 Welcome everybody, it's 15, and before we start, does anyone have any public comments that they want to make about anything that's not on the agenda? I do. Do you? Yeah. All right. That's like new business, I get you, Thomas. Well, new business would be on the agenda, but for public comment, we can have some, yeah. I'll submit this. OK, well, we'll get to that. I don't know if I'm in the right category here. All right, well, we'll get to that. OK. So first off, we'll start with the minutes from the last meeting, which is July 26th. So they look fine to me, so I'd move to approve unless you guys have any corrections to that. It's only good to me, too. I second. All in favor? All right. All right. That was for you. And we're on, is Greg, we're waiting on Greg, possibly, too? Zim Zim. Zim Zim. Greg, are you in there? He's in Zoom. Anyway, somebody else is trying to, here he is. He's just showed up there. We'll let him wake up this, well, while we're waiting for him to boot up, you want to, now I can get a comment. Yeah, he just showed up. Mark, that's it. Sure. I just have a thing to read. OK. Hey, welcome. Hey, how are you? Good. Good to be with you in just a minute. You guys hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. I see it, too. But we're. You lost your place in line. Wait a second. We're not quite, we're almost ready for you. OK. All right. Let the guest comment come first. OK. If anybody doesn't know, my name's Larry Creech and I live on West Hill Road. I've been a resident of Rochester on West Hill Road since 2006, on full time for quite a while. One of the times I was part-time. When my wife and I bought our property, I was unaware that West Hill Bridge was a limited access road. There were other permanent houses as well as some camps on our road and Jones Mountain Road, which is also has Henry Garza has a house there as well. Garza? Garza. I'm only knowing them forever. Obviously, those homes and camps just didn't fly over the bridge to get to their home sites. In fact, the 16,000 pound sign before the bridge has been ignored forever by everyone on that road. Capital improvements from well drilling to cement work to excavating modular homes, logging trucks, town trucks, excavators with heavy equipment, et cetera, et cetera, have all surpassed the weight limit on that road numerous times and very frequently. People have invested in their properties and paid increased taxes on their capital improvements just like everyone else in town. When we moved here, the select board did not say, Mr. Creech, this is a limited access road. They didn't say your taxes would reflect a limited tax rate by living on that road or an assessment. People on West Hill just want to live their lives like everyone else in town. There comes a time when things have to be performed on our properties. Maintenance, like septic improvements, new wells, and a whole myriad of projects which the wooden bridge can't handle. Over many years, residents have addressed these issues to the select board and asked for the bridge to be improved. Many scenarios have been voiced by the select board on upgrading the bridge. How long can this big list top go on? No offense. I'm 69 and the years are ticking by and I'm getting older and a new bridge. Just like to bring to attention of the board, there's some very large monies that are windfall monies from the state that we might be able to get some money from for the bridge. We have also been waiting for the National Forest Service to kick in money and they were supposed to do the bridge this year but they didn't and I don't know why. We never found out. There are state and federal grants for things and maybe we could get some money from heaven. I don't know. The people on West Hill don't like breaking the law by exceeding the weight limit on the bridge. We all know what it is. But what can we do? Promises, promises from the town but no action. My final observation driving about the town is that West Hill Bridge is probably the poorest bridge in town and worse shape. I've talked to the state about this and obviously West Road is not a state road. Route 100 is. It's a town road. But the town said that people trying to move on and do bigger capital improvements on West Hill, which will make the town a little richer in tax money. We could rent a smaller belly bridge and put it over that span so that we can run a cement truck up there legally without breaking that bridge or a dump truck full of topsoil or crusher for a site for a barn or something like that. So I've done some investigation. I'm just hoping that I'm not talking on deaf ears. It's been a long time and everybody up there feels the same way. And somebody's up there trying to sell piece of property for seven figures. So it's not like we're all not paying taxes and it's not like if they sell their property they won't be bringing a moving ban up both ways to try to get across a bridge. So that's my little speech for tonight. I just hope you take it into consideration and hope something happens before I'm 70 or 71. What your last name is sir? Creech, Creech. Larry Creech. C-R-E-C-H. C-R-E-E-C-H? Yeah. And I don't know if Henry wants to say anything. Well yeah, the only thing I can say is that yeah I've been coming up here since 1999. And I will say that the road has been approved and obviously the big slide area that was one big thing. I understand that that was a huge amount of money. But I will say that the service as far as maintaining the road and everything has really improved over the past two years. So, you know, on the other side of it. And yeah, one of the first years I came up, you know, I met a logging truck coming down the road and it was in the winter time and that was quite a scare for me. But yeah, that's about it. Well there's no question that the town, that's the number one bridge on the town that needs addressing and it's not like we haven't been working on it and we actually had a plan with the Forest Service and what changed in their priorities or their funding, I can't speak to that. But it's not like it's not on our radar to do that. And what was, I guess as you know, what was driving the Forest Service to invest in rebuilding that bridge was the timber sale that they planned and contracted for up above that. And that's not been canceled. