 So we'll call the select board meeting for November 16th, 2020 to order. First thing to do is to approve the agenda. Any changes or someone would like to make a motion. I would like to make a brief. Change to the agenda. It's a small item. Okay. With the most recent. Advent of the Waterbury reader. Do we want to again reconsider what our paper of record is? And if we could maybe have a brief discussion of that. Is the, is the reader. Part of the times, Argus. And is that currently our paper of record? It's the, from what I understand. It's a joint. The. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Waterbury roundabout and the times Argus. We'll throw that as an item B and managers items. Any other changes. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda with the change? I'll move to approve the agenda. As presented with the additional change. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Next consent agenda items. Minutes of November 2nd meeting. Discussion or someone like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda items. I make a motion to approve the. Any further discussion. Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Hi. Public we definitely have some members here. I don't know if anyone would like to speak during this time. Tom and mega you're going to start with Tom and make your microphone is muted. Tom we can't hear you. How about now. There we go. Can hear you now. Go ahead. Okay now's my time. Okay, start the clock. I want to talk about sharing community resources. The center chains frisbee course in hope Davey is the most used in the state. According to the Waterbury record, thanks to town officials and the wreck department, the outdoor activity resources in town have exploded in use in the year of 2019. We're all faced with the challenge of finding safe space to write out the pandemic. I'd like to discuss sharing resources. In particular, the multi use area, which contains a disc golf course nature trails for walking and hiking, courseback riding, cross country skiing and snow shoeing. As stated on town signage by the footbridge. I have a couple of particular items. One is oversight of the disc golf course. Who always sees the day-to-day operations of the disc golf course. Is there a formal agreement between the town and any group or individuals? Is there an agreement with the town regarding tree cutting, brush hogging, mowing and weed whacking on park land? What is the agreement on expansion and placement? Of new structures, including but not limited to walkways, tee boxes, landscape tiered or steered areas. I'd like to know what the liability. Coverage is for people doing these activities. And the last point on that is what's the revenue to the town. From course rental tournaments and leagues. The second question is, um, what are the designated activities? The second question is, um, what are the designated hours of operation for the multi-use area? And, uh, hope Davey in general. The third question is about community access. And I'd like to know how. Will multi recreational use be promoted and protected for all town residents? And, uh, just the suggestion is that maybe a community board, a platform would help integrate the diverse parties and interests, and make water buried great. And that's, uh, that's my statement. So, um, Tom has, has put a lot on everyone's plate there, including mine right now. Um, last week, um, I can't remember which day it was Wednesday, Thursday. I received a, a call from, uh, a person who had had a bad experience on the disc golf course. Uh, she was there simply trying to walk and some of the people playing on the course. Um, uh, at least according to what she told me, basically tried to tell her that she didn't belong there and, and we're, you know, pretty intimidating in their behavior. Um, I immediately called, uh, Nick Nano, the wreck director, and Nick is on the call here. I can see his name anyway. Uh, Nick reached out to the woman who called me, spoke with her and, um, you know, clearly, uh, both Nick and I told her that, uh, there was no reason why she could not, uh, walk on the, on the course as Tom indicated, there are places. Uh, there are walking trails there. It is a multi-use area. Um, and, uh, you know, we encouraged her to, you know, make sure that she was walking, you know, not just across the course while people were playing. You can't, you can't do that on a golf course or this golf course. So Tom has thrown out a lot of questions. Uh, I don't have answers to any of those questions tonight because I heard them right now when you did. Uh, Nick is here. Uh, I'd like Nick if you can just to give the, the board and the public a little bit of an idea about. What we're doing. Certainly. If people are cutting trees and, uh, you know, uh, altering the grounds, uh, on their own, uh, that's not, that's not something that we condone. But Nick, why don't you just at least, uh, give the board a little bit of insight as to how, how much the facility is used and what we try to do to manage it with one rec staff. Yeah. Um, so there wasn't a first off when I came in a couple of years ago, there wasn't an existing MOU. Um, and it was kind of just, this is the froth course, uh, you know, this golf course. Uh, this is the group that maintains it in conjunction with some town, um, support as far as brush hogging in some areas, but, um, back up a little bit in the spring, there was some issues that were brought up about the cutting of the trees without town permission. So Steve Losch beats the town planner and I took a tour out there and made it very clear with the group and, and I think since then there shouldn't have been any, any more clearing of trees or anything like that. Um, the game plan going forward was to create some signage, uh, that I was going to do with my general maintenance budget to just let the public know that there is walking trails. There are, um, there are, uh, there's no walking trails, but in order to walk safely without interrupting folks who are using the golf course for golf, uh, for disc golf, um, you know, just, just for both parties to know that it's a shared facility. Uh, I, I did, I like to throw this, this analogy out there just because I understand maybe 20 years ago it was, uh, facility was, you know, available for, for recreational walking. Um, but it's a very established disc golf course that as Tom pointed out is one of the most popular in the state. Um, it's, it's like if, uh, uh, someone walked in the outfield during a game at Dacro. Um, you can walk on the outskirts of the, of the field, but if you walk through it, you're most likely going to upset people who are using that asset for what it's, well, for what it is now. Um, that's not to say you can't go walking on it, but it's just to point out that, that there is a correct way to do it. And hopefully the signage that we were designing this winter will help correct that. It'll also correct. Hopefully the disc golf users, uh, perception that the community isn't allowed out there to walk. Um, again, a lot of these issues, I'm just, these questions I'm just hearing tonight too. So I would need to do some research. Uh, I reached out last week and, um, uh, got, got a little bit background information on this incident that happened. I'm not, I'm not, uh, uh, supporting the, the reaction from the disc golf