 So this is exciting, you know, and it's really a privilege to be here and kind of coming back on the planning commission, we did a quick, but thorough review and production of the town plan. And you know, part of that was while I was in my absence there, because it had been determined that a municipal planning grant wasn't gonna be secured unless there was an adopted town plan. And that caused a lot of the initiative of the commercial community and others for the steam to run out unless we got a town plan. So we ran and got a town plan. We're gonna have a public meeting on it and thank you for your help and contribution to that. We then as kind of moving forward to the planning commission we asked the state and Vermont Regional Planning Commission to, or Sandy did, help facilitate, or someone on our team did help facilitate a meeting and they presented to us something maybe familiar to all of you, this concept of village center designation. This wouldn't be to the exclusion of any other possible village center, the most likely civic and or commercial poor in our town would be Putnamville if any. And this doesn't exclude that opportunity or any future setting or it's separate and apart from that. There just a kind of digression but an observation for me trying to read in light of the town plan needs. I saw, you know, several active steps in this community that many of you may have been involved since 2001, I'm trying to kind of bring in across the finish line and have a village center, have there be a calming of traffic, have there be some shade tree, have there be some sidewalks, some bike path, the whole line yards and it repeats itself every time. And so we listen to the state and there appears to be and the merits of things always matter, always matters but I'm going to record and say no downside to applying for this village center designation. In fact, there are numerous upsides and one exciting thing is in this document just to kind of do it much better than I can. Where's the one that has the main one that you brought? This one here. Just grab that. Yeah. And then at the back of it, you'll see some of the types of opportunities not the least of which is the very same municipal planning grant that we wanted to go to with the town plan as it turns out our scoring for that municipal planning grant to get the feasibility study, it is probably if not entirely contingent at least in part contingent on having this designation, that'll be a scoring factor that we are able to verify when we listen to the state and the planning commission talk to us. But at the back pages here, if you'll just look through all the sorts of things that you can become available. You mean at the heart that says 2019? Yeah, after the hard week examples, let's just say the last three pages back to back. And just kind of glance over downtown Village Center tax credit, whether we have money, state of historic preservation, don't put the facility, the ACV outstanding, historic preservation trust to remind you, the list goes on and on. And obviously it takes work and effort, but for one example in kind of casual conversations to the what's next, middle sex work and the economic development committee is apparent that there's a group of businesses in the downtown that want to associate degree. If they were to be like a not-for-profit, they could lease one of your historic buildings and then become accessible to renovate the buildings to get tens of thousands, $100,000 to do so to some of the structures right here and then we get downtown. So all that kind of is not really pie in the sky, but it becomes concrete when you actually do things. And in my view, actually doing something like getting your support for the Village designation is really important. And again, I can't, we pushed, I mean Sandy, we pushed a bit to try to figure is there any trick here, does it mean a tax change because people who own historic property or something automatically, and we didn't get into the weeds, but for the most part it seems like none of that will change. In fact, there isn't a historic designation already that we're trying to understand a little better about. There is, did you say? Yeah, but I don't want to put that on this tape thing. I want us to find out more and be able to report back on it. We're trying to make- Can you town already? In the village already? Yeah, we learned something, at least Elias seemed to mention it, but that gets me off something I prepared to talk about. I'm really focused on this designation and the potential it has for the town. And so let's see a couple other things. The young man, Zach, who's come on as a planner for the Vermont. Regent, is that a Vermont Regional Planning Commission? Yes, thank you. Is very helpful, and there's monies already there that aren't going to be the town's expense to help facilitate the fairly straightforward simple application process. One element of the application is the select boards signing on that you approve that we should pursue the designation, but the actual work like this map that was provided, which in itself is quite detailed incorporates many of the parameters of the designation. In other words, you can see there's both civic and commercial and other designations colored into that. That's why I bothered to get the color copy from y'all. But anyway, he's there to help us get her done. And why is it critical now, all of a sudden, is that this goes in tandem with the town