 started then I don't know if more folks are gonna show up or not but we can I don't I know most everybody but let's go around the room and introduce our self Denise Wheeler select board cliff women's call us select board Rose Pellis Muck select boy Kaye Lynn Karneson recording secretary Stuart Mortland Alphalair B. Brooks-Michel Hayou Thompson Chris Holcomb Sharon Lynn Slickford Judy Robert Town Clerk okay so this is I just want to let folks know this is just the first of what will probably be a couple of meetings to to talk about this so if folks don't weren't able to make it tonight we're gonna try to hold another event maybe an East Calis maybe one in Adam and something like that because we have you know to make sure that we have space for such things as this there's definitely been a lot of chatter on front porch forum and I wanted to offer up that some of the issues and questions and things that have come up are answered in a document that we've put out like last year or year before last frequently asked questions if folks want a copy of it which really does answer some of the questions but I think tonight the operations winter operations right tonight we can just go around the room and see what folks want to express is their concern or compliments okay I first want to say that I know everybody is working really hard the road crew I know you guys work your butts off I can't imagine having your job I appreciate how when we pass each other we wait to each other I you know I I know that you must you all must be exhausted and I know you're feeling a lot of calls from the community you know all you are you know Toby you are there has been a lot of chatter and a lot of concern and so I'm not coming here from a place of pointing fingers or playing whatsoever and thank you people that I talked to in Maple Corner I mostly talked to Maple Corner folks at the store and people I carpooled with I'm not hearing a lot of blame or finger pointing at all I'm just hearing concern and confusion and I feel like some I've been learning a lot just about oh I didn't know that the road crew wasn't out in the middle of the night I know that I talking to Sharon I didn't know that route 14 was state the state that was really interesting and so I've been learning a lot right that's a good thing and that's absolutely good thing we've lived here since 1993 and mostly go up and down the county road although when kids were Calis elementary school you know used to be on the roads more and always had good tires always tried to drive very carefully especially in the wintertime and always noticed that East Montpelier line the roads you know from 1993 moving here they're always quite better not you talk about the county road right on the county road yeah and so for years I've just kind of Lewis and I kept that to ourselves and I don't think there's a lot of chatter about it and Carolyn Norton last year wrote something on the forum about the roads and I feel like it's opened up conversation that I think is actually healthy for people to start talking about it and so I think from what I'm hearing community perspective is that there is a long-term problem here of for some reason the Calis roads not being as clear in the wintertime I'm talking mostly about the winter you're talking county roads today I'm mostly talking about County Road what what I notice is the difference on the right at the line there and so I feel like it's time to figure out how to have our roads and I know you guys have been looking into this to some degree but I hope there can be further exploration as to how or like I'm thinking we need more more manpower I've heard that we have more roads in Calis than we do in East Montpelier I don't know how it compares to Worcester but I feel like if we do have more roads to cover then it seems like we need more manpower and that may mean raising taxes but I feel like it's a public safety issue in particular now with it with more ice with the with climate change and the more you know thawing in the freezing that to me it's just a number one priority to keep everybody safe and personally I have you know an 18 year old boy who's driving on the roads now with his 18 year old boy friends and they're inexperienced they're not crazy kids they're good kids but they're really inexperienced and I am nervous every day for them on the road I'm not as nervous about myself I have a good car with studs and I drive very carefully and so does my husband but I'm nervous about people also do who can't afford good tires can't afford to have a whole wheel drive and so and then you know the more recent concern is hearing that we are low on sand to me I feel like we're gonna get more sand so we don't have to skimp because ice is really scary and you know slipped on the ice walking walking outside of my office the other day you know because it wasn't stand on it and I was walking fast you know and I fell hard and I think I didn't get a concussion but so anyways I I feel like it's a time to kind of step that thinks short term let's get more sand and then long term let's figure out the roads and because I get that you guys are at your your maxed out yeah they are so and to me it's like when I heard that people aren't when they're you guys aren't plowing in the middle of the night I understand you need sleep makes sense that sometimes the county road isn't plowed but while we're going off to work because you haven't had the hours to plow it and to sand it so thank you your nice comments and willing to understand you know that things have changed with the weather and that's something that we're very well aware of edit the this question and answer she answers your question somewhat regarding the county road and as I've learned from Alfred I've learned a ton of outroads more than I ever thought I would ever know from Alfred over the years and it you know callous is situated such that we get the weather from the Worcester Range that East Montpelier doesn't get callous is at a higher elevation than East Montpelier we started using what's that stuff called magic magic salt which is what East Montpelier started using in Alfred last year investigated what we might use it would be better because regular salt doesn't work when the temperature is below 20 degrees it just doesn't work and then when it does work then it creates slush and then when it freezes and it creates you know so it's it's a constant battle but that is a part of an answer to your question which I found you know oh yeah that's true because I know where I live we're at a higher elevation we get more snow than some other areas and callous most of the time so it elevation does play a huge role in this but but thank you very much your comments and Katie's taking notes of all this so we can reflect on it and see how we might go forward later mr. Morton yeah just thoroughly prepared so I have to ask does anyone know what the town pays for sand what it cost Alfred knows that's like $13 what is the total cost for the winter well let's imagine the county road the West County road in the asphalt part of the county road is a certain fraction of what is it 93 miles in Calis I think there is seven we you mean a back road all the roots I think it's 70 isn't like 70 83 according to the well I say it's five percent of the total the total sand that would be if I'm just throwing this up but if the amount of sand put down was doubled on the West County road and the asphalt part of the county road to I can't imagine that would cost a tremendous amount in terms of the percentage of the cost the overall cost of the sand or in addition in addition cost I mean if it's $60,000 it might be even if it was much as $5,000 which it probably wouldn't more like $3,000 in addition if the sand was doubled up or the county road but let's say it's five it's five thousand out in addition to the 16,000 and if you take that that extra five thousand and divide it up among the taxpayers it couldn't amount to very much more per taxpayer per year I mean it would be something that I would think most people would willingly take maybe people in in East Calis would have their own concerns and then one another $5,000 or $3,000 and whether or to that could happen but yeah it's but but these Calis people are here complaining about the safety issue so it's kind of it's kind of narrowing down to this neck of the woods I mean I noticed I had no I had no cracks with the snow plow that's done at all and in the work that they do I just like Heidi said when they get on the county road and you're driving into my pittier it can be pretty hairy and you're only reminded of it when you cross the line into Eastmont Pittier now that line is a demarcation right there I mean within a few hundred feet on that hill that before you go down you'll into Eastmont Pittier that's there's no great difference in elevation on either side of that town line but you really notice the difference and by the way you also notice the difference on Colorado road when you go to Worcester you know right where the town line is by the amount of sand that's on the road that isn't to say that there isn't an adequate amount of sand going down necessarily you mean it could just as likely be that Worcester is a wash and sand and they don't know what to do with it so they put it down but it's noticeable there too for whatever that means let me ask Alfred a question do you put sand on the county road because it's got fairly large stones in it so we never put sand on the county road on the black top part salt that's just salt just salt now does Eastmont Pittier put sand on their portion of the county road no they just only use salt or that ice