wouldn't want it to be very far because you know you'd have to pump it to the tank from an economic standpoint the closer it is it goes back better let's see here anything else on the additional source well connection of the burlin corners to the municipal wastewater system that's a project that we've looked at for a number of years those familiar with the cross-tech with burlin corner up there would be a gravity a gravity system that would serve a residential area that would start from the corner or near the corner and go down cross-town road to about the location of Bosworth Road where the burlin pond crosses the culvert there and then it would require a pump station at that point and pump it back up cross-town road to a manhole an existing manhole that's up there that area is has got a lot of poor soil and I know you know there are poor soils and there have been some failures of septic systems and it's hard to to get anything new permitted for on-site septic in that area so so we looked at that and Tom would you just give an update on the status of that public workforce applied for an application from the state's clean water state revolving loan fund and and what the clean water SRF what they their program is you let's just say it's $100,000 to do the planning final design of the system this program then will fund that and then at the end of the project they will grant you 50% of the dollars so in effect you are you're out of pocket expenses $50,000, $100,000 on the project and so the public's workforce has used clean water SRF for several projects they're going to be coming up here talking about it so they were very proactive during COVID there was always this this thought that there was going to be some federal dollars available for projects that are shovel ready and they're working the public's workforce working on a handful of these projects now to be able to get a couple of our state reps here tonight maybe they can talk more eloquently than I can about where that kind of funding is at but so the plan is we want to get a handful of these projects ready to go so if somebody says there's X amount of grant dollars to do this we want to have a capability any more questions on this and then the construction of a Riverton community wastewater yes the community down in Riverton this this would be an on-site wastewater project it would include multiple houses so we've had some test bits down there we've had an engineer look at the feasibility of it and it looks like it's feasible to I forget the number of 16 16 so it would be like a mini we could put in a collection system for the residents probably include a few manholes kind of thing and to a pump station and probably would have to use a pump station to pump it to the treatment area which would be it's fairly large plus it's like a regular leach field not a sewer plant just in-ground on-site treatment it's your house septic system on a sterile system and that's under the same clean water fund right Tom that's kind of in the same boat with the crosstown project that project there if you if you were how expandable is that going to be there's going to be more than 15 residents down through there or it's only 15 or 16 that are having trouble so I think the block process brand is that existing homes wouldn't connect to it because they'd have to pump but it would allow because when the town went through new zoning three or four years ago they allowed for a higher residential density down there that lack of septic service would not allow that density now but this project would allow potentially the construction of 15 or 16 new homes down in the Riverton area or a business or a restaurant or something like that okay any other questions on this one what are you saying people who are already there and have homes would not be allowed to connect to it as long as their sewer systems are functioning right they fail every day what's that? they fail every day well yes but I don't even know the federal money broth that's out there right now for this well that's why we want to get these projects ready you know ready in case some of this COVID money suddenly becomes available for construction projects they like shovel ready projects you know if there is such a thing so if you have a design ready to go and they've got money you just you put it out there and get a contract the biggest piece of this puzzle was the biggest piece of this puzzle was finding a land mass down there that could support it and so we were fortunate to find a local resident that had some acreage down there they were willing to partner with the town on doing this and there was some question about expandability if you find an additional septic of land to allow this to be filled it will be like the canes that people have they would still have the canes along the roots it's like your home septic it will keep you no ability to pump that not affordable to realize not an affordable okay anything else on the river wastewater system construction of the Berlin common recreation path you may know that the town received a it was all a project it was $40,000 to look at a recreation path around the new town center we're just coming to the final pros of that we had our alternatives meeting here a couple weeks ago so at the end of the day this was with VTransMoney at the end of the day it's going to list potential costs and things like that it's a good bit of dollars to construct this so really how the planning commission is viewing this is in segments and Bob Wernick's here he can maybe talk better than I can so a project like this once you get the initial concept done now you have to do the engineering and design that's X amount of dollars and there are VTransMoney associated with that likely the town through the planning mission would apply for the grant funding for that so that would then put the design engineering design of this project together and then it likely that as to do construction you'd have to look at doing it in segments