users. Unfortunately we don't have any names, but, um, it is a shared use facility. We do collect fees for, um, some golf tournaments that happen there. It's not significant. It's very, uh, very expensive between 50 and $75. And it's usually for, um, I think two schools rented out to do their freshman orientation and, and to do some sort of, you know, disc golf event and then probably a handful, uh, disc golf events throughout the year. Um, besides that, we don't take any fees in. Um, uh, I think there probably should be an MOU established and bill and I will work on and Steve will probably work on that. It's, uh, it's a goal of this winter. Um, but it's not something that we can just turn around and do. We have to involve all the parties. Well, just, uh, to interrupt, uh, and MOU presumes, uh, two parties. And I'm not sure, uh, back when the course was first established, there was a group of people who were from the local area and, and they played a lot and we kind of entered into an agreement with that group, but, uh, certainly not everyone that, um, uses the disc golf course is part of any group. You can just show up there and play, right? I mean, you don't. So, um, we can look into the possibility of an MOU, but as I said, an MOU presumes another group and I'm not sure there is a, you know, a group of people that can be identified as the watery discourse users or whatever. So that's something we'll look into if it's possible, we can do that. But, uh, I think the main goal is to help educate the people that are using it for golf, that it's not exclusively a disc golf course and that, uh, the mere presence of people there should not be something that causes such an upset as seemed to happen last week. Yeah. I've got a question. Yeah. Once I just want to clarify one thing. There is a, the group that I'm referring to, uh, there's a group of five folks that are pretty prominent, um, that do the general maintenance every year. Uh, they, they do, uh, they put wood chips down the town and give them wood chips to take care of it. Um, if there, I don't know if they're in a, you know, Steve and I met with them. They're, they're, they're like the, the go-to folks for the chains. One of them is on the DRB. Uh, so when I talk about MOU, I'm just referring to that, that group that Steve and I are aware of. And Bill, I can share that contact information later. That's fine. Thank you. Yeah. What was the question? Um, I had a question about, um, their affiliation, um, the, the disc golf course. Um, I've, I've had a long history with the mountain biking community and, um, the trails on Perry Hill and, um, is there any affiliation with this group, with any, like, any parent group, uh, disc golf, or are they just their own thing? They, no, they, they belong, I don't know off top of my head. They are affiliated with, uh, some, some other parent, uh, leagues. And I, I think that, uh, yeah, I'd have to do some more digging. Um, but, but they're definitely affiliated with some, just like, just like, uh, the, you know, some of the leagues that rent, Dak Rose field, they're affiliated with a larger league there. The, the, the disc golf is definitely, the prominent users of it are affiliated with this other group. I need to reach out to, to them to get a little background, background on it. But, um, yeah, to answer your question, they, they are, I just don't know exactly what the name is. Miss Allie, would you like to speak? Um, I have a, a, an addition to what Tom said, can I share? I would say, um, I do know there is, Meg, you know the name of that group, right? You. What is it? It's called a disc golf for mom. So there's your answer. Um, so, um, I love that you called me Miss Allie. Uh, yes, I would like to piggyback off of what Tom said. Um, I'm, I love the Hope Davey Park and I am a PE teacher in the district. And one of my main goals is to get children interested and capable of participating in lifelong activities, which include disc golf, hiking, cross country skiing, snowshoeing and running. Um, all our activities that you should be able to do at Hope Davey, um, on the trails or that were, that's what's posted anyway. Um, I do have several concerns with the domination of the, um, parks trail use by the users. Um, it seems as though the notion of multi-use shared space has been pretty lost. Um, and unfortunately I've had several really comfortable encounters with people using the course. And I'm not going to go into any details about any specific incidents, but, um, some recurring incidents include loose dogs that wander, um, into my yard daily, almost never coming back when their owners call them and sometimes defecating in my backyard. Um, people choosing to urinate, facing our house and on our property, as well as beer cans getting tossed into our bushes and many people using the course when it's closed for mud season. Um, and we just talked about how people have been berated for using the trails for alternate purposes, even if they're not in a direct path. Um, and even though it is supposed to be a shared space. Uh, I do want to be clear that I love that our community has this resource on public land and most of the disc golf users are respectful. Um, and many of them are friends of mine. Um, I'm just bringing these issues to light because I believe that as a community, we can do a bit of work to find a balance and a better understanding for use of the space as a community recreation area, as well as improving general respect between folks who neighbor the course, course users and people coming to the park for our alternate activities. Um, and just throwing out the idea of maybe having more of a committee for the park to help oversee the improvements and community relations and park use. Thanks. Uh, I mean, it sounds similar a little bit, uh, some of the issues we had with the skate park in that area of just, um, you know, the shared overlap of space and respect and of course the community that's tightly knit around it. Um, yeah, I mean, I think we can do only so much with signage and then, um, I looked up it, I think it's called the center chains disc golf club, but I don't know how well organized they actually are. Um, but I am interested in learning more about this and seeing if we can come up with some solutions. I mean, I'm sure there's some things we can do. Otherwise, you know, it's going to come down to it. And that's where I have a question to bill on, you know, what would the state police right now respond to when it comes to public urination, that kind of stuff. And is that our suggestion that they should just be calling the state troopers on something like that? And I know no one wants to be that person. That's a challenge. And I think all of the things that we've talked about, uh, and heard about are good suggestions, certainly upgrading the signs. Uh, I see bill mentors on the call bills on the recreation committee. I hope we don't need another committee. I think, you know, the rec committee can, can be, uh, the eyes and ears of, of the town with the public on something like this. Um, you know, education is important. I know that, uh, the state police were called the other day because, you know, the incident that was, uh, that I described earlier. And, you know, unfortunately, like everything else, the state police can't be everywhere at once. And, uh, the person who called the