be gone stop magic salt are you using the magic salt this year yes it's just a matter of safety that's that's my only concern and I go I'm more frankly concerned about people coming the other way yeah the other drivers that I have on my own driving so can I answer or try to answer some of the question about the county road I usually hit the county road around 4 o'clock in the morning my first round with salt 4 o'clock in the morning so and then I have to go back to my dirt roads because my route consists of both black top and dirt roads so I'm at the county road that's the first thing I do is put salt on so some days when it's still snowing you guys come through at seven eight o'clock the snow is already overtaking the salt it's our my salt is not working anymore because it's still snowing and it's still slushy Eastmont Pittier he's had a chance to come back to that a second time because his route is only salt that's all that truck does is salt so he's not going back to the shop to switch out and get sand you're also plowing I'm plowed and I salt the county road and I also have dirt roads that I haven't put sand on so my truck is switching between salt and sand all the time yeah so I generally get the county road done first first off and then I go do this do the sand dirt roads with the sand and then if it still needs it I go back so sometimes it's eight nine o'clock before I get my dirt roads done to put the second dose of salt on the county road meanwhile you folks have already gone through because you're going to work you're going here there you're seeing it at its worst condition right if you come back through at ten o'clock you're gonna see it's gonna be better right and those are such crucial times because that's when the bosses come through and that's when most people are going to work right is there a way to switch the so that you do and I'm just asking because I don't know well we could switch routes around I mean so they lighten the ridges one of my roots also lightning ridge road has to be done bus six seven o'clock right because there's people going to the school there's there's bus rolling that's a main artery so I try to get the county road done then my very next load is there's a load of sand that goes to to lightning rich are you having to go back to the garage when you switch between salt sand you're switching everything it's not like push a button you know it's probably 20 minutes to switch because I got to clean out all the salt so I don't want to waste it and mix it with the sand so I dump all the salt back in the salt I didn't use then I have to say yeah so that's you know it's not a lot of time but that's 20 minutes that and then it's travel time also don't forget that's from it's from lightning ridge back to our shop which is four miles yeah that sounds like an impossible job yeah and we have very it's not impossible but it just takes a little bit more time that's impossible right now with all that to get to the county road at the crucial time well and and we have very little payments so there's not a lot of places that you're using the salt it's not like you do county road first then you do all the other pavement channels like you do kind of a payment salt and lightning rich payment done by this right and then and then you're switching the sand yeah well that's why I wonder if there's you know could you do the lightning ridge plowing and sanding first and then do the county road salt I just wonder if that would if you had if you've already tried that maybe some occasions that would work but the salt takes a little bit of time to activate it's not automatic it takes a little bit so that's why I get the salt on first so it starts working and it starts but like I'm saying when it's when it's snowing the snow the salt the salt just gets overtaken by the snow right and then at seven o'clock because I've already cleaned it it's really it's already plowed and cleaned at four three hours later it's covered up the snow right it can snow a lot in three hours and I mean it's it's six that that's a six-hour rodeo so every time we go out it's six hours so if I'm on the county road at four it's going to be six hours later before I can get back to that unless I leave some of my smaller roads sometimes I leave like Gray Road Tucker Road George Road I'll leave those because they're not bus routes right because that is indeed a more traveled road right and I know that in that handout it talks about the rodeo thing which I learned last year what that really meant and we do have in our winter maintenance plan that some of the smaller roads may have to wait like I know the road I live on it's not a bus route it's not a main artery and that's fine because of the stones that are in the sand they would kick up and it would be breaking windshields the stones would be the stones that are in the sand right are the other half-inch diameter half to three-quarters inch in diameter so you know if they get right right so if they get they kick out of a tire tire that's in front of you that's coming into your windshield and then the town would be looking at liability for that so we just don't put sand the state stopped using sand on the black tops for that same reason yeah they just don't use it and the fighter sand you know sandbox and would be just too expensive there would be very expensive also would be very hard to keep it a separate pile I mean it's hard it's very hard to keep you know multiple piles of different product it's not easy folks it really isn't sure a lot what can be done well let's let everybody have a chance to have their say so my my concern is is the overnight because not all of us work a nine-to-five shift I worked second shift so I'm coming home in the middle of the night and there have been multiple times when I cannot or barely make it up like an English road because it's so icy I have an all-wheel drive so that's my main concern if I can't make it home an emergency vehicle can't make it either and I understand that they can't keep the roads or they can't be out on the roads 24 7 right but there are people that are out there during the night right as you said not everybody works nine-to-five other people work different shifts so I understand that and your route was not county I'm mostly out of the road and like the new year so you're coming up 14 of 14 to let me I have a hundred mile commute to work and the only part dread is liking rich room because I work in Burlington graded it's the only room that's dirt but Toby did you want to say anything Chris just so you know I'm the deputy to the fire department and you know we deal with the roads actually we have chains on our trucks and if we need an emergency access to a fire we can reach the town garage so emergency vehicles really are not so much an issue on the overnight as much as you're coming actually our concern is more somebody's driveway we have more trouble with people's driving just so you understand that so it's not as much of an issue for us to not have overnight clown and that happens we deal with this month here they don't have a policy of plowing at night either so the roads in East they start they start to have a policy of not right that's correct their policy is exactly the same as ours because I've been doing some research because of this so just so you understand that part of it is that we're not different than some other towns same as Worcester Worcester I could Worcester twainfield Marshfield Cabot Woodbury I looked on their websites and could find no winter operations maintenance plan maybe they don't have one not every town has one excuse me most of them that do because I look to yeah have a similar one to ours right that's correct yeah to me it it's kind of mind-boggling that we don't go out and I mean people still need to get to where they're going but you understand that we have you know 83 miles of roads to plow we have four people right now we're down a truck we have been using some part-time people to help out with some of the plowing because for instance today's one of the regular road crew guys were out was out sick you know that happens and they do need to get a certain amount of sleep they can't plow 24-7 so it's it's a dilemma and you know we need to figure we need to figure it out we're open to suggestions ideas conversation to see what we can do Judy did you want to weigh in I'm curious about the idea of having other sites for the sand or yeah or the salt water to shorten the time that they have that of the loading and the unloading and if there's town late and I know you'd also would need a bucket loader to load it so that you know it ends up getting costly but right if it ends up changing so that it's five minutes or ten minutes to reload rather than all the way over to the opposite end of town well you remember in spring absolutely cut down on time in the spring time for the last couple of years you had a really good idea which was to put sand or gravel at the town hall in the parking lot there because we weren't using the town hall because it was being renovated that's no longer an option is there any other place on this side when there's not enough room here at the town office parking lot to put a big pile of sand or gravel well the big problem is you need another piece of equipment to help us right you can't just have it in one place because if somebody we have a route that does the whole side of East Calis in that side of town and it's very convenient for him there so if we move the loader to this side of town for the other route he couldn't reload his truck so we'd have to get another we'd have to buy another eighty thousand dollar motor in order to make