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's coming. They have an ETA and they don't have ETA on that. And they started, we were going to do it, and we're going to do it and then they canceled it, honestly, had the design all made up. I believe Joan could even answer some of that, I think. It's tens of thousands of dollars already invested in this design of the bridge. So it's not dead, dead, dead on the water. Right. I've read the National Forest's proposal on it. Yeah. So it's all done and it looks great. Yeah. And we were hoping they were going to start that this year, but they, they canceled out in the last minute and they didn't let us know that until just, well, a couple of months ago really. Did they say that how long that improvement would take or anything like that? I can't answer that. Joan, do you have any information about that? I was wondering, well, the last question was, do we have any time estimate of how long the project would take once the, once it does finally begin the West Hill Bridge? Several months. Yeah. Yeah. And do we have, do you have any more information than what we've already shared about what's been on the Forest Service mind or their planning? Right. Forest Service at this point, but for one reason or another the Federal Highway Administration, so far, it's not giving me answers about funding. It used to be something that was totally reliant. So we have a grant application in there from last year or longer. And I'm not very precise information, but that's all. Yeah. It kind of froze up there, Joan. Could you repeat that last bit there? Which is where the funding's not responding to inquiries from Green Mountain National Forest about going to look at the application that we submitted for them. So he gets to get the test, yeah. No, I don't. Yeah. So while I do check in with the design work is the design work. So it's definitely in process. It's just an extended process. So just my last observation as, guys, is that if this goes on for years, would the town consider because of the bridge is getting underpinning, is getting worse and worse? Actually, the framing on the bridge is probably fine for most anything. Two town trucks came up last week. You know, with an excavator, and they didn't fall through. But if we look at this and start looking down the road a couple of years, I think maybe the town might want to look into just putting in a wrenching and bailing bridge from the state and putting it in and just putting some ramps and put it right over the bridge. Just that way we can run whatever we want up there. Give it some consideration. Do you have a project in mind that you have heavy equipment coming for? We'll take it under advisement. I guess that's the best we can do right now. And then we'll try to get something going to see what they want to do. I mean, we've made them want to talk to the Forest Service about it as far as dealing with that, because they're going to want to put a temporary in there anyway. Well, anyway, they're going to be running a lot of trucks over it. So they might be able to deal with maybe just getting a temporary in there for the start. And at least that part would be done before they do the actual bridge. And that may be something they might be interested in, and we might be able to talk with them about that. I don't know. We'll have to put some thought into it and work for that, I think. That'd be great. Thank you. All right. Thank you. You're welcome to stay for the rest of the thrilling meeting, too. No, thank you. Great. Since we've got Greg online here talking about the Riverbrook Drive culvert replacement, you're on. OK. You guys hear me OK? Yeah. Yeah. So just a little background. So I'm Greg with the White River Partnership. We had a grant to do some culvert designs. So we had done some culvert assessments in the Upper White River. And we did some, we placed some culverts for the town and the Wingbrook on Wing Farm Road, I guess, Maple Hill, Marine Hill, and a bunch there. Anyway, we had this design money. And so we had a couple culverts in the Upper White that checked some boxes for us. And so one is in Hancock and the other was on Riverbrook Drive there in Rochester. So we hired Cricket and just said, can you do a design? And she will have a design in September, I believe, that I'm happy to share with you guys. But anyway, what I'm here to ask you guys is not unlike what we did in the Wingbrook drainage, if we could fund a replacement, like absolutely fund it. No calls to the town. Would you guys support us replacing that structure? Like I said, it chicks a couple boxes for us. We think it'd be fairly easy to fund. And yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, this is the same scenario as waiting for the Forest Service to fund the West Hill Bridge. But you sound a little more positive. Ready for action. I'm sorry you cut out there. You sound, yeah. But yeah, you would, I think that we all agree that, yeah, you would have the encouragement and support of the town to take on that project. Yeah. So exactly where is the culvert located? Right here, McJohn. It's the only culvert over at Riverbrook Drive there. So when you cross the bridge there by the town garage, yeah, it's just undersized. So from a water body standpoint, but then it also blocks upstream fish passage which checks a bunch of boxes, which allows for funding. And so the only thing that the town, we would purchase all the stuff. We'd do it suit the nuts and then the town would own it. And it would be a town structure. Once I get a design, I'll share it with the select board so you guys can, it'll be, I think, a preliminary design from cricket first of September. I'll share it with you guys if you have anything you want to weigh in. Do you have a time frame that you're thinking this would happen? Really not sure. You know how the funding works. Maybe next year, if we get