state police, uh, I think quite understandably didn't have the names of the people. There was a, a pretty intimidating altercation and she called the police to report that. And the police told her that, well, without knowing who it was or having a car or anything else, we really, nothing we can do about it. Um, and, you know, I'm not, I'm not advocating necessarily for, for more recreation staff, but the physical presence of people at the facilities that have some authority is part of the solution to a problem like this. You can have all the things that you want. And as I just said, you know, if 95% of the people are really good people, but you have, you know, 200 people using it, there's, there's 10 people that are problems. And, uh, trying to just deal with those 10 people as an individual out there trying to enjoy yourself is, is intimidating. It's, uh, discouraging. It's exhausting, frankly. So, um, uh, you know, I think, I think the thing to do now is to, you know, allow staff to make some recommendations. Uh, you know, if there's some public urination going on, you know, if you can get their name, you can help us stay police. And maybe they can do something about it. Um, pictures. Well, yeah, if you take a picture, then maybe you're going to get, you know, taking pictures. I would hate to share them, but they exist. Anyway, um, we, we understand your issues and nobody, I know the select board are concerned about it and I want all of you to know the staff is concerned about it as well. Uh, we'll do what we can. Um, I think Nick and the red committee can talk about this kind of stuff in terms of what other, um, uh, measures we might take public education is, is the biggest part of it. I also think that being considerate of the people who are playing is part of the deal too. You know, if somebody's, if somebody's getting ready to throw a disc down at a, at a, at a, a basket and I'm not suggesting this happened the other day, but if people are playing on the golf course, you shouldn't expect that you can just walk straight across fairway number five, for example, you know, you've got to, you've got to give as well. It's a shared use facility, but they have the right to use the facility too. So I think it goes, goes both ways. I would just add to that, uh, the public urination and fecal incidents happening. That just got brought to my attention last week. So it's part of planning in the future. We'll put, we'll put another portal at maybe, hopefully we can put it closer to the, the froth course. Obviously we can't go out there and police. People like Ali said, take some pictures. We can post it. We can publicly shame them, but hopefully maybe per, well, what we can do now that we've known, we know these issues is work on, you know, the actual park itself and can we provide a facility out there that maybe makes it easier for some of these people to go use it. In conjunction with sign in just as, Hey, if you need to use the bathroom, you know, please, please use the portal that could cause X, Y and Z for diseases and whatnot. Um, yeah, just, it's just. Like Bill said, staff will work on it. Um, you know, we're just getting brought, uh, this stuff to our attention. So there's things that we can do certainly, um, next spring to help hopefully help start mitigating some of these problems. And the loose dogs are relentless. It's awful. So that's another big one. Oh, where are we at with a dog catcher? Yeah. Same place. We've been here for months. Yeah. We have one. You want to go. Yeah, thanks. So I just want to, as Bill suggested, kind of volunteer the recreation committee to, um, work on this issue. Um, and to support Nick. Um, but especially to support, um, the attempt to have the various uses of that space be, you know, created in a way that can be compatible. Um, and it's going to be important as we move forward, um, for neighbors to be represented and to show up and represent, um, for bikers, for runners, for all the different, uh, participants. Um, and, uh, you know, I'd like to get together. You know, I'd like to connect with Dave frothingham and see who is really, uh, Waterbury chains now and make sure we get that group on board. Um, the good experiences that we've had with various organizations like WADA is that, uh, when you have an organization that's involved with those trails, they start to actually be very successful in policing those trails. Um, and they're better policing the trails and making the changes than, uh, Nick or staff or somebody coming in. So, uh, we have a situation here where, you know, Waterbury chains really needs to step up and police their own. We've got some people giving a very bad name to, uh, a great sport, um, a great area. And really, you know, all of the recreation, um, because it just makes our outdoor recreation look bad. So I think there's a lot of interest in trying to curb the changes that have just been described. Um, and I'd like to see some folks like Tom and Megan Ali. And some of the. Golf people and stuff will not wait until spring, but get together sooner than later. Um, and see what we can do. You know, going forward to get people together. And I, I hope I'll get a chance to say it later, but in case I don't, I just want to say. If we do come up with a time to meet or especially a work day, it'll be very important for, um, you to get involved in picking that day so that you can be sure to show up on that day because we've had issues like this throughout the history of the course. And too often the folks who want to represent the community path or other activities on that work day, they show up in very low numbers or don't show up. And we've got, you know, 40 disc golfers working hard to try to build a trail for the community path people, but they're not there to tell them where they want the path. So, um, I think that's going to change. We have more neighbors involved and we'll be able to have a stronger input. I know that the committee for, um, center trails is trying to get a community path, a bike path through there. So there's another interested party. So I think, um, you know, we should be able to get people working together to establish a clear path and safe ways for these, uh, different activities to be compatible in the same location. Right. I'm going to go Nat, then Mike, then Meg, um, but we do need to move on, but I think we're definitely heard that, you know, we're going to continue to work on this. And some of those questions to think about hours of operation, we can do offline and get that information to you and then decide if anyone's, um, doing anything that should be on that. Go ahead. So yeah, thank you, Bill, for your words. Um, so I have been, I mean, I, I moved to Waterbury center, uh, before there was even a disc golf course and I used to walk my dog through those woods and, um, it was never a disc golf course there. And so those are all just jogging trails and walking trails and I snowshoed through there in the winter. And so this thing is, this whole thing is a ball, but as we know, as we know about everything in Waterbury, everything has evolved. There, you know, um, the Waterbury trails, um, have evolved. And we know from studies that, uh, even though we call them mountain bike trails, half of our users are on foot. You know, so it all seems to me like this. It all seems to me like this. It all seems