that the other collaborate with the champs being that Worcesters just down Colorado or just down the Worcester road like because they would have that and they would have sand close to County but I don't know that's a lot of applications are with a collaboration well yeah if we put our piles of stuff there and then maybe paid a lease fee or something like that I'm sure Worcester is cramped for space also I mean these piles of sand take a lot of space and I mean that's something to look into I'd be happy to look into that yeah I know the real commissioner and Worcester really well I'm sure that he would be open to it if it's feasible for him but then you got to keep track of yardage and a lot of a lot of keep track to do right and then timing some days he's gonna be outstanding where we're not and we want all the sand and he's not there and you know I know Plainfield and Marshfield does that they do Marshfield has sand at Plainfield's pit because or their yard because their roads are closer Maple Hill is closer to Plainfield garage so they do that I don't know how it works out I could look into they might have a simple way of calculating having an administrative you know just a sheet where they write it down right well I know you're busy dodging storms but I think that's an option that's worth having you check out right I bet there'd be people who would donate land to do that except that you have to have the other you also Alfred when you were talking about the your schedule it seems like you have you have a very predictable schedule and maybe there's possibilities of changing that but even the way it is it's predictable if you're out at four putting salt down and then there's a there's a sweet spot in terms of timing right so this is to me where maybe communication and letting people know this is the schedule this is how it works a really good time to be on County Road after is you know an hour and a half after Alfred's been through with the salt truck which is in this this one again that's gonna work for some and not for others it right but it for some people it might be like oh half an hour earlier makes a big difference or waiting a couple of hours makes a big difference and they can you know maybe they have that flexibility so a lot of the bus routes were calculated to get the bus routes open and safely sanded so a lot of the planning of how the bus routes go and they actually change every year because bus routes change and we sit down and Alfie recalculates what you need to go this part of that loop instead of that right so there's a lot of flexibility there but that's based on school buses but it doesn't change it changes every year but not every week no changes every year so the other thing is and one of the first things I did when I started working as an operations manager was right around with the guys in the snowplow get up at three they go out on the road so I went out with Sid one one night we started and we came by the town office here and by the time we finished the loop the side of the road that we had plowed on our way out was full of a foot of snow so part of the problem is that when snowstorms happen it's five hours before we can come around again the second time even though we've moved a foot of snow there may be another foot of snow in the road and there's nothing we can do about that right that's that's the reality that people have to understand in a storm and timing of a storm okay so if a storm starts at one in the morning everybody thinks we're heroes because by the time the snowstorm has put its snow down and we've cleared the roads everything's good and open but if it starts at nine o'clock and there's a foot of snow before we get out on the road we don't look like heroes and that's part of the issue that we don't have any control over mother nature and the timing that's one of the things that we can't do anything about how much we know unless we come out in the middle of the night so I guess we want to try to wrap this up for tonight here pretty soon because we have other things on our agenda so a couple of things we can go back to the question and answer thing and try to put in some more answers to some of the questions that have been raised over the course of this discussion and in emails and on front porch forum things when you have a chance of between storms or maybe Toby can do it for you because you're pretty busy is to check with Worcester with the idea of shared some shared space when we and then we can try to go to some other areas in town and do a similar type meeting maybe an east callus maybe an adamant whatever to get more input give people a chance to better understand I think a lot of this is just education so people understand really what's what's going on and trying to come up with some other alternatives like the Worcester idea it's down to the expense of loaders another loader and that's not cheap it'd be pretty hard to justify it and then there's the space just to keep does anybody does anybody know how you I'm sorry I was thinking not only this part but as soon as you mentioned Adam and I thought well geez they're gonna want a loader and a pile of sand sand down there too yeah it's almost like it's like yeah if you do it in this one area yeah then people are gonna know maybe expect it in another area so there's a lot of there's a lot of variables as you I think you're real realizing listening to all of this yeah so I appreciate everybody's time to do something else you want to say I have a question does anybody know how the state is able to load onto their website where their cloud trucks are does that work the state has that GPSes in their trucks so is there any is there anywhere a conversation about towns being able to kind of add to that oh so you could look on the website or something yeah where the truck is you can literally watch this the trucks on the state roads so you can time yes you can you can time your commute to be behind the truck right and then they'll be trying to pass us because we're going through slow people maybe not everybody else I think most people see it every day I see it every day people on the county road to go to a to a snow-covered road because they're in a hurry and I'm going much slower yeah people are going to do that yeah yeah I like so for example tomorrow storm is I guess maybe it's predicted to not start snowing till maybe four in the afternoon or something so is the road crew gonna start work at 7 a.m. and then the snow starts at 4 and then or you know like do you have a plan that okay we know you know so what's the game plan for tomorrow so if I go out it's starting snow at 4 o'clock 4 in the afternoon it's a it's a durational storm we're talking six inches in 12 hours or we're supposed to get 6 to 12 right right but it's all done Wednesday morning it's all over with so it's just an overnight type storm so I can go out and then start at 4 o'clock with a half an inch of snow if you want me to but now I'm working all night because it's six hours to do a route so I'm starting at 4 at 10 o'clock when I get done my first time around it's still snowing the sand and stuff that we put down at 4 o'clock it's all covered up it's covered up in 15 minutes well I don't know that's what I was saying about conserving the sand I'm sorry yeah yeah no I I am always in favor of and I've said this before of staggering the hours and my son used to part-time for the town of East Montpelier and he used to start work at 8 o'clock at night till 2 in the morning he was there like per diem fill in and so I I think that that's a really important thing that we all should consider is staggering roots staggering the drivers not everybody works you know four in the morning till whatever time you finish and then you know and I know you don't do that because I've seen the time sheets that they're longer but I'm thinking so I was at work all day so last I knew the storm isn't supposed to start till in the afternoon tomorrow but I was thinking so is everybody coming in at 7 tomorrow when maybe their hours would be better allocated if they were 3 to 11 tomorrow instead of 7 to 3 you know you can't ask guys to work that night shift for regular regular pack that's not fair well you're saying have us not come in at 7 o'clock tomorrow morning so we got the whole day off to ourselves but we come in at 7 o'clock they should be sleeping for a four o'clock at night four o'clock in the afternoon I don't know I'm just thinking outside of the box I think that we need to be really different and the you know these are good solutions my son now works for AOT he plows the interstate and in the last pay period he worked 188 hours in two weeks so he starts at midnight until 3 30 in the afternoon or whatever and the state can afford that but I'm not saying that we need to do that but I'm just saying you know he usually works 7 to 3 30 but when they know it's snowing he starts at midnight so you know you just have to think about all these different things you just have to stagger shifts you have to step back and think out yeah like when he like if if Alfred is done then you get the per diem on the truck for another four hours you know and yeah that's what I mean the part-time people like the full you know you swap them you just hit the trucks I think need to be moving more and I do want to say that I did come up Lightning Ridge Wednesday night at 8 o'clock and it was the scariest trip of my life and I've really really scared this past Wednesday when it was just you know and there's such a big crown on it so you really have to go right up the middle and I have an all-wheel-drive Subaru with four-studded Haka Palleta snow tires