plan. And this will be the basis for the application. Again, being at the tail end of some other conversation, we have grant deadlines in September, so if we're going to get the feasibility study money, that should happen next month. And we'd like to be able to work as a planning commission to get that grant and have the strongest possible chance to do so. You'll be able to. You know, it's Peter Wanda, so I apologize for the phone. I hope you can hear me. Yeah, I can hear you clearly. Thank you. So is the geographic territory that's going to be included in this, the mitigation correspond with the village districts on our zoning map now, or is it different? I think it largely does. I haven't done that crosswalk. This is the Vermont Regional Planning Commissioner based on state. So I want to see the answer has to be yes to that. What I can tell you is I haven't crosswalked it, but I can say this. I understand it goes from the Bear Roots building to the edge, on the other edge of the Camp Mead property. Across this road, I think it's got that little. It got that little way back. But what about this part right here? Because that's outside the boundaries it looks like. Yeah. I'll put a map right here. Because I mean the boundaries of the village are red and we're proposing this part here. So here's the thing is we're not proposing, this is something that they generated for us. Right. And this thing can expand it, depending on actual identification of commercial or civil civic use. So what we can do, I guess what I want to do is make sure that the ability to answer you precisely was a very important and valid question that we have to assure ourselves of, ought to necessarily get in the way right today of the approval, hopefully from you to pursue this. To pursue the definition. No, that's fine. Yeah. I just want to be sure that to the extent we can we're consistent, you know? Yes. Right now, I don't have any of these maps in front of me. If you can, maybe I can skin an email with T-Ray now. Yeah, I think, Peter, this is Sandy Levine and Sarah will try and send it to you. The Village Center designation map boundary is a little smaller than the Village Zoning District. And the state explained that they really want to have an anchor of commercial property on all sort of corners. Or civic. Commercial or civic. So it's excluding, if the boundary would be housing, that would be excluded. It would be the commercial areas and the civic areas and the spaces within those. So these are excluded because these are houses. OK. I think that's a lot of interesting stuff. Here's my thing tonight, guys. I'm fine pursuing this. We're not finalizing this tonight. I'm just expressing a concern that to me, it makes sense as much as we can to have what we consider the village and what we say the village on our zoning map be the territory that's incorporated in this designation. If for some reason it can't be, then maybe it can't be. But all we're saying tonight is we support pursuing this. That should write. OK. Well, I'll tell you what the thing says. But just in light of what you said, I want to, we spent a little time, or at least I did. I remember being almost tedious on this, trying to figure out whether future expansion or growth could lead to an expansion of the designation. Like if it turned out that the size, despite our efforts to advocate for a larger map in this step of the process, in the future, if we did get something up towards the highway, you know, that could now kind of be another anchor. And then he pushed back a little bit and began to talk about historic precedents and what had been there and was not been there. He did Richard Amore from the state. Agency of Commerce and Community Development. But again, very flexible. Just recognizing it had to pass at least the laugh test, if not the fact test. So you'd have to have something that was there. But they'll work with us, Peter, on these boundaries. And if they're incorrect, I expect they'll expand them. If they have to be a certain more constricted size, as Sandy suggests, that sounds like what we've heard. Yeah. Well, for instance, up the other side of the highway, we actually have commercial activity. Yes, exactly. That's included. You know, so to me. Oh, no. Everybody was talking about it on the other side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. That's included. It's newer development. Certainly a good point to work on. And frankly, I don't know how we're going to... This is really, if we get this, this will be, in my view, and I've spoken long enough on this, is I think it'll be a concrete first step that'll give you an opportunity to grow, give us an opportunity to grow and maybe access some of these funds that we need so that town doesn't have to pay for them and we can actually do some of these things in the business owner's city, or aren't you? So has this state registered historic districts, the other designation here? Do you know what I just said? You ever heard of that? I think it is. We were trying to understand, if it's there, that's probably what, it came up in conversation, Mary, not on this map. Well, I mean, that's because the whole thing is more. It's probably not. Let's find out. Let's get that answer later, like what is our historic stuff. But what was exciting in looking at the funding streams, and I'm not just a dreamer, I'm kind of pragmatic, but it really was interesting to be trying to figure out whether the money