to be golf course. Um, it's a, it's something like we ran into when I was with water. Where, um, We weren't having any problems with conflicts between runners. And, uh, bikers and hikers. We were having a problem between. Horses. And bikers and horses and walkers. You know, and, uh, and almost seems like it's just a, it's a problem of, uh, of synergy of the uses. And it's almost become something. That is unsustainable in its current state. There are people who want to walk out there. There are people who want to jog out there. And there are people who want to check really, really hard discs of rubber. And that's a problem for the walker. So, you know, It kind of seems like it's one of those things where. We're in this position where everybody wants to use it. But it's become unfriendly to everyone. And that's all I've got to say. Mike and then I. Yep. I just want to dovetail a little bit on what Bill said. I'm a big believer in education. I'm a big believer in the best place for education. Yes. Signs do work to some extent, but the users and the neighbors have to educate. Uh, folks who are using the facility. I know I've been at hope Davey and, you know, especially after the instances we had. If, um, I went there and folks were parking, you know, in the wrong spot, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, if you approach them in a very nice way, they said, Oh, I didn't realize this was an issue. And I, you know, I did that a couple of times and it was different people. And they just were not aware. And sometimes it's a matter of, you know, everyone likes to complain, but sometimes it's just a matter of saying, you know, most people are reasonable and they're going to take. Oh, I, you know, I'll do this. It's the few people that will be very belligerent. It's like, no, this is a disc golf. And ultimately, you know, the people are using it saying, if you're not going to try to obey by the rules, we may not have this disc golf course, you know, and I think that's going to get people to change their behavior. There's no way we could have 10 rec staff policing this. And of course we can't afford that. But the people who use it really have to police and be our eyes and ears. I'm not saying that the rec staff can't be there on and off, but also neighbors, if you see, just kindly say, you know, most people are going to be pretty good. Oh, I didn't realize this. You know, you know, everyone. That's especially. I think it's bad if someone deaf, you know, if someone relieves themselves on your property, but they went way out in the woods somewhere. I don't think anyone's going to know any, any different from it. I think we just need to rely upon education from the users, maybe educate some of the key users to say, Hey, if there's not some change and you got to be the advocates of change, you're going to lose the right to use it. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Hi everybody. I just want to share that I actually was the person who had the encounter last week. And it was a really tough one. There's been a lot of things. I thought that I was alone in, in some of the stuff and have learned that actually a lot of folks are experiencing, you know, some level of. We'll just call it like unpleasant to very unpleasant. Intimidating. Targeted perhaps encounters. And I think hearing what everybody's saying, I want to first thank you to Bill and all our town people for the, you know, hanging on to the fact that this is shared public space to all of our community. And we want to go forward and shared space. I really think that. You know, I think that it's just, you know, I think that it has just become really bizarre over the course of really this year. And I can share a couple of things. Okay. My observation is that we went for, you know, years. I know there's always been conflicts and it's really easy to kind of go into this neighbors versus. You know, somehow the disc golf players and honestly, everybody. I don't feel that. I think that's a, frankly, it's a very old sort of narrative as Annette was saying, like we've evolved, like we've all evolved and we know this. So having that narrative of like, oh, the neighbors, you know, think there's trails, but oh, they don't quite get that the world of disc golf has exploded. That's just not it at all. So like Bill saying to involve the wreck. Whole committee. We really want to open this up to a much broader conversation with all, you know, stakeholders. There's a lot of people in town. A lot of people not represented here. I'm speaking for lots of people that I know who really thought that the whole thing was gone years ago to become a disc golf. Of course they don't even know, you know what I mean? Like people don't know people don't bring their kids here. Like you don't see young moms out there with kids. It's not safe from a physical viewpoint. Of discs, but even aside from that, the whole vibe, it really has been dominated by the disc golf course. And a lot of us love the fact that we have a disc golf course. Like we really do. Like I'm excited about getting my team going. I just haven't been able to in COVID, you know, and I know Ellie teaches it. I mean, it's like, there's a lot of us. There's a lot of women in town. A lot of kids in town and we want to involve them, which means we want to have kids. We want to have kids in town and we want to involve them, which means even more people are going to be on the course. I don't see a lot of women on the course. There's a small group that seemed to be playing now in a more organized way. I love that. So I'm just saying, I love this. And I wanted to all become like really together. However, one really important observation I have. And I've really dug into this to try to understand the dynamic. And one of the things that I find really difficult to understand is why is this so difficult is center chains. And please correct me if anybody, you know, if I'm saying something wrong, but I've tried to understand it. If you go to our sign, it says center change disc golf course, which we all think is like our local course, right? We're like, people are playing, you know, golf here. That's great. But disc golf or not. It's not about the community. It's about the organization. Which is paired with smugglers notch. Like this is not about waterbury recreation. This is about a much larger and broader group. I mean, these are like corporate groups and corporations. We even have a corporation that was in town. That was called center chains disc golf. Oh gosh, I lost the name of it. And a one of our community members and a person who's involved in this corporation whose goal is to expand disc golf. And so most recently, when they just had this work day, which just kind of happened, I mean, I guess within the community or whatever, but like the, the pads, like the things that you throw from, like, like, I don't think me and my team need those. You know what I mean? Like, like I don't even think the intermediate teams need them. But like I said, you know, you know, you know, those pads are for people who are playing professionally. And what I've figured out after trying to put the pieces together, because I'm like, why am I being ordered off the toll to leave the course? This is our course. This is a frisbee golf, excuse me, disc golf course. This belongs to us. And it's like, what? Like