but it was the scariest trip of my life and I'll just say that I live on Lightning Ridge right at the top yeah so you know I think we really need to stagger shifts and just be more creative and well we'll put that down in our list of ideas thank you Rose and just so folks know in looking at time that the crew has now outside of regular hours from November 1st to February 3rd the regular four-road crew folks you have this is just over time this isn't regular hours 721 hours of overtime and the three part-time folks in addition to the overtime that the road crew has put in have worked 237 and a half hours and that's cost the town 27,219 dollars and that's so that's just so you get the picture of how much time people are spending you know in overtime yeah so hiring more people more more part-timers part-timers remember when they get hired they have to have a CDL a class 2 is it just hard to find people that has a class A or B yeah it's very hard to find any move and availability I need you tomorrow I need you tomorrow tomorrow night oh sorry I'm gonna take care of the kid you know it's not like you have you'd have to find people that you could put on a retainer that they would hold themselves available for your call in order to make it really work and one of our part-time people it is no longer available so now we're down to two that's that's one of the issues that finding per diem and you just don't want to put just anybody in these trucks I mean it's not intense work and there's a lot going on there the trucks are expensive there's a lot of levers there's right you got cars coming at you you got hanging off the side of the truck five feet there's really a lot there so you can't just pick somebody off the street right right I know in the first first part of last year I went without anybody I had three people and I just couldn't find another another full-time employee it was just that hard to find to find anybody this year luckily I ended up with I have right now I have two spare guys yeah we have the jet but again it's hard to one of my guys right now I call them this morning because somebody was out sick I called no I have to my wife was sick last night I have to stay and watch the kids today so to have somebody part-time it's it's a commitment and not everybody wants to just devote all that time to not knowing for Alfie to call right right time because they don't know what the paycheck is gonna be and I can't I can't I can never tell it's all about mother nature when it happens when I go to work somebody calls in sick I don't know that until I get there you know what I mean the sky was trying to get me to is still trying to get me to tell him what day I need him but I can't because I don't read the future yeah so it's like I said I think everybody appreciates that this is not the more you the more you get into it and the more you understand about what's going on you realize how much how complicated it is it seems like it should be like oh well let's just do this and it's not that easy and we want good qualified people you know we had one of the one of the trucks international the engine blue wasn't covered so we had to get do a lease purchase for a Western Star when you order a truck which they ordered it in November it's a whole long process just to get the truck then when you get the truck you have to send it to this other place names I can't remember but you have to then they have to put on the body the plows all of the extra equipment that the truck needs so right now we're using what we call the spare truck which is you know why we've just been lucky that hasn't broken down and we would be down to only three trucks with four people to drive them so and I think you said that truck was supposed to be ready our truck will be here tomorrow perfect timing just curious you couldn't it wasn't worth just replacing the engine oh no we had that that's a whole mother hour discussion all right look at the minutes yeah we did this right for several months so while we're on this I will just say to people if you got questions about the road call me I'd be happy to talk to you and explain to you my side of the story why we didn't pile the road that day or why we were late or whatever because there's a lot of things there's a truck breaking down there's I'm down a man I'm waiting for the rain that's coming after the three inches of snow there's a lot of different things that I can help you understand why roads are in better shape you know so I'm just saying feel free to call me because I'm not that hard to talk to no I'm not always near the phone but if you leave me a message I'll return right so just I'm just saying pass that on to others I will and I know Carolyn Morton spent a lot of time talking to you I know she really appreciated talking to you yeah but I think we do need to you know as we talked about some other options maybe thinking outside the box thinking about our budget I mean to me it's like being in the cars most dangerous thing we all do every day and we need to be really safe and you know particularly around commute times but also all time you're driving in the middle of the night there are other people that are you know well and the other thing to remember it's somebody may commute at seven and somebody else may commute at nine and there's a two-hour difference in that same road at seven may be perfect and at nine may be terrible and you're going to have two different impressions of what the road crew has been up to because of the timing and that's a really important thing for people to understand that every time we plow the next time we come by it's not going to be any sooner than five to six hours later on whatever road we plow we go by your house at seven and the storm still going you're not going to see us till mid-afternoon or whatever because that's the next time the guys can finish their route take a little break and then go out again depending on the weather so it's a real you know it's it's unfortunate but there's no way we can constantly keep your road open in the middle of the storm and the timing is going to be mother nature and when we start and what our path of our route is and I've talked to enough other towns to know that everybody's kind of facing the same problem this year this especially this year you know the way the weather has been it's just a nightmare but I've never known Alfred to not he's always cared about making sure the roads are safe I've never I've never doubted that either no not at all there's no question in my mind that that's his main concern and his main focus and I would never doubt that with climate change is that going to continue our years going to continue to get worse well I think that's a good question I think that's something we really have to think about when the polar bear start climbing up your house yes no I think I think it's a fair statement to say it seems like ice is more of an issue now yeah and we may have to think about next year getting in even more sand you know in realizing that the last couple of years the weather has been more intense and maybe we need to increase the other the other information that's really important is so if Alfie drives by and puts a load of sand on an icy road and it's still raining within an hour the rain is going to wash that sand right off there's nothing we can do about that there's no other product that we can put down that will keep that road safe if it continues raining and don't forget some of times the reason they leave some snow down is because the snow absorbs some of the rain and there's better traction and slush than there is on a slick icy road so those are all that so when you say oh my god why didn't they plow the snow off it's all slushy it's terrible there's a reason behind that for the most part is that we're trying to keep the road as safe as possible in a very bad storm event yeah and we don't have any control right that's how they're natured right but it's also just manpower and money right that's just what I'm hearing yeah and so that's mostly where my mind goes to rather than why aren't these guys doing anything I just think all the time we don't have enough manpower so and we don't have enough and we don't have enough money yeah yeah trucks we don't right and we don't have enough materials right I mean it's a it's a very expensive I know I face worth the expense when we're talking about safety I don't I don't disagree with you but others would so we have to have a discussion as a town about that and I think sooner than later well somebody could bring it up under other business that town meeting just to get just to get a sense of where people you know what people feel I'll just say that I've been on the road for 22 years and it's always been four guys for 22 years we've been only four man crew yeah granted the equipment has gotten much better since the day that I started you think much better I'm not gonna say it isn't yeah it really has but if I don't have the figures in front of me as far as how many more people are in town now than what used to be 20 years ago but everybody knows in this room that there's a lot more traffic on these roads now and they were 20 years ago oh for sure there is because I was I've been here longer so with more traffic there comes more demand right if the road crew and the manpower is still the same and you've got more demand I agree yeah more we need more help more so I really we really need to really need to we really need to put this to rest for tonight I think there's some things that we can check into and come up with a plan to either meet here again at another select board meeting I can't promise you will be next