had to come from the town. Like, was there going to be any plausible way in which you could actually get some renovation monies for historic edifices here without the town paying it through the tax base? And it seems like if you did have a less CEO as an author-profit like a business association that you'd be able to leverage funds through the system that way, and I thought that seemed like an interesting idea. I think it just has to be a really practical question for the minutes. By approving this and signing this, what is the select board committing to? It says this following, Resolution for Village Centre Designation Application, and it's very brief, so I'll give you this. Okay, Peter. So it says, whereas the municipality of Middlesex, Vermont, is applying for Village Centre Designation for the Village of Middlesex, now therefore be resolved that the select boarder, it says the legislative body of this municipality agrees to and supports the application for Village Centre Designation past this 30th day of July and then has all of your signatures. All right. You just put your, I don't know. That's straightforward enough, okay. And that's it, and I'd love to entertain questions. I'm sure Sandy would, and we obviously can't. I'm not fully equipped to answer most questions tonight on this. It's kind of a new thing. I want to understand better. By us signing it, does it mean that this red line is our designated Village District? I can say, I don't think it has to. We're going to talk to the other guy on this. This hasn't been adopted. It all has to be filed. And I think a good thing might be to suggest that we would provide to you if it's not to owners for you to look at it, the full application electronically at least before it gets submitted. So if there are any, maybe even in advance of that, if the select board would like that. We don't have a long timeline, but there is, again, this application guidelines document, that included what I've given you. I can make copies of this for you. It's pretty straightforward. It's kind of this letter. It's gonna be filling up. Feel it, feel it, Peter, I'm sorry. We're on a really tight schedule tonight. Okay. Well, thank you for your support. Are we prepared to endorse this resolution? Yes. Do you remember? Yeah. If we are, would some of us please make the motion? So moved. So moved. Second? Yes. And it feels seconded? Feels seconded. Yeah. Okay. All in favor of endorsing this resolution for the designation of Middlesex Village as an official, whatever the right words are. Village Center. Village Center. Designated Village Center. Please say hi. Hi. Hi. Any opposed? We're done. Thanks guys. Thank you. Thank you. I'll see you in a few minutes. Mayor, do you want to start signing? Okay, so let's do this as quickly as we can. We've got minutes from June 25th and July 9th. Yes. Move approval. Wait, hold on, Mayor, you can't move one of these. That's very sure we got the right people for it. Okay, so I wasn't here. Mayor, you can't move the 25th. So someone else can move the 25th. I'll move it. Second. Okay, all in favor of approving the June 25th minutes, say aye. Aye. Aye. Mayor Zayn here, can you guys pass this one? Mayor Zayn. Okay, move approval with July 9th. Okay, is there a second to that? Second. Okay, all in favor of approving the minutes for July 9th, please say aye. Aye. Aye. We can close. We need to approve their minutes. Great. On update on middle sec, we're going to start board email back in possible. I think different. Real good. Yeah. We're gonna, are we accepting John Demeter's resignation from the ZBA? I'm just telling you that he is resigning from the ZBA. So as soon as you guys accept that, we can post it. I move we accept John Demeter's resignation from the ZBA. Hey, wait a minute guys, hold on a second. Why is he resigning? So what? Family. What exactly is the status of EMS? We just need more time to figure out what's going on. Yeah, I mean, Parla, Sarah and I were chatting last week and there's another vendor who we became aware of that I think it may be worth our consideration to look at some alternatives, but it's something that we're gonna need to look into a little deeper and probably have a presentation or at least you and I meet with them for a presentation so that we can look at what they have to offer versus what we currently have. John? Okay. Okay. No, that's fine. Thank you. Okay. So we're back to just a minute or two. Yeah. We'll shoot for the next, next week. Shoot for the plan. I move we accept John Demeter's resignation from the ZBA. I'll second. All those in favor of accepting John's resignation letter from the ZBA, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. It's up to them. I presume the orders have been signed? Yes. Correspondent Central Among Regional Planning Commission approval of 2019 down plan. That's pretty much it. The Central Among Regional Planning Commission review the 2019 down plan and said, yes, it's good. You've complied with all the laws. Good job, Santa Levine and Planning Commission. Yay. Yay. Yay. So we're just about ready to happen. That's our, that's our August meeting date. Yeah. Right at the spot. Right. We get to be in our public hearing on the down plan. Correct. So can we, should somebody go up and check and see if there are people upstairs? I put a note up side there, but I don't think there is a note there. I think the bill is locked, wasn't it? I opened it. I don't know if it was. Shot