this is getting weirder and weirder and weirder. I might be incorrect, but I think the issue is that we have a lot of players who are playing like in leagues and professionally, we've had leagues running every single week in this park, like for months and months and months. It's, and I mean, maybe there's casual games or there's individual users, like there's mixed use and there's still people trying to walk and there's all the people who have given up trying to walk and all that, but we have a very, or a very tight knit community of really, really avid golfers. And they're not just like, oh, this is Waterbury locals enjoying a sport. It's part of disc golf. Vermont is a corporate entity that's growing disc golf. National. So my question is as a community, and I think that we need to open this up really broadly to all stakeholders. Do we, like, do we have the space and the will to actually host to have our little local field that we all want to use? And we're going to have like tons of kids out there and tons of women like me and who even knows. I mean, Tom might even play. You know what I mean? Is there going to be room when there's not even room? How do you, how do you marry the needs of a professional. Organization. Like some of these folks, I'm sure they play recreation. I thought we had a recreation area, but over the course of many years, I've looked at this and I'm going to continue to look. And we have lots and lots of questions and you guys will get them. Why is it that our course is being more and more developed. For this one particular entity that isn't even. Okay. Maybe the guy who's the president of it, who started a corp, a nonprofit corporation years ago. Like there's a lot of money being transacted. There's a lot of money exchanging hands right in our parking lots. It's like, there's a whole thing that has nothing to do with people who are like, Oh, by the way, I'm throwing a disc. Will you, you know, like maybe you didn't know I was throwing. So. I think we need, we need a town group. We need to flush this out. It's not, it's not about signage. Although thank you, Nick. Signs are good and, you know, but our signs that we have don't work. I think it probably it's again, extends the conversation. First of all, you know, you have groups like water for the mountain bike group. They're a part of a larger group called. Not correct me if I'm wrong. For my mountain bike. Yeah. So you have these organizations that start to organize. I think as, as these smaller areas grown popularity and they do start to organize, you start to see them associate themselves with more national organizations. And in that specific sport, I think a lot of what you're seeing are these tournaments. I know we do have one of the like higher level players that are that lives in town. I think at this point. I hear you. I think that it makes sense that bills group with neck in the town. Start to work on where are we at currently? What are the problems? What can we do in its current form? And then look at a five, 10 years out. Do we need to look at other options? Are we growing too big? Just like the skate park discussion of at some point, does this need to go somewhere else and become the popularity? Isn't always a bad thing, but it can also grow outside of the boundary that we built it in. And there's more houses that have now been built right there across in the post office. So I expect that we're going to hear more and more problems. There. Ali backs up to it and it's having problems. I remember years ago, that dog ran into somebody's dog door. I mean, this isn't the first time I've heard about problems. Luckily, I mean, for the amount of use, I've been on the board for I think seven or eight years now. And I, this is one of the first conversations. I really feel like I remember hearing about concern. So I think that's a good and bad thing. So I think we just need to take it seriously and have our, you know, the re look at the resources we have. See if they can address these issues. If they can't, well, you know, we can address them from there. Ali, go ahead. And then I think we, this is real quick. I promise. But Mike, you were mentioning about, it's important to educate people and speak up in a respectful way. And that's exactly what I've done. Since I've been there. I don't, I think some of you know me. I'm a pretty reasonable kind. Like I approach people. I approach people. I don't, I think some of you know me. I'm a pretty reasonable kind. Like I approach people in a, in a pretty friendly way. And you'd be really surprised that some of the, the comments that I get back. I was told, I thought this was America. When they were out on the very obviously closed course, when they were signage over the parking lots, over the, the walking bridge, it was very obviously clear that it was closed. And there were people out there all day, every day still. And I would say, Hey guys, like the, the course is closed, just letting you guys know. And they're like, Oh, really? We didn't know. And I'm like, well, maybe you should learn to read. I don't know. I didn't say that, but it's like, how more obvious can it be? And I have said, Hey, your dogs over here, please leash them if they don't listen. And you know, you get comments. And I've, I've tried and I, I don't want to be like the nasty neighbor that everybody hates. So I've kind of stopped doing that because I really want it to be more of a community. Worked out problem. I don't want it to just be on me. And that's where, that's where, if you're going to be nice and you should be nice and say, Hey, if, if you're not going to try to work with people, work with your neighbors, this ain't going to be available to you. And no one wants to shut the disc golf course down, but if you're going to have bad actors, maybe that might need something because that's why I think the group itself needs to police each other, you know, police there, the fellow players. And if you're not, I see this all the time. I work with a lot of sportsman's groups and there are a lot of bad actors in the sportsman's community, but there are a lot of good hunters and fishermen. And we don't like bad things happening either. And I say, you know, ultimately they're going to shut this area out from hunting. You know, if, if, if you're going to be shooting bullets into signs and stuff like that. So, you know, you just, you know, I'm a big believer in education. And I think Ali, you're doing the right thing. It's just a matter of, I think getting some of the internal people to advocate for you as well. I agree. They're a tight knit community similar to mountain biking. I think once the word gets in that the town has got an eye on them. And I think that's a good thing. There are concerns from neighbors. We can put out a pretty good message that says, you know, knock it off and start policing your, your people, or we're going to have to step in and do something. Tom, go ahead and then we're going to have to move on unless there's other public. I have one sentence. Go ahead. That I asked that the town ask. Whoever is doing it. To cease destruction. And construction. They're dropping healthy trees, eight, 10 inch 20, 25 year old trees just dropped and cleared. Cause they don't want them in the way of the dis. They're building, building, building. I just think while we're in this state. Stop destruction, stop construction until there's a plan and approval by bill and the select board. Yeah, bill. Can you talk about that real quick in terms of any kind of agreement that we've had either verbally or on paper about their ability to modify the course in any way. And maybe Nick, you can speak to that. Yeah. The, the cutting of trees is certainly not. Condoned. It's not something that I knew about until just, just now till tonight. You know, if I'm the former village, the Edward for our utility district. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. As this issue in the watershed up off of a sweet farm road where, you know, we've got again, people who lose those trails, like that was indicating. And most people are fine and do what they're supposed to do. But there's a, there's a group of rogue individuals who just decide, well, you know, I want my trail to go this way. And they, they cut trees. And they're not too late. So that's something we'll have to look into. I think Tom, your suggestion is good. Nick can reach out to the, to the folks that he calls the, the core uses and tell him that you can't cut trees and you can't build anything without permission, stop. If that's happening, I'm very concerned about it. Mark, can I ask one question before we jump chip on this? Bill, can, can you refresh our memory there? Wasn't there some form of an agreement with the new development across from the post office? The name of the development escapes my mind. When Paul Reed originally had it, wasn't there an agreement with the town as far as being part of. The whole park trail system and whatnot. And was there any covenants in there that pertain to any of the guidelines as to what could be done with it? Well, at one point in, you know, my memory is not razor sharp on this, but the disc golf course, I think for a time actually spilled over onto private land. And when Paul Reed went to develop it, he didn't want that on that property, of course. And there was some pushback among some of the players who like to play, but it wasn't our property. So, you know, way back in the day, there was an MOU with the watery chains group. Well, I can remember a couple of the people who were involved then. I'm not sure they still are now. So I think we're at the point where we've shared as much information as we have right now. We're going to have to reach out to this group. I think Bill Minter and the rec committee can be very instrumental in this. I think that, you know, they're, they're volunteers who are appointed by the select board to, to, you know, be the eyes and ears, not only to identify needs, but concerns with their creation. So I think working with Nick and them and then reaching out to other people who aren't on the committee, certainly Megan Tom and Allie and others who might be interested. But I think that's really where it needs to start. The rec committee and Nick have to begin at least gathering some information and communicating with the, with the organized group, if you will. And then as Mike says, education is good. This is going to take a little bit of time. I think we're, we're at the end of the, the season right now. I don't know if they play all winter long or not, but they'll try to get the message out. Every day trees. They can't cut trees and they can't disturb the ground. That's not theirs to do that with and every day. Yeah. And I understand because, you know, it was several years back. It wasn't a disc golfer, but there was a couple of people who were going out there to, to hike and it was mud season. I happened to be there at the Hope Dagie park and I met him at the bridge and I told him, you know, you can't go out there. It's closed because of, of mud and you're going to damage the, the facility and, and, and it's, it's not a place where you can go. And he looked at me like I had three heads and I said, look, the state is closed down, you know, the hiking trails. And, and he basically said, well, you know, I'm kind of a rule breaker. I, you know, rules are there, but I'm someone who likes to push the envelope. It's like, yeah, okay. So I understand exactly the kind of people that you're talking about and it's a small minority of people, but they do really spoil it for everybody. I'm just going to say it's the nulls and it is not in covenants for them to be, to have any right away through that land. Right. And I would say if any of the neighbors see people cutting or doing any kind of alteration like that, take pictures, take pictures goes a long way in a court. And if, you know, you know, we should have redress if, if they're cutting trees on public land, that's just not cool. We're going to move on from this topic. Thank you very much. And we'll continue to make sure this is addressed. Is there anybody else from the public that would like to speak during the public session on another topic? All right. We're good there. We're going to move on to the select board items. First one is the library director's report on me. Thank you very much for being patient. And the floor is yours. Thank you. Good evening. So we're going to transition from outdoors to indoors to talk about the library. The members of the select board probably received a document from me through Carla. That had just a little timeline about what the library's been, been doing for. Since March. I didn't receive that. I'll just mention really quickly. We closed on March 18th, which was the same day the school's closed. And we began virtual youth programming April 9th. Virtual adult programming May 13th. We started our curbside service on May 19th. We had a summer reading program June, July and August. We started a walk-in service on a limited basis on July 15th. On August 11th. Interlibrary loans were able to resume. And on November 2nd, just a couple of weeks ago, we expanded our hours. And then just to give you an update on a timeline situation. With the governor's new orders and the spike of cases in Washington County. We made the decision to close to in-person service starting last Saturday. And then we made the decision to close in-person service on May 15th. And then we also made the decision to close the doors are once again, return to curbside. For who knows how long? So I wanted to just give you kind of an overview of. The situation with libraries and COVID. I'm going to share my screen. I have a few slides to show you as I. As I talk. So. to switch that for me. Mine says that one participant can share at a time. Okay let me try. Oh hang on I think I can. Okay. Give a shot. Is that, is the slide show visible for people? No. No. Okay. Share screen. I went into advanced sharing options and checked that all participants can share. How about now? Yeah. There we go. All right so librarians all over Vermont are doing their best to serve the public within the bounds of state and CDC guidelines and the limitations of our own buildings and staff which as you can imagine very a great deal from from town to town and city to city. Here in Whybury we are so fortunate to have a modern building with plenty of windows, a good ventilation system, and space to accommodate people indoors. So we have pivoted to a limited more limited library service that has more of a transactional focus rather than a you know a broader sort of living room of the community focus and that's been challenging but it's also