select board meeting because that's the one right before town meeting and we have to get prepared but it's not something that we're gonna just forget about just so you know and we'll let you know when there's gonna be another meeting thank you very much thank you for having a really respectful conversation thank you and don't forget to take it all right what would you like me to call you all right so I would like to do I know we're behind I figured we would be well Alfred and Toby are still here municipal roads general permit we need to sign off on that and get it into the state by April 1st right and we need to get a check standard to do a check for 1750 the check so everything is set to go this is not something that we have which roll over this is the new state law so would somebody like to authorize me to sign municipal roads general permit application second is there any further discussion with a check yep the text the most important part so just so you know the MRGP really doesn't have any requirements until like 2020 where you actually have to work we're actually doing a lot of the work ahead of time we've already done a road that's already in place so we've done a lot of the pieces of what we'll be required to do way ahead of the curve the other thing you should be aware of is the state is thinking about updating their standard for bridge and road standards yes what they're trying to do is meld the MRGP erosion issues into the road standard that they have every time to meet in order to get funding that makes sense that they would right so they're so they have a draft document Alfred and I went through a snowstorm and we're the only two people there everybody else called in because they were chicken shits but we sat down with them and essentially most of what they have in their new quote-unquote state road and bridge standard is what we already have in our standards and I've asked the V Trans people to tell me directly that our standard army meets their new proposal so I'm waiting to hear on that so I mean our separate roads our town's I saw a little blurb in their document I read the stuff that you sent around and it said that if your standards are more significant or what I don't remember what the right word was but if your standards are more stringent than theirs then they comply right so we just so I just need them to officially say that our standards meet what their new proposal and it's still a draft it's not official yet so it's you know until they roll it out and say this is the new standard we're still good okay so I'm glad you guys were the heroes and went well we wanted to make sure they were doing the right thing did you have to go to St. Jay no no I wanted I was actually thinking about knowing but then when the weather hit I was chicken scared that's right all right so we have a motion all those in favor please say any opposed hearing none thank you be safe mr. in this next storm yeah I heard six to 15 what did you hear your prediction is six yeah yeah right now who's getting Paul your your you will see that shiny truck maybe I'll have to catch a ride I am because it's only it's like eight or nine o'clock oh yeah yeah I'll give him coffee and blueberry that's a very nice little truck you should skip that and just tell me what to go for riding yeah no spilling coffee in that new truck all right thank you good night thank you guys we need to we can move the Nimreck thing till after Tom is done yeah I think anything else to wait is correct he can't make it tonight oh okay okay I didn't hear back from either of you whether you got the agenda and I thought when I got here and I thought oh I never really heard back from either of you I hope you got it yes okay sorry so with new at the library oh good well first I have to tell you I really appreciated your discussion winter roads I was on the whisper select word for five years and of course this was a very common topic for us and Martin road is over near route 12 and it has a steep section and one year we had hired a new road commissioner and in the very same day in the afternoon I ran into someone who lives on Martin Road and he said I've lived in this road for 20 years it's the first time it's ever been sanded properly this new road commissioner is great like three hours later I'm at home to get a call from his neighbor two houses away about the new road cushions wasted all our money too much sand in a row can't okay so what's your doesn't have a winter operations plan then well I couldn't check it net what they have now because it's been so yeah I mean roads are a huge issue and they're a huge part of any town's budget oh yeah you know and yeah it would be great I'm sure to have another person more equipment but that's all I'm a huge expense so anyways it happens every year thanks for coming glad to be here and I'll tell you a few things about what's going on at library and then cars answer any questions that you have we're still one of the very busiest libraries in the state of Vermont we serve 17,000 people from the six communities in this area including callous and only Burlington has a busy library nice to serve 42,000 people so we serve 17,000 yeah and our six communities so it's great we're on a perpetually tight budget we we watch our money very carefully we get you're getting 52% of our income from taxpayers in six communities and we have a endowment we do not touch the endowment we live with whatever we can make on the endowment so that works out very well and it lasts that way and we do a lot of fundraising and send out appeals and we get a lot of support that way that's great we get to do a lot of extra things because of some people who make extra donations we just a few months ago we placed our 14 public computers and we did that with a donation someone had made a donation to the library specifically for new computers over the last two years we've done a lot of necessary landscaping out front and we were able to do that completely with donations so donations beyond the regular ones that we get we're in the something you'll be hearing about later this year we're in the process of raising money for a upgraded elevator we're not asking any of the communities for any money for is that gonna be a handicap accessible it is our elevator is 45 years old right and we asked one of the things I was working on before I came over here right I don't know if we got one for the town hall oh yes good so we have a grant application that's going in on friday and so we've been working on that for a while and we have a second grant that we're applying for related to that too so we're optimistic good so um because as you know elevators cost a lot of money so the we don't actually have to change the elevator cab we have to change all the mechanism the controls it and all the control system and all of those parts so it's mostly stuff that people don't see but anyway we're looking forward to that but we're working on that through grants and through private donations so we're not asking taxpayers for any support on that project and that's part of a larger scope project with a number of larger mainly capital types of improvements on the property and again we're doing that through grants and and private donations and and some fundraising will be coming up later but not taxpayers so you know last year Calis gave us an increase all the towns that last year we went from 16 dollars per capita to 17 dollars per capita so it was an increase of about 1,300 dollars to Calis and it was the first time in six years that we had actually asked for an increase so this year we're not asking for any increase so it's still 27,132 dollars it we're asking for again i have that committed to memory too that amount yeah okay that's good wasn't great because when you're working on a budget you got all these numbers in your head and then three months later it's like what was that one yeah it's i find it easy to remember all the numbers while we're working on it right yeah so um but we have you know a lot going on at library again it's perpetually busy we do lots and lots of programming yeah i see that children's library and the adult library um in april we have poem city coming up which is uh we have you know a couple dozen programs throughout the month and let's see i'm not sure it's not confirmed yet but we have at least one program in each of the towns in addition most of the programs are in the centrally located and not clear but we have programs in each of the towns also so a couple possibilities for Calis so we'll see what we have so that's that's all going well good that's great are you going to have a handout like you usually do for Cali? you want some numbers? it's usually blue oh there it is well i had a choice of blue paper today janice or green i'm partial to blue it's a good thing i give blue and did we hear about your retirement from the oh i'm retiring on june 30th from and you're not gonna be at the library anymore no not so this would be five years that i've been there well yeah when you took over though you weren't going to take over or yeah i took it as an interim position while they were doing the search right and i said i was not a candidate and here you are after yeah well they did the search well the end of the hard thing to do right now they're starting the search and they're um really focusing and hoping to get more applicants from Vermont because one of the things that happened last time is they had over 30 applicants and quite a few of them were out of state and what happened was um virtually all the out of state applicants as soon as they found out what the pay scale was they changed their minds and they