rock. What was that? I don't know. Sort of. Shot rock. Shot rock. Yeah. Shot rock. Big pieces. Like how the drainages, we saw the drainages. That's small stuff. It's part of the reading the record of the town fan. I'm going to give you Jim Colby's letter. Yeah, I printed that. So there's no one upstairs? We're waiting here. We're waiting to hear. No one upstairs, right? One person is asking for air, and now there's no one in the room. No one in the room. You guys have air, it's now back in the room. Do you guys have Jim's letter? Yeah. So I think we'll just enter this into the record. I'm sorry, I'm losing my voice. Yeah. Why is this one? She went upstairs, lost her voice. I don't know. I got it. I read it. I don't have it in front of me, but I read it. I don't know. Does anybody else see a copy of some? These two. I just had it. I just need one more. Oh, here it is. The last chapter. I didn't have a chance to compare it to what page is he referred to. Here it is, there it is. Can we just enter that into the record without anybody having to read that into the record? I don't have any objection. Peter, are you still chairing the meeting? Okay, do you have any objections? I'm fine, I'm fine accepting his letter as part of the record. Yeah, I don't have a problem either. You know, guys, I think it is what it is. It's the fact that we have no one know them there who attended our public hearing tells us that there aren't any strenuous objections. Well, we do have Theo Kennedy and Sandra Levine and I'm sorry, Jim here. So, I don't know if you're attending and want to offer comments at the public meeting. Is there any commission to submit the response to this? I can't hear a word or three things. I'm sorry, I was just standing. All right. We just told him this is the same thing that said this is for them. It was just one of your stuff. No. Okay, fine. The answer's the same thing. Okay, good. This is Jim Decker. I'm here mostly about the roads and trying to figure out what we're doing about the roads, where we're moving forward, what the hurdles are to fix the road. All right, and when you asked me. Oh, I did. Oh, okay. You asked me. So, yeah. I thought you were here. Okay, are you talking about any of the discussion of town roads in the town plan? No, no. I'd like, just in general. Okay, well, that's not what this public hearing is about. Even though we're sitting here or we just, we just changed our hats in terms of what our obligations are. So, Theo, can you- I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were there if you wanted to be heard about the town roads. No, I'm more interested just in listening to this conversation. It's all good. Okay, thank you. We have an adjourn, Jim. So, if we finish the hearing, then we can take up your comments. Don't forget, you also have to pick a date. We did pick a date. No, pick a date for the town-wide vote if this, if you don't make a change to the town plan. We don't have to. I didn't pick a date. Oh, look at Carl's here for the, yay. What is happening? I'm sorry, I lose my voice. Chair, Peter, Carl Dupont just entered and he, come on, have a seat. Okay. Maybe if we just entered your father's letter into the record. Their father's father. I'm sorry, your uncle. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jesus. Jesus is your father. I won't go there. I won't. Did you want to offer some comments on the town plan? Not right now. I'll listen to what you have to offer. Did you see the copy of this letter? No, I did not. It's GCCQ. Oh yeah, so she's. Yeah, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So Carl, do you have a comment for us or the public here? Right now I'm just going to listen. Okay. I hate to say anything. I think you guys have already been informed of the position quite thoroughly. Yes. Okay. So what's your, what's your, what's your pleasure to like to work with them? Well, I wanted to ask Sandy or Theo have you seen Jim Cole's letter? I only just saw the TV. Yeah, same with me. So I don't really know. I was hoping you guys would have a position but it's hard to do that with that when you just saw him. Oh, I'd like to ask the question while you're thinking about that. So he recommended several changes. Yeah. So the question is, if we accept those changes and amend the town plan as a result of those changes, does that mean we have to back up and go along in the process or are those considered minor changes? Sandy, you want to come up here? So that hinges on the question of a substantial change, I believe, or is it a content with the two qualifications, content and something else? Content and form, whatever. If it's basically, if this change is substantial enough, it does kick it all the way back to the planning commission and then it also kicks it back to the central planning commission. Right, and it looks like it changes the map. Yeah, to the map. It's the map, so that's significant and changes the specific recommendation, I think, regarding changes to zoning, but I think, I don't know, I don't have it. So when I looked at it quickly, it was like I would consider it a major change. It's a major change. It is, I would say. So unfortunately, you know, that we hear him all the time, I know, but it's a little late in the game for him to be asking us to make a major change now. So, wait, Leah wants to say something, Peter. So for the record, I'm here with my chair of the planning commission and I'm on the member of the planning