to make it affordable and then the planning mission would look for dollars to do these segments and a good bit of it hopefully it could come from VTrans but there are other recreational grants to the state and federal governments that promote recreation and so this is probably a multi-year project probably four or five years at the least at the minimum before we start doing any construction but I know the rec committee and the planning commission are talking about an enhanced bike and trail path throughout the town and this is sort of a linchpin of that in the Berlin Newtown center there where we hope there's going to be a population we're hoping for three to five hundred units of housing down there that they could connect to this trail network it's going to be a great exciting time I think for the town Any questions on the recreation path with the common? Earlier on you were talking about the recreation path you were talking about the whole of the land of Jason dealing with affordable housing as well did you tell us about that? I'm sorry what's the question? The question was earlier this evening when you were talking about the rec path when it was first mentioned you said you were planning on affordable housing adjacent to the recreation path did you tell us about that? where that's going to be? You know where the senior housing project it's been down street has applied from the town of Berlin for a zoning permit to build 30 units of workforce housing there and that would be the first piece of it so it's right across the street from the senior housing So those are single family or multi family some are single some are multi there's 30 units there How close do they do this recreation path? A couple hundred feet Alright next door Okay Anything more on the rec path? Construction of the Fisher Road Diet Study or completion? Bob? Yeah the Fisher Road Diet Study Yes We're currently conducting a road diet scoping study Fisher Road has a stumbling connection with town center concept Once a road diet it's literally a diet you're losing lanes the object is to improve safety make roads more pedestrian friendly make them more bicycle friendly so we're conducting a scoping study I say we retain a consultant to do that Jen said we could talk about alternative solutions but we're not there yet In fact the timing is excellent here on the 25th next week we will be having an alternatives presentation meeting that is going to be available to everyone either in person or virtually using zoom and at that point in time different alternatives that they're looking at will be presented to the steering committee into the town to discuss and look at so it's we know they've already looked at certain things but we really haven't seen anything concrete they've done enough work to understand existing conditions they've done some traffic modeling but we haven't seen anything yet so I'm excited to see what's going to come out on the 25th and that's at the center of mall Chamber of Commerce building at 6pm do you have an idea what the traffic flow is on the traffic count is on the Fisher Road I do but I can't tell you the number it's around 12,000 I believe but it's considerable of course it was a lot less when we closed the Fisher Road well coming up with hard numbers that are current you sort of have to work around a year well I mean the only reason I asked that ball was because I think you need a point of reference for people to understand the importance if you're going to have a pedestrian presence and a bicycle presence on that road why this study had to take place you've got places with four lanes and five lanes a lot of pavement and not very pedestrian friendly right crossing that so that came up when we started talking about connecting the hospital to their property on the other side of the road connecting the ball and the future development in that area to the hospital so it became necessary I think to look at how can we do better if you're interested join us on Tuesday procurement of land to establish a Berlin park Tony yeah recently there was an application to the building planning commission for a project that's Tony Town and the folks who are working on that project are interested in possible working with the town of Berlin to share some of that land a good chunk of the land actually for the possibility of the establishment of a town park I know that it's real goal for many of us in Berlin to create more recreation areas for people to utilize. I'm trying to be a little bit careful not to be completely honest but I'm still in the the planning phase and the public portion of what they're hoping to do on their portion of land so there's not a lot to share about it publicly. Any questions? I can't share that at the moment all I can share is that there's a really amazing opportunity for the town of Berlin to work with a partner to share a good chunk of land that can be used for the public and specifically for the purposes of establishing a park and trail network which will be really wonderful Would that be in generally speaking in the new town center? No. But in the town center? Does any time we go? We did add a we did have another thought here Corinne can you speak to the historical society? In general it's not really a town function but it is important to the town It is The historical society has was established back in 1982 and we were we were actually looking at in the late 90s putting an addition on the current town building and instead of that the town wanted to look at remodeling and putting an addition of their own that ran into some controversy and so the historical society ended up paying $30,000 to have the space that they had there at the municipal building The pandemic kind of slowed things down as far as people's involvement We're trying to pick things back up It's kind of hard We do have an exciting program that's going to be happening on November 12th There'll be more information out about it But we try to put on several programs