weren't interested anymore so they're really hoping to get people who who have an idea of what you know Vermont salaries are like because it's you know it's different yeah that's that's for sure it is so we're talking with staff about people who might apply for the job and you know we're going through oh get some of this and this and this and all these things and i said and i hope we do but you know but that person can make twice as much in canada keter massachusetts so we have that problem statewide we do yeah yeah but but we get people who want to be here because i was going to say but the the reality that what people find out though is the just the lifestyle and all that is just so much better you know people move here for that reason so you got people kind of crossing so there one side is numbers and the other side has narrative and this is the report that i sent for your annual report right okay so but there are a bunch of numbers and information there and the front side the top is general things about the library overall and the bottom section is information specific accounts i have plenty more than if anybody needs them i do usually leave some of the i can leave all the we've all be sweet sure yeah i'll leave and i'll give craig more too so i'll leave them to the office after use as a handout okay thank you thank you we have a you know last year we lent over 16 000 items electronically and the ebooks are really popular with some people not as popular as you might think though because i mean people some people like take the modification stuff because then they can just take it one small item on the internet to carry three books if they you know if they got three books in a week so but regular old books are by far the most popular thing we have so i'm glad to hear that actually yeah i hate you know books would go away yeah so the ebooks are another possibility one of the things that we did a few years ago next to one of the things two things that i did for callus when i started but two things that were helpful to callus and to wister we used to have a four-day borrowing period for like dvds we still carry dvds and cds we have people in all six of our communities including the city month later who have terrible internet and uh so they can't they can't write movies over the internet on netflix or something right they can't stream them so um so those people still appreciate that we carry dvds and those are still popular items but one of the other things we did is it used to be a four-day lending period for dvds that's pretty short it's short it's short especially if you live in callus or wister and the first year i was at the library got a number of complaints from people that you know i come in town once a week so it doesn't work for me so we increased it to seven days so it's a full week for those items yeah or you have a snow storm right and we provided we we get people exceptions for snowstorm flooding and stuff like that and uh really like i i get my mail at anime and co-op and i love that there's that little book you do too yeah it's a little book exchange yeah yeah it's really great it's on the honor system and it's so yeah right it's i can i cannot read a book in two or three weeks you know my one or two pages a night before i fall asleep yeah right so i appreciate that thank you and it's working right even though it's honor and yeah aren't you doing it at maple corner or is that a separate maybe does the maple corner store has books right it does but that's they're separate they're free books there oh yeah but the adamant it's a it's a it's an honor system it works really well we occasionally lose a book but not too often yeah well it's good though honor system still works yeah it does so we replace the books every three weeks or yeah you know a bunch we take requests nice great well i mean it's so valuable it's so valuable you've really done a lot with public relations and communication since you came on so i just want to let you know how much we appreciate that thank you how valuable that is and we're going to miss you thank you it's a great place to work and one of the things people just love the library so they're you know she's not great constantly get all these positive things that people have to say about it yeah i don't think libraries are going away anytime soon at least not in vermont we still have more libraries per capita than any other stage do we really that's good of course the majority of them are really tiny libraries they're like the size of this room not even including that part a lot of them are that that size right we have a couple of libraries in the state that don't have plumbing or electricity but you know what they that's not typical but that's it right at an extreme now might you be a member of the board after this i won't be no i think that would be very weird for some of the staff especially for the administration yeah well unless you waited some time yeah yeah so well thank you so much thanks town thank you thank you thank you um all right so perhaps we could circle back um to the agenda we did that we did that nimrick put forth a proposal and i think katie put it in the folder um did i say tonight thanks for moving me up on the agenda i appreciate that oh yeah no problem thanks um number for the proposal to um be the town's auditor the person that i had contacted who said yes they were interested and then changed their mind and said oh gee sorry i'm not um and i've run out of ideas of who we might get nimricks proposal um is right there and they can do it within the amount that we budgeted which is six thousand dollars um the one question i had when i first looked at this and i don't have an answer yet so we don't have to decide tonight if you don't want to is it says complete a report of findings and work to the treasure and select board my question was how often is that quarterly annually what how often so i'd like to have an answer to that question before i would want to um consider their proposal and they would be doing their work remotely so chances are they would be very limited um exposure as far as additional costs because of mileage good travel time yeah so my only thought about this was you know this seems like a very good idea and very professional but is it in any way going to help save us some money on the professional audit like with Sullivan empowers i mean just seems like we have to spend so much money just to look at the books you know well and i think that's just the way things are now it's the changing of times and stuff and that's why you know now we're caught up with the audit from Sullivan Empowers we've got a contract we've got the nineteen thousand dollars budgeted and we have to have an auditor you know by state statute by our charter we have to have somebody and i was hoping to find somebody that would do it for less than the six but it's just nobody wants to do it yeah and i want to say this money on the Sullivan empowers because like you say it's under contract but um i think this solution will save a lot of stress um sundry yep and we realize some savings and benefits from that well and i and because we you know she really wants somebody to do the the auditor she doesn't like the fact that we don't have yeah somebody doing that right now because it makes her uncomfortable yeah and that's good yeah you know i think because it's numeric we potentially get some more powerful reporting here and then with you i would want to know what's the frequency right i would think it would be monthly if they're doing well that's the question and i don't think sander's gotten an answer yet so and i didn't mean to cut you off for sure i'm sorry that's okay um i think i just every time we talk about this i think that the word the the title of auditor on on this work is a little bit of a misnomer because it really is so functionally different than what the outside firm does get confusing but that is what the title sure it is what it's what the title is but it lends itself to that thinking oh well why don't we have two yeah yeah yeah and they're just really they're just different this is like a second set of eyes right this is a little bit of work right this is at like the town level and solvent and powers is like you know it's a professional five professional auditor is it actually an auditor firm right yeah my firm we use the term internal versus external auditors yeah this is like the internal audit your level and they're the it's all that empowers is the external yeah it does get confusing yeah i think we were working on something i changed it to staff auditor or something okay that's not really that's not a title right but yeah it's it's just going to keep them and so confusing so there's no conflict because you remember how like we used to have father gill and then we had somebody right it's going to be the auditor from their firm so there's not any conflict because we have nimbrick and and then this person also works for a number there's not going to be any no because that's because father gill was doing the audit the external right right so that was why right so even yeah she works for nimbrick we should be okay yeah makes sense wonderful do you want to wait till we get an answer to that question before we i would just tell them that we agree um then we rather than the answer question i would tell them what the interest or whatever the monthly yeah complete a monthly report yeah just send them a letter to sign put the word monthly into our letter well i think i can just write because what else are we going to do i think i can rarer i think i can just take in an insert yeah this year and there doesn't seem