commission. And we have a process, obviously, you all know, very substantial, even though it was rapid, very fed in the thorough process, we reached out to every citizen who had a mailing address in the town again for further input. And we read a substantial letter from Mr. Colby at an earlier time and dealt with each and every substantive item they're in. And I think actually, in fact, may have to meet some adjustments, I don't want to misspeak, but we certainly considered it thoroughly. And the town plan product that was sent out for review was based on all the input through the contemplated process under law to reach the conclusions that we did. Having said that, this is a living document. The town plan is not like a monument that gets locked into forever zone, right? It's not a time capsule. It's a reflection of the current circumstances. And it's a basis and a foundation for the work that the town wants to do and it needs to do in order to develop its town. Because without that, we can't even have a town plan for which people could go to this lovely open space. So when I read this for the first time, I see provision number one, being a pretty good, or statement number one, being a pretty accurate description. Maybe that's a level of opinion. I don't think it's actually terribly substantive, you could strike those, those words, those sentences. And for me, not substantially, I'm just one person substantially change the document in any substantive way with regards to the town plan. It doesn't really, I mean, we can look at him again, but he's saying he wants to lead it. No change in the zoning are anticipated for this area at this time. We actually got on this and we're on the record, but it's handy. I remember talking specifically about this because we were trying to say, what does it mean at this time and anticipating? It wasn't even a very helpful sentence. So that and that present no major, whether it's true that they're being contemplated or not, neither of those sentences being deleted is anything substantive in my view. The next one is a very different matter and there's a process that you go through. And one, I would argue that there's a process that was afforded in the context of this town plan development, a very substantial one that everyone, including this gentleman, was able to participate in. So to come to the select board at the very last moment and perhaps not with any intent, but inadvertently perhaps because of the importance of the development of this area would have you to this person somehow inadvertently or knowingly, I have no idea, it's not my job to assess, but put an end run around the completing of this process, which is so terribly important. We need your decision tonight on this because of the work that went into it and how it fits into the conversation we had before. Otherwise you might as well kick the can down another year and will we ever, always appease everyone and everything at all the time? If that's true, we shouldn't be in this business because that's just not possible. Just have to be fair. And we've been very fair. You raised this issue earlier? You know, at this concept, I'd have to crosswalk. I don't want to misspeak, but the idea is reminiscent of an ongoing conversation about this land. And I think some of the aspirational stuff that he's talking about is sensible to me. I don't know, my business sounds good. It's private property, you know, go for it. But so that's all I want to say. So I think it would be disappointing if we allowed that second paragraph to be enough barring any other public comment to be a barrier to your approval of the town plan. What I can say is this can come up in because we are going to address the zoning again, right? We're going to go into the thick of it. And some of that is really where the rubber hits the road, literally, right? Town plan is a vision document and the zoning documents are where you can or cannot do things. So I feel like we could address that in that context and that's all that I'd like to say for the record. I have a question, Peter. I'm not sure if Theo or Sandy can answer this, but I mean, there's no doubt that Jim owns this parcel of land. However, he is not a resident of Middlesex. So what kind of standing does that give him? We have always allowed, I mean, first of all, obviously he can't vote on the town plan, that's the death plan. He has always allowed property owners to be heard in town plan discussions and zoning discussions, but they can't vote on the town plan or on the zoning documents because they're not resident. Yeah, obviously, I guess I'm just wondering. It seems to me that we have one individual who's a substantial land owner who tries to insert his own opinion to manipulate wording in the plan that will provide something to his advantage. So, and although we're saying we give that opportunity to anyone who's a landowner, we seem to have one landowner who constantly is doing this. I was a little nifty. You've been doing it as long as I've been doing it. Okay, I was a little nifty when I got the letter at the 11th hour, as you said Theo, and there's been a process, and I'm sure you were inundated with information from this gentleman in terms of what he wants in the town plan. So, to me, I don't know, just personal, I don't give it any standing at all. So, I'd have no problem if the planning commission said, thanks for sharing round file, and you can put that in the minutes. Well, it can