every year, have some meetings There's a lot of great research going on We absolutely welcome questions and are willing to assist with people researching a lot of great research binders a lot of files a lot of photographs a few artifacts a lot of great information I have historical society cards if you're not sure if we might be able to help you You also might have photos of old homes or stuff going on in the area that we would love to have a copy of or scan some old documents Anybody basically that is looking for information we ask them to then share with us what they can because you never know when somebody else will be researching a similar thing It could be somebody's third cousin that is also interested in some family history and we have connected up some family members which is kind of cool in itself We plan on having what we've done for the last several years This year a reminder that town meeting is actually going to be on Saturday before town meeting and then voting will be on town meeting day Voting will be at the town office but the town meeting I believe will be at the school as it has been in the past and so that's where we'll have a display I don't know if there's any other public forums that are being planned where they invited us for the last minute to have a display and it was too much of the last minute but we always love sharing the materials that we have with people I love to talk history anytime anybody wants to If you don't know how to get hold of me come and get a card for me and I would be glad to either myself or Richard Turner or others are happy to meet you at the Historical Society I think evening weekend whatever works for you will try to make it work for somebody to be able to meet you there There's a lot of research that can be done outside of actually meeting to help people along with whatever project and we would love to have more people get involved We've got lots of projects that you might consider helping us with and we've been putting more information on the new town website if you go to community resources and then historical society We're trying to get some more indexes and stuff to help people figure out what it is that we offer So, be in touch Do you think for current? Next is proposed charter changes so the town is proposing charter changes that will be coming on the ballot this year We've got two public hearings and one revision notice on those Chair, do you want me to read the charter changes off? If you don't understand them I can do that I'm going to open a couple of documents here So the first charter change will be article one it's the local options tax and based on that I won't read it as it's going to appear on the ballot I'll just state what they are It's for the town to impose a 1% sales tax a 1% rooms tax and a 1% meals and alcohol beverage tax and the tax under that authority will be collected and administered by the Department of Taxes in accordance with 24VSA Revenues that the town receives through that would be designated for capital projects within the town Gush on that one Sir, that was where the people who come into town but don't own land in town get to help pay for services that we offer them it is as it has been said that our population sells up to 12,000 a lot of those are workers a lot of them are shoppers and this is just a way to have them help fund the plowing the infrastructure everything else that we do to encourage these businesses to be here for them Any questions on this? It's roughly 600,000 If we implement the sales tax the meals and alcohol tax it will be just a little bit over $600,000 with those two and that's based on 2019 tax numbers from the state What are capital projects? Capital not projects necessarily but capital improvements and that would be equipment like the snow plows the snow plows one of the things to give you an idea that was the greater that was what? $230,000 something that was just one piece of equipment right now the payloader that's in the sand pit that's getting toward the end of its life trucks we replaced a schedule when they run out of their warranty we replace them in today's world you really can't keep things much beyond the warranty because it costs so much to do any kind of repair The other projects would be paving road maintenance anything like that How does that go to the fire department that's always running for money in the town they have to send them requests for the aid for the aid of their lab for the aid of the fire department that all leads into the town and the fire department coming together you see what I'm saying was there anything about hotel rooms that dropped so much police activity again that would be a 1% on the rooms and meals Does the surrounding towns have that text? Barry just started October 1st many towns throughout Vermont have it now at one time it was perceived of Williston and now there's many towns on the list and Vince has that list of the towns if anyone wants to call him about this you can always reach out to him at any time or any of us as well I don't think you're going to compare to other towns because it almost feels a little bit low maybe it's very low for other towns but having so many car dealerships those won't be covered and there's one other thing to think about on this one you're better at than I am Vince the state implementing it there was last year there was a some talk in the state legislature regarding local options tax in towns that may not have that in effect at some point in time there was talk about pooling that the state implementing it pooling those resources so we would since we don't have it currently if they were to enact that the way that it read was that money we'd be paying that that money would be pooled and then distributed by some formula that the state had around to all the towns or if you already have it implemented like the other towns around us do now it wouldn't impact us and in essence I see it as we're getting ahead of the curve are you good anything