to be any place to sign it but if you want i could sign well you think they have a contract or something right but apparently it's or it's a proposal this is a proposal so maybe yeah that would make sense that it's a proposal so they would come back and we would say you know is this monthly and they may say no we mean you know we're not quarterly and then if that's the case then how do you feel about that you want to rehash it and i don't know what monthly is going to really do to me seems like quarterly would be reasonable well unless they just say february 2019 complete no adverse findings and a signature that's the report yeah i don't know what they do yeah maybe as we're doing auditing what did you you didn't do like a monthly report or no we approached it like i mean the the vlct guidelines for the audit are like this thick it's not that it's well jim's right jim a lot um do you see can you come here good thing you're here early we did have a job description but i think that the duties of the auditor are by statute right well we and this is what they're proposing they would do on the report and how often we get it it just it has to be reasonable it has to be reasonable for the work and our oversight of it and it has to be within the price otherwise that is that's a just a kind of a silly proposal if you know what i'm saying like if they're saying it will do all that we're willing to report to you once a year that doesn't really that's like what and we're going to pay you an extra six thousand six you know we're going to pay you more to get the reporting that is reasonable for well i think it has to all fit together for the price i think monthly would be great i could understand it if they said quarterly because you know how much are they really going to do we could ask them for we also should ask them for a template of what the report would look like to rosa's point of what are we going to get as a report yeah let's get a show some templates show us what we're getting well i think we need some more answers then before we approve this yeah jim would you like me to you i think we didn't have a job description yeah i'd have to go back and see if i can find it but annually perform an audit of town accounts utilizing the process is described in the most current edition of the vermont league of cities and towns handbook for local elected auditors presents the findings of the annual audit to the voters in the annual town report work with the town treasurer and select board to develop and implement a system of internal controls appropriate to the financial activities of the town including segregation of duties monthly bank statement reconciliation and regular deposit of funds respond to inquiries and requests for information to public town officials and employees and perform other duties as assigned okay so we got some more work to do with this yeah right and against that list and against the weeds materials and we do want the internal controls which is best i don't see that as part of this is this is second set of eyes this is kind of you know touching it looking at it quickly things kind of sniff test yeah it's not that it's not the lct um and then what's the tolerance in between is probably a question that will emerge so remember what the point of the point of the exercise was that every town is required to elect the board of auditors and they are supposed to perform an annual audit of the town right uh the town books and this is not a professional cpa outside audit but this is something else that towns are supposed to be doing every year and the difficulty was that i think we went a period of time significant period of time where there was no one elected right and so therefore all of those responsibilities that are described in the vlct and what were not being performed that's why we went to the charter so that's the the goal of the charter was to be able to appoint rather than a board of three auditors a single person who would do those functions because we still have these statutory functions that were supposed to be performed so it was the notion of we would rather than elect three we would appoint one and they would they would effectively do that one person would do over the course of the year the things that the three would have otherwise done um partly it was touching you know just having this sort of regular contact to look right because the style double double check because the solvent empowers thing is a once a year or even i think our the charter provides is not less than every three years so this would was intended to be a in between of the regular outside audit right so um yeah i don't think that list meets it doesn't say anything about internal controls no and the the actually the internal controls was was part of um uh a response to the um audit report it said that there were some deficiencies in internal controls so um you know the system of internal controls was to sort of segregate some help segregate the duties and make sure that those things and i think we i think given the setup that we have now if we had this auditor we would be meeting the internal controls with what i'm doing and with what barber might be doing if the budget passes for f y 20 i think we're we will be meeting those internal controls one of it you would perhaps what you might think about i mean the next step down the road is just eliminating the local eliminating the auditor can we replace yeah we can amend the charter just eliminate that function and then nobody does it and then you go to an annual outside audit which is what we're doing right now you're doing it annually anyway right i was gonna ask you jim under the charter for doing it annually anyway what do you need to do this how do we how do we even need to do this well you do because you have a charter that says right so until we until we amend the charter we should be still having somebody so this might be a short term this might be a short term okay until we amend the charter to eliminate the office of town auditor which we could do next town meeting and it's subsequently at the same time we amend the town charter to go from not less than every three years every year okay well that i mean i actually feel better that we're having it annually even though we don't have to we don't have an auditor which we need to but i think this this might be yes this might be a bridge yeah to the next okay thank you you're welcome it's nice that you showed up when you did i try um all right so i'm going to say that we're not ready to do anything with it yet we got some more work today right um scott bassett would like to serve on that subcommittee of the town hall to look at the venue how the how the building's going to be used what venues that kind of thing um so would we like to appoint scott to to that committee i make a motion to appoint scott bassett to the subcommittee of the town hall that's working on formulating guidelines for usage thank you is that the name of it yeah sounds good i'll second that do we discussion uh do we have a sense of um we had a good discussion a meeting or two ago okay so just last meeting with the two nancy and ardie who were here um do you have a sense of scott right here i'd ask him so tell us you know like what's your what's your interest in the does he have an angle the the subcommittee is basically feels like right now because nothing is formalized but it feels like it's going to have two purposes there'll be one uh element of it that actually okay we've got this agreement as to what is the use of the town hall somebody's got to manage that that'll be one of the functions that the subcommittee performs the other functions the subcommittee performs would be fundraising and scott is interested in being part of the fundraising team okay and i think he's interested in he would do both he would do both but yeah i mean we really haven't met as a subcommittee only just once right okay but that's actually good to hear because it was while we were discussing this fundraising element of it that scott said i would definitely want to be a part of this right awesome and david cheats would also yeah when he's on there and we also i remember the motion and i didn't see it in the minutes but chris colt was one of the folks that we had put in the motion but i don't did this mean i didn't see it in the minutes but that's a whole different thing all right so there's a motion and a second all those in favor please say aye and he opposed hearing none um greeter grant we did the greeter grant at kurvis pond last year and colleen was going to try to make it but the vet's office stays open late tonight so she's probably still there um and they would like to do it again and i think there was a little bit of some um bookkeeping hassles but i think those have been those got resolved and i think going forward people are going to be more you know understand what their role is better in relation to this and this is an in-kind grant so any work that's done by like colleen or um sand or whatever goes towards the town's share of the grant and it's the grant is for $6,379 the um match the town has to match is $1,610 and that is the in-kind so it doesn't really cost the town anything other than we budgeted last year $250 for the grant um where did it go sanders sent me a paper um and she's ended up spending $200 and the town spent $252 on just some out-of-pocket kind of expenses $250 what was this for kind of do with payroll and miscellaneous supplies um a chair things like this yeah yeah it weighed employer taxes kind of stuff the town would have to spend $250 toward it there's $51.09 and the grant that's left from the