be part of the record, but that's it. Sure, exactly. So, I'm sorry, your comment, you don't want to just say something on a positive light, but what we did as part of the what's next middle sex group was meet with some of the business owners a couple of times, and just in light of what you're talking about, try to create a forum where non-voting business owners can talk to the issues that are important to them and how they'd like to see the downtown develop, and just as one member and as a citizen, I welcome that. That's the only way it's really going to work, right? But as you point out, if this were to derail it because of this provision, that's more than unfortunate. Yeah. That's a problem with the process. I think we vetted a lot of this very, very thoroughly, and I think we could take up the merits in the zoning process of paragraph two. I don't really care about paragraph one, and the last paragraph seems to be more discursive than it does if you want to have a request. Yeah, it doesn't have to change. And if that's all you got, then that's less than I feared. Whose glasses are these? There you go, sorry. So there they have it. So it sounds like, well, Peter, you're running the meeting, sorry. It's not even working for a motion. So is this a motion to approve the town plan for a vote? Approve the town plan and positively. That's you need a motion to close the hearing first. Yes, yes, I get that, but I don't care when we're at the other end. I move we close the public hearing on the 2019 town plan in the town middle six. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Hearing closes at 6.15. So I move that we approve the town plan for the vote. As presented. As presented. By the planning commission. By the planning commission in September. Actually, it's your version from July 9th. Because we made a couple of corrections. You made a couple of corrections. Okay. This is the latest one. That's all the way from April. That's okay. July 9th, you guys made a couple of corrections. So that's the one that's part of the public hearing. In fact, that's what you're needing in July 30th because you haven't had one. It was no, you were in it for 15 days. Great. So Liz, don't move. I second it. Do you second? All in favor? Motion, please say aye. Aye. Great. Aye. Any opposed? Do you guys want to set the, we just set the date though. Set the date. We could actually do it without meeting again in August because this will fall. If you set the, if you set for the townwide vote on September 10th, Tuesday, September 10th, that will fall. That is day 42, which is within the 30 day, 45 day window. That data's in. September 10th, Tuesday, September 10th. I have the, I have the warning right here. That's our meeting, right? So it's a different day we're coming. Right. It's not a, it's not a select board meeting. That's fine. I'm just wondering. That's a positive vote. That's an Australian. No, I said September 10th. September 10th. I thought you said the second, I'm going to what? So this is a vote where we come in and you write. Yes, no. I want the town plan. I don't want the town plan. Yes, no. Okay. Here's the warning that I drafted. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. Seven. I don't know. I think this, I don't know. They didn't think this one but I, I just followed the law. Okay. I'm putting down my calendar for ten minutes. Okay, so. I just want to, do you guys want to approve this holding it down while you vote? I just lost all my notes. Do you want to move it? I move we have set the town vote for the town. That's the one. That's the plant, worn it for vote. September 10th. September 10th. very moved. Two seconds. Second. Okay. All in favor of having the vote on the 10th plan. That's never going to happen. Bye. Yay. Whoa. It feels like it's been forever, right? Okay. 10th or 10th plan. Okay. Let's do a sign that super. Okay. We're now back. We have a good job. Good job, everybody. Good job. There's a lot of work you guys did. Thank you for a lot of work. Peter, if you want to. I hope it gets voted on. It will get voted on. It may only be 47 to 24. Peter, we still have our meeting going. We have an adjourn so we can hear from Mr. Decker, if you want. Yes, we can. That would be good. 10 minutes. I don't know. I just, I mean, honestly, I came here to find out more about our roads and figure out, you know, what our opportunities are here because, you know, I've been in town maybe seven or eight years now and, you know, I find our roads, you know, just, I mean, they're not, they're not up to par, right? You know, we have problems with, with how slippery they are every time it rains, you know, things are like, maybe we have Brook Road. It rains a couple of days hard and you could slide off the road if so, on the edge of those things. It's dangerous. You know, if it's graded on top of that, it's, it's deadly, right? I went up the other day and this is where this started. It was graded. A person came down the middle of the road, wouldn't move over. I was on the edge going less than 20 miles an hour. Had it in four-wheel drive and a full-sized pickup truck and almost ended up off the bank. That road was absolutely treacherous after that gradient. So that kind of put me in a little bit of a storm there for a bit. So, you know, I've seen over the last seven years or so that I've been here, you know, the same thing over and over and over again and I don't know if it's costs that are driving it. I