lucky. But we would fund the whole thing. OK. That include a temporary bypass there too? It would. That would be part of it. It would be on the upstream side. We would work with the landowners to secure permission to do that as well. Yeah. Yeah, all right. Yeah, that's a yes. OK. Thank you. Great. Yeah, I appreciate it. Great. All right. All right. Thanks. You're welcome. Good night. Hi. So, you know, it does happen, you know, and it'll come through, and we can find the bridge. We'll work on something for a daily there. That might be an avenue that the government might be interested in. They had put one in when they were doing some work over there for the slide. It's great. Right, they did. And that thing was great. Yeah. They might be able to get on to that. So, Joan, you've been listening in on this. Is that tie-in with any of your updates for tonight? That's essentially all I had. I don't have much else to report. All right. OK, that was some good news. I guess we'll wait to hear from them. I don't see Tony here from the library to talk about anything. The boys are back from where we got from the highway. The project is moving forward up on Bethel Mountain Road. I don't know an exact completion date, but there are a lot. Excuse me, I can hear where you said the project was on Peckle Blutt. I said the project on Bethel Mountain Road is moving forward. Bethel Mountain Road is still closed for public passage, but it's making progress on that. Terry is a utility operator. You got anything you'd like to contribute tonight? No. Pretty boring. Pretty boring? OK. No, you're not boring. I like that. How about, Jeff, it's your opportunity to break the spell of not much to say. OK. Frank and I worked with energy efficiency investments to complete the walkthrough of the high school. I think that was last week. Provided the Black River report about the high school to energy efficiency investments that does give them a basic print size of the building we've not yet been able to locate the school blueprints themselves. But I'll be talking to the new school principal when she's available about that. See, I sat down yet again and looked for holes in my data on CB oil expenses for the town buildings. There do appear to be some missing buildings and what they've provided and what we've been able to find in town. I will call Charlie and find out what's going on, because they just didn't respond at all. Basically, you look at the various buildings, and some of them are showing half the usage of prior years with no real reason for that. So it looks like we're missing data. I reached out to Green Mountain Power to talk with them further about the resiliency island area and megawatts necessary to make it a go for them. I have not heard back yet from Josh. Let's see. We have the Climate Economy Model Communities program of the Vermont Council on Rural Development. The first meeting there of a preliminary steering committee is scheduled for 6.30 to 9.00 PM on the 11th this month, coming up this week. That will be here at the town office. And the Vermont Council on Rural Development, I think, has rounded up about 20 to 25 participants for that first meeting. That's about it. I'll be here this week. And so I should have a chance to work on some of these issues and hopefully clarify and move things forward. Got your PDR on the 11th? Yeah. Yeah, I saw the list of people that have agreed to come and are contemplating coming. And it looks pretty good diversity of the citizens of Rochester and a few people from other parts of the valley as well. Any questions? Well, the only other thing I'd add is that this is a preliminary, kind of a one-time steering committee that is going to be looking at a community meeting, setting up and creating a community meeting to look at our issues and prioritize them. It's kind of a restart in a way of Envision Rochester. So now on to the new business. And we have a resolution here to designate two rivers out of Quichy Regional Planning Commission as administrator for the Rochester High School Building Study. So I move to point them as stated. You're using them for a second. We're using them, yeah. All right. All in favor? All right. All right. All right. All right. And then there's also, we'd like to announce, a statewide memorial to honor Vermonter is lost during COVID-19. I don't know what form that is taking, but we're absolutely in, well, I would feel, my vote would be in support of that. And that's on Sunday. Do you have a date or a location? Yeah, that's Sunday at September 19th at 3 PM at the Statehouse Lawn in Montpelier. It says here, all Vermonters are invited to attend a statewide memorial service to honor Vermonters lost to COVID-19 and to bring healing to our spirits. And this will include a ceremonial reading of the names of all who have died. And for information, you can contact Vermont Interfaith Action at 802-651-8889. This was? That's the two rivers. Yes, the two rivers. Yeah, I'm just going to say that. And moving down the line, I want to approve a new annual map maintenance processor for the April 1 through March 31st, 2022, April 1. Wait a minute. We've already been through April 1. So we're halfway through it? There are your starts, because the grand list gets large. Grand list gets large. So we have to pull on the new guide. Yeah, yeah. The list of year. And is it the same folks that did it last year? We just got the new maps in. They look pretty nice. Do you have a chance? Yeah, I have. I haven't approved it yet. CAI technologies. So I'd move to approve that. Contract that? What is the total? $1750. I can't hear a thing. You were saying about this just for the map maintenance. Are you really approving what? We're approving the contract for the next year of the tax map maintenance from CAI technologies for it. And the number is $1,750. All in favor? Aye. We've already talked about the river drive covert replacement. So basically, we're all to bills. And it's been a nice having you all here. Thank you for coming. Now go jump in the river. Yeah. Yeah, it's not a cool off. Yeah. All right. Thank you, my dear.