town's share of the $250 so and I think it was well received and they would like to do it again at Curtis pond because Curtis pond as was because I asked about rotating it to one of the other ponds and the feedback that I got was that Curtis pond is actually the pond that's in the worst shape of any of the ponds in Calis it's the shallowest um number 10 Nelson um what are the other ones anyways it is the one that is most susceptible to the invasive species so Josh who is the state guy that came here last year remember recommended that we still do it at Curtis so I just need authority to sign off on this because it's due Friday so second okay any further discussion questions right all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed hearing none motion carries all right we're okay um but do you want to do a quick update on an rfp for it support services sure we are going to move forward with rfp for it support services I have been educating myself as to what other towns here in Vermont have done I've also looked at it nationally what some other municipalities throughout the country have done for rfps now what I want to do is circle that back around to the proposals that we received from a few of the companies in the area that are offering that and trying to come up I mean some of these documents as you can imagine you know they probably had a team of people you know working on each individual section of it and you've got a document that's 48 pages long and then you've got other ones where it's just a single page I see ours being somewhere in between there maybe six pages at the most but that's if we decide to you know decorate it with well here's the history of talus and how we came to be and why we need these IT services but really what we want to boil it down to is what are we going to have then take care of for us and what other types of IT support do we imagine that we will need and I think the examples that I have gives me plenty of input to be able to put together a draft to present to the board that we can then discuss and if we need to add more meat to it we can certainly do that if we want you know tone it down a little we'll be able to do that I came up with my first draft was actually much more aggressive but I backed that off so a rough time frame for imagining how this will roll I would like to be able to put the first copy of the draft RFP in front of the select board at our next meeting I don't think we'll have enough time to decide and finalize it there because we'll be getting ready for town meetings but that could start the discussion then after town meeting we come back and look to finalize that RFP approve it so that we can then go ahead and publish it by the month mark and give it a good month to be out there in the world let people respond get the bids back in time the proposals back in time so that we can look at it at the select board meeting on April 22nd at that point if we see something we really like we can opt to award it or we may decide well you know there's a couple of good ones here let's hear it in person and then that would give us an option to have another meeting potentially on at 29th or if we're comfortable with just rolling it into a regular select board meeting we could opt to do it that way and then what I would imagine is by first week in May is when we really should be awarding this thing because there will be lead time for whoever we award before they can put us on their schedule I'm sure they're going to get busier with all the stuff that's been going on about the flaws in the work that we're discovered and also our contract with RB Tech our contract is RB Tech we'll be coming to a close right around that same time frame they're wanting to meet with us around May 1st to just go over what they've been doing and so it kind of all rolls into that time frame as well and puts us on track so that when we hit the start of the fiscal year we're moving forward in accordance with that right are we going to try to put anything I mean I don't know if it's even the right place for it but are we going to try to put anything in the proposal about the cybersecurity stuff is that part of that there are elements of that you will never get anybody to sign off and say yeah we'll take full responsibility for that right but I mean given all the recent stuff that's come out about NEMRIC and finding out about it just like point out too just I hate to interrupt the all of the things that have been discovered about NEMRIC I think we need to be a little careful about that because NEMRIC the I think that the problems of NEMRIC have always been known to exist okay I don't think that there's anything about NEMRIC that's suddenly become revealed to be not what people who knew about it understood I think it was presented in it was presented in such a way that oh there's this incredible discovery about the infirmity of NEMRIC now I think it's always been people understood that NEMRIC has its own limitations and is what it is and that people who have recently come to learn this have discovered it yeah yeah it's not NEMRIC is very old technology it's based on what is it? DOS? On what? DOS? It's Fox Pro I think and Fox Pro isn't supported by Microsoft anymore and right yeah yeah but it's also it for better for worse you know it's legacy technology that's been adopted by the state of Vermont and it is the system of the entire state I know it is and we just barely got everything to convert it right but it is what you know it is what it is and I think the expectation of NEMRIC and everyone else is that the security that would go along with this is built outside of NEMRIC not within NEMRIC so that's not an expectation that we should have so that's an expectation we should have with this RFP then because they're going to provide us with that wall right the cyber security yeah because I think that folks that have used been involved in NEMRIC right along have realized it doesn't have any wall itself it is it is it is you know Microsoft Word or Excel it is a it is a program that runs but not yeah I wish somebody would put something out there whether it's the state or whatever explaining that you know instead of people thinking as I did oh yeah the NEMRICs for the polls and right and it's like here we are we just converted and are we going to be in trouble if something gets breached you know because the town responsible and you need to like an Amazon you know other customers also bought security blanket shell suitcase firewall good one Jerry no seriously then I go look to say why right yeah because I need that too yeah that's a good point but I wish I do I wish the state would because they must be some I know it's a state approved product it seems like the state should be stepping in and saying something doing some kind of maybe they are maybe they're working on it I don't know because people are gonna see a lot of people I'm not probably the only one yeah who thinks thought that there was something more that they should be doing I think I think there is something more that you should be doing but I think that it's something that you should be doing externally of NEMRIC and not expecting that there's going to be something within NEMRIC well that's what I was thinking that some NEMRIC should be doing something yeah because I don't know any better well but we have the opportunity the timing is great because we're writing our RFP right now and click understands this all the stuff and it seems like the vendors are going to understand the issues better than we know yeah so so if we are able to articulate the expectations and in an RFP format it I think it moves the needle in terms of what they're willing to bring to the table and be clear about in terms of their security tools and the extent to which we can rely on them right and it puts us in a position to consider these proposals apples to apples because we've defined the outlet yeah yeah and it also means Jim that I would imagine you're going to be seeing this sometime between the 25th and the 11th all right thank you um Katie I did put a copy of this in both folders so you can find them in there and should they get moved from folder to folder for meetings oh um well yeah when I do this draft I'll put it in the folder for the next time exactly all right great okay I think that's it um before we before we shift I have one quick thing I want to ask about in the context of the town meeting thing doesn't have to be now but I don't know before you drop the gavel before we go into executive session yeah yeah well now will be the time okay so one of the things um that's in the detailed document that I attached to the email that everybody has um is so this is context as I went to the VLCT training for moderators that they invite select board and other people to go to I was the only one there from Calis I've been to no I'm sure others have been to I never had so I went um but one there were you know a lot of things that kind of bubble up but one of the things that was a point of kind of extended discussion last week was that other business cannot be binding and so that was like a distinction that I maybe hadn't been clear about but I guess everybody else is is yeah clear okay so things can come up for other business right but we can't make any decisions they're all just very interesting right it wasn't it wasn't a warned item on the one so okay yep yep no I'm glad you went because I've been a couple times it's helpful it's really it's yeah yeah I wish it was yeah yeah that was good all right anything else before we make a motion to go into executive session okay um I make a motion that we go into executive session