don't know if it's, you know, I don't know what's driving it. And, you know, I see mud season, you know, we attempt to do a road and it slowly deteriorates over time. Rook road, when I first got here, it was just finished. So I might date the right timeframe, but it was just finished over. I know they popped it over. It worked great for two years and then it's slowly bang, bang, bang, bang, bang downhill. And now we're at, like, this year. It was a pretty, you know, it wasn't great. You know, the other road up over the other hill was almost unpassable at times. And if you try to go and I know it hasn't worked on and I know the road down in Montpelier is the same. So I don't know what it takes. I don't know if it's more money or it's different designs or different material. I've been told so many different things. I've been told we're using sedimentary stone and it crushes to a small dust that works into the gravel. And I was told that by a state worker that's not over 30 years working on town and state roads. I've been told that by people in town, construction people in town. I've been told a lot of things over the thing. I don't know what it is, but I know I've grown up and I grew up in the state of Vermont on dirt roads, and I feel like I stepped back into the 70s. And I just, You should have stated it in the 70s. And what's up in the 70s? I met you here in Middlesex. I'm not trying to do criticism here. I'm honestly, I just don't know where to go. So we've been making a decision and the town years ago receiving advice from the state and a lot of uh people who are supposed to be experts on dirt road maintenance and construction, and they recommended that we, when we re-filmed our roads, re-surface our roads, we would do it with crushed slate. Okay, and we did that for how many years, Dave? Oh, too many. Too many is right. That's Gary's legacy. We did it for quite a while and that decision which we made and we thought it was the right decision at the time turned out to be a terrible decision because what happened is over time that slate is soft and it breaks down and it turns into exactly what we've all experienced. It gets very slimy when it's wet and particularly when it's just degraded. I believe it was and help me out here, Steve, two or three years ago. Yeah, probably. That decision that we would no longer, for all these obvious reasons, use crushed slate for resurfacing our roads. That's correct. We use state spec material on our roads. Right. So, Brook Road was pre-date, so that covering that's on there that's turning to clay is pre-date. And so, can I ask a clarifying question? So, when we did East, when we did the road up Molly Supple, we removed all that slate, didn't we? We removed all that material, rebuilt the road, and used all state spec material for rebuilding. Right. Okay. And that's as we're moving forward. Those are our plans. Those are our plans. Let me just finish my overview of it. So, you know, we recognize and acknowledge that that was a bad decision. We thought we were doing the right thing at the time. We took advice and it turned out to be bad advice. So, we are living with the consequences of that decision and it's going to take us time to recover from that as we, you know, go through our, go through our maintenance cycle and get gravel on those roads. So, getting to your first comment, money is obviously a huge part of it. Maintaining our roads is the single biggest expense we haven't found. It's the lion's share of our budget, the equipment and the payroll and the material and everything else is the biggest part of the money we spent. So, you know, could we do it faster if we had more money? Absolutely we could. But for the most part, we haven't heard, we've heard from a few people saying that we should spend more money, raise the taxes, you know, do it, do it faster, do it wherever. We are not going to do that so far. We were struggling with what, watch out for everything else. We are really struggling to maintain what we have. And this year, not solely because of the roads, but largely because of the problems with the roads, we ended up overspending our budget by over $70,000 just to keep the roads open. So, we acknowledge that at times the roads are very slippery and climby and, you know, no different than the roads in the winter when most of the people in town now know that and they know to slow down. I know not everybody can slow down and I know sometimes the roads are bad, but we're doing it. We're trying to do the best we can with what we have is what I'm saying. And we recognize your concern is the problem and it's going to take us a while to recover from that problem. Well, thank you. I mean, that makes sense. I mean, I'm glad to hear that it's being addressed and it was addressed a couple of years ago. I guess my most focus was on Brook Road for one of them and some of the other, I know they're poor and they've been poor for a long time, but Brook Road was one of those ones I saw upgrade when I got here and it's, you know, and I guess that falls into the previous category. That wasn't really upgraded, it was resurfaced. But it was resurfaced with material, right? So, it was pre-vet dated, at least the top layer. So, makes sense. And then, you know, just a, if we have a moment here, the mud season type environments, we're talking about replacing roads and doing those things. Are there other approaches? Because when I arrived in other towns, you know, let's take