been rewarding. We're still serving the community. Let me advance my slides here. We're still we're still serving the community and all of the staff with the support of the commissioners have worked hard to adapt our services to fit the required health and safety protocols. Here's our staff in case whoops sorry in case you haven't met all of them. We have three full-time staff and four part-time staff. So some of the work we have done has come to fruition in the following manners. We have done thorough health and safety training for the staff just like businesses have done with policies and procedures in place for both staff and visitors including transforming our interior space so that it's a safe place to visit while adhering to COVID standards. We have taken the lead on the Waterbury Cares program which matches volunteers with neighbors who need assistance with things like grocery shopping, prescription pickup, connecting them with meals on wheels, check-ins and other other things as well. We have been an outlet for masks first from Maker Sphere in the early days which was fabulous and now the ones from the town received masks from the states and that's ongoing. People are still taking masks. We transition to virtual programming and many of them seem to be providing a nice sense of continuity and community despite the fact that people sometimes are weary of Zoom meetings. We started a YouTube channel where we post a lot of our programs at recording so that people can watch them at their leisure. We have also instituted some outside programming with safety protocols in place of course. Things like the story walk that we had in the garden all summer long, community poetry walk which was really fun, musical munchkins, a Halloween program and we are planning to participate in some way in Winterfest as well. We have been quarantining our materials that are returned to us after being in patrons' hands, in patrons' homes. According to the most up-to-date information that we have, there are some studies that have happened through some federal agencies about the viability of the virus on materials so we're following that very closely. We are offering tech help by phone and email. This is one of our newer staff people on the left there, Kyle. He's our tech librarian. We've also beefed up all the information and resources available on our website including some really nice resources for families who are either homeschooling or schooling at home and we also, especially in the first few months, we shifted a lot of our materials budget into more digital content ebooks and downloadable audio books so that people could access that and you may have seen on the second page of the document that I sent through Carla that our digital material use as was the case with many libraries across the country really skyrocketed during that time. We have been guiding many people via phone and email through the process to access all of our digital materials. From the very beginning, we've been answering our phones six days a week for our full pre-COVID hours fielding thousands of questions about accessing digital resources and other things and more recently just since we were able to have some in-person contact in July especially, it's been great to be able to restart our work with some of our community partners like the food shelf and the winter clothing drive and be able to offer those things at the library. In October, our physical circulation bounced back to about 66% compared to October of last year and our total circulation meaning physical and digital items reached 82% of what it was in October of 2019. Interlibrary loans have rebounded up towards more normal volume at about 77% last month. We registered 13 new patrons in October, eight were Waterbury taxpayers and five were non-residents. And between March 18th and October 31st, we registered 86 new patrons at the library. So during times of economic distress, public libraries become an even more important resource for the community. In the 2007 to 2010 great recession, public libraries, this is a national statistic, saw about a 25% increase in use. And this represents everything from families and senior citizens sort of tightening their belts by borrowing rather than buying to job seekers filling out online applications to folks getting help with unemployment claims and then attending all the free programs and much more. We have been doing our part in Waterbury to try to reduce 2020 spending by implementing layoffs at the beginning of this, reducing staff hours, especially in the first few months, several months, along with the other town employees who did likewise, voluntary pay cuts, reducing line items in the budget and trying to be very conservative with our spending. We've had a lot of positive response and appreciation expressed by the taxpayers for being open, which is gratifying and we are pleased to be serving the community despite the challenges of operating during the pandemic. And I invite you to stop in and visit and get a card if you don't already have one, like our Facebook page, sign up for our newsletter and help us spread the word that despite the fact that like all businesses now, it looks a little different, but the library is open for business. And I want to thank you for giving me some time on your agenda and for your attention and I'm happy to answer or try to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm in a similar problem with public facing and I appreciate you guys figuring out how to continue to serve the public in a safe way. Does anyone have any questions for all me? Katie? So I know you guys talked about doing a book pickup where people can request books and then come and pick them up at your location. Have you guys ever thought about bringing back the bookmobile and like possibly driving it around to like local daycares and having people have the option to browse quickly and then check one out and then driving around and having that option for other community members as well? Bookmobiles are great. I have fond memories of one in my town when I was growing up. They are very expensive. I think there's only a handful of them in the whole state of Vermont because they're very expensive to purchase, get set up as a bookmobile, and then to run it. So I don't really see that in our future. I suppose if we knew for sure that we were going to be in this kind of lockdown situation for five years, maybe we would try to look into that, but I just don't think it's practical for us. When we were able to, before the pandemic, we did have some outreach programs. We had a staff member who was going to, I think it was about five daycares in Waterbury and I think one in Duxbury that's right over the line and doing little story hours and bringing them bags of books. We also provided a home delivery for people who were shut in for one reason or another, whether they'd had surgery and they were recovering or they didn't have a car or whatever the situation was. We didn't have a huge demand for that, but we did make that available to patrons. So I hope that helps answer your question. And nice to meet you, Katie. Anyone else? Thank you very much for giving us an update. You're welcome. Thank you for your time. You're welcome. I think I will bow out for the rest of the meeting. So take care, everybody. Bill, I think you're