else on local options Vince okay article 2 is elected to appointed clerk again very simple it would take removing the town clerk as an elected position to an appointed position several people have asked about the appointment process as I can only speak for myself on this one the way I looked at it was we really needed to take and put it before the voters and see what they want because the comments I was receiving was about 50-50 but the fact that you were getting some that all meant to me that people were interested in at least looking at it so that's what we're doing it's still up to the voters to approve it or not I don't understand why did it come up in the first place I don't understand I mean it's only been elected a lot of towns isn't it elected most towns are elected I think there's several others around us that are appointed now what is the reason for switching over from elected which is more of a traditional way of doing things like what brought it in one of the things for me was when we appointed the chief we appointed Vince the length of time it took to look through the applicants with an election you're truly restricted to people in town with appointment you can look a little further afield and I know some people say that gives the select board more power or more control it really doesn't because even as an appointed position the town clerk is still separate from the town from the offices of the the select board in other words once they are appointed for whatever term three years then they are in for three years there's no way to take them out of the office they are still separate from the select board and of course Rachel is appointed we had to follow the state guidelines she appointed an assistant the select board had no control on that it's that the select board is looking for more control my personal view I don't see it I just want to see a better choice or a broader choice to pick from so is it still three terms or do you appoint somebody and that person is appointed for three years then at the end of three years it's either reappoint or look somewhere else any other questions on this the last one is article three which is an addition of personal property and inventory taxation waiver basically that is when the total assessed value this is business now personal property and inventory taxation is equal to or less than $1650 the town treasurer may after approval of the select board waive that personal property inventory taxation because from the treasurer's point it probably cost us more to do the administration amount of tax for the business than it does to just waive it at that point this is business related this is for businesses correct I don't have the numbers of how many have actually the town did last year I don't have that off the top of their head but it's not that some people would be expecting to pay it and some wouldn't correct and also what was the number $12,000? $12,000? $1650 if you have to run that through the tax you divide it by 100 and multiply it by the tax rate so it's not the $1,000 it's actually the $100 on the tax rate it's like $25 or something about that and for Diane it's more of a nuisance to deal with than to just it could be a cost before but we might for you we might not for you know what I mean I understand what you're saying but yeah but no I mean well that level on it and realistically how many businesses have personal property they're using for their business I mean most of our commercial properties here in town are box stores or much larger concerns and personal property never really comes into it it'll be for the you might get a mom and pop type of operation that would have this I guess it was just my English but I don't know a little bit well we did have some review on the wording of some of the other changes too okay anything else on that any concerns comments getting down toward the end of the agenda so I'll close the floor discussion board have anyone want to have a round table good thank you I'd like to thank everybody for coming and as a first year select board member this is extremely educational for me learning what everybody did and it was really helpful for future decisions that we may be involved in making so thanks for coming and sharing and I had an idea too we're pretty cross pollinated with our volunteers on some of these commissions and boards I see it would be kind of a fun thing maybe for each board or commission to put together one sentence pitch and maybe have the town distribute on like front porch forum a contact name and maybe a volunteer opportunity of the week to go out for each of these boards front porch forum seems to be really effective in getting neighbors I sent out a request for a hydraulic lift and I got like 10 emails back on recommendations so it's really effective on connecting with the community and maybe there are people out there that volunteer that just don't know there are these excellent fire truck driving opportunities out there so maybe that would be something that we could try as a town and that's kind of all I have but thank you for coming everybody I think that's a great idea and I would also add to that that tonight's forum was just wonderful and it's great that you're all here so I concur with what Carl said but maybe we could do some type of a forum like an elevator pitch regarding volunteering and it's something the town could do and we could do it a venue like this and make it a fun exciting event to encourage people to come in person as well as what Carl was suggesting just another thought I would like to thank the Grange for the use of their building people in town you are if you need a venue you just need to get a hold of the Grange master and have a chat with him as I understand it the building is as long as there's no other activities here the building is free for the town people to use I would like to take and thank everyone for showing up a motion to adjourn so move all in favor for adjourn so close in the back