example, the worst road, which is probably the one I drive on or don't go around, is the one that you come down, molly subtly, make a left, and you head to a Vermont area, right? East Hill Road. It's unpassable probably, except for making a full-size truck during the mud season. You know, one of the things that I find that's really hard is that I used to commute a lot with a car and I'd come on down the road and the great, the graders, that's a, you know, would grade the mud perfectly flat. And so, I'll come down the road in a car and sink right to the axles. And not very fun. So, you know, I don't know what the best approach to that is, but looking at a road when you're coming out and expecting not to be able to sink up to the axles when you see a graded road or a groomed flat road, it's kind of an expectation. During mud season, yeah, it's tough, but you can, you know, if it's, so I don't know what the answers are. I've seen different approaches where people groom stuff to the sides. I've seen stuff where, different approaches. And I just, the one that we're grooming it flat is just, you know, I don't know. It just seems, it doesn't seem to make any difference on the roads. It stops the roads from warming up. It just covers up the problem and re-flattens the road temporarily for three hours before somebody mud bogs down through it again. So, it doesn't really help. So, I don't know. There have been other attempts and other ways that you guys have both commanded those. So, first of all, let me back out of town and again, please help me out. It's not our policy or practice to grade the roads flat. When we are doing grading in the summer time, our normal grading, not during mud season, we crowd up the roads. Agreed. Yeah. Right. I'm not talking about the crowns or the growth. I mean, I think, but just to briefly touch that subject, the grading that we do during mud season is literally to help people get through that section at that time. It isn't fixing the situation right there. Well, what I'm asking you though is, can we do things differently? Yeah, exactly. Are we attempting something different? The mud season changes every year and sometimes that section may not be that bad, but the section just down the road. I don't even mean upgrading the road, but when you have a mud hole that's a foot deep and you take a groomer over top of it, it's still a foot deep. That isn't exactly the way it happened. I would suggest that when we have one of these situations in this next mud season that you go right along there with Paul or the greater operator that's doing that and see what we do, we don't just grade it off flat. So, boy, that looks good and it's just a mud hole. We do not do that. Okay. Well, and you also put rocks and other stuff in there. We try to put stone and other materials in to help mitigate that a little bit. And we try to do what we can to get traffic through without really going through our entire budget. And I think that's what a lot of this is driving for. I'll just clarify one other point that you had made not at this meeting. You didn't bring it up, but I'll just clarify. Now you had mentioned that we use salt in our sand and that's one of our problems. We do not put any salt in our sand. None. Absolutely none. That's interesting, but if you look at our roads, I don't know how they melted 20 degrees, 25 degrees out there. So, but I'm not going to get into that argument. Okay, I think that we got to call this off. Yeah, we need it. Here are you still there because we have another meeting. Oh, yeah, no worries. We've got about one minute to wrap this up. Okay, one minute. I'm good. Yeah. We're not just saying closing in. We love constructive criticism. We love it when people come in and talk to us. We like to hear from residents and we like to explain, you know, how we're managing to try to do this. We all drive on these roads, so believe me, we know what you're talking about. And it is that we're not paying attention. The last thing I would say is that the several places where we did a reconstruction of the road and Lolley-Suegel is one and by Ray Nickery that he chill, is another improvement in the way the roads are, those roads are. Agreed, 100% of them. Again, that's very, very, very expensive to do. So to say, you know, that the whole length of a road is just financially unfeasible. Can we, over time, which is what we're trying to do, pick the worst spot and go in there and reconstruct those worst spots. Yeah, that's what we're trying to do. Yeah, I agree. I just, you know, from a perspective of somebody in town, you know, I'm usually pretty patient. As I said, I almost ended up in the ditch the other day and it kind of pushed me over the edge after seven years here. And, you know, I'm glad to hear this change. Obviously, that's a license plate. I didn't. I was too worried about actually falling over the ditch. And, you know, I'm kind of, you know, I'm getting involved here. It is, it sounds like we're moving forward with different approaches. And, you know, it's not, and to myself, it's not about did it work this time. It's like, well, it didn't work. So let's try something different. And, you know, and I hear that's what's going on. So that's a good thing. So in my opinion. Okay. Yep. Yeah. Thanks for coming in, Jim. Thank you for your time. Thanks for coming in. Carl, thanks for coming in. Thank you. I'm very glad you came in. Thank you. It's really good. It's a good morning.