probably going to take this, discuss property tax delinquencies. Yes. So I sent out a memo this afternoon just to update the board on where we are with regard to tax collection and to kind of reengage the discussion that the select board has had a couple times during the course of the pandemic about penalty or interest on pay bills. So as I said at the beginning of the meeting, I got tied up on a different meeting. I'm home right now. I don't have any of my information with me. I can remember in round numbers though. So in 2019, we had about 155 taxpayers that did not pay as of the due date. And our collection rate was just slightly less than 98 percent last year. We had a 2.15 percent delinquency rate. So out of the $15 million that we built last year, we had collected all but about, and here's just from memory, about $340,000 or so. You have that number in front of you if you have my memo. This year because we set the tax rate at 51 cents as opposed to 55 cents is authorized, the amount of money that we actually built was only about $400,000 more than last year. Initially it was supposed to be about $725,000 more, but we set the tax rate lower, favoring that a goodly number of people would have difficulty paying. So this year the delinquency rate was 4.8 percent. We have about 2.3 times more outstanding on the day after tax collection date this year than we did last year. So well over $700,000 still remains unpaid as of 4.30 on Friday afternoon. The number of taxpayers that are delinquent is actually slightly less than it was last year. I think it's about 140 or something like that. But I did quickly compare the lists and there are about 47 people or taxpayers because some of the taxpayers are businesses. There's about 47 of the delinquent taxpayers who are on both lists. So that means there's about 95 people on this year's list that weren't on last year's list. And I'm not suggesting that they all never have been on the list before, but it's hard to extrapolate the reasons why folks are late. But the fact that it is significantly higher, more than two times higher, indicates to me that COVID has to be a big player in this situation. So the normal course of action is if you didn't pay your taxes by 4.30 on Friday, we would impose the penalty and the interest that the voters approved at Taoying, which is an 8 percent penalty, and 1 percent interest for every month will be there between now and the end of the year. And then beginning on January 1st, it goes up to 1.5 percent. I had Karen Petrovich, the tax clerk today, we didn't push the switch to add the penalty and interest to those outstanding bills right now because I needed to have this conversation with you folks first. As I indicated in the memo, we do have the capability of allowing taxpayers to pay by credit card. We have over 2,000 taxpayers, 30 of them chose to pay by credit card, and that's not a high percentage. And I didn't compare to last year how many paid by credit card, but my guess is that at least some of those 30 used the credit card to pay their taxes on Friday to avoid a 9 percent immediate hit. In order to pay by credit card, they have to pay a service fee of 3 percent. So Mark in his business, he probably eats the cost of that transaction on credit cards and just puts it through, and he takes a couple percent hit on it. The time does not do that for any of the credit card transactions that we allow. So the credit card companies that we work with have a means by which to put what they call a courtesy fee on there. So the people who are paying by credit card are actually absorbing that 3 percent cost. So if somebody has a $1,000 tax bill, they're paying 30 bucks extra to pay by credit card. So with that information, and I kind of think about it a little bit and say, well, a couple of months ago, I had kind of indicated maybe we should not charge penalty in interest at all. We don't charge penalty in interest at all. The people who pay by credit card paid 3 percent more. If they didn't do that and you waive the penalty in interest, they would be better off than they are now. We don't have an easy way to reimburse or refund that 3 percent fee because that fee was not paid to us. So if we decided to not charge penalty in interest and wanted to be fair to the people who played by credit card, we'd have to make that payment back to them and frankly we'd be using tax money to repay them because we didn't collect that 3 percent fee. So I've thought about this a lot since Friday, but I haven't really talked to anybody except staff. So you see my recommendation there is perhaps it would be best to say let's charge a 4 percent penalty. The legislature gave the select board the authority this year and this year alone to change what the taxpayers voted at town meetings. So it's within your authority to do that. If you charge 4 percent, it rewards the people that chose to pay by credit card last week just not to be late. They paid 3 percent. I suppose you could charge 3 percent and just make it fair all the way around, but I think that initially my feeling was that the people that tried to figure out a way not to be late should be rewarded a little bit. So what I proposed to you was charge 4 percent interest, I mean 4 percent penalty and leave it alone after that. Don't add interest on to it. In fact I would recommend that if you don't charge interest at all right now we can leave the interest button off. I would suggest given where we are and what things are looking like we're going to talk about COVID in this region in a little bit. I think that living until April is reasonable not to charge interest at all and then at the end of March the select board can revisit the issue and decide whether or not we should begin to charge that interest at 1.5 percent. So if you accept my recommendation and you charge the 4 percent penalty because we have about twice as much delinquency as we did last year in the end you'll you'll collect about the same amount as you did a year ago and my goal is not necessarily to collect penalty and interest it's just trying to find a way to you know thread that needle and and find a way to be fair and with that I'll stop let you folks ask questions discuss it amongst yourselves. I'm not sure there's any right answer. I think what I'm trying to provide is a is a reasonable way to look at it that gives people who were late for whatever reason a break this year. Some people as I said you know the usual suspects and every time has people that don't pay just because they don't feel like paying or they can't be bothered. There's no way that we can go through the list and say oh you should charge that one 8 percent and charge this one 4 percent don't charge that one anything. So anyway I'll stop talking and let you folks ask questions or discuss this amongst yourself. I don't know if anyone else has any feedback before I kind of step in. I mean I think it might surprise some that I feel for the people that are impacted by covid but there's certain people that maybe you know this this isn't necessarily a covid impact it's a decision or a mistake that we've penalized at 8 percent in the past and and Bill I think you alluded to it at the end of your comment that you don't think there's a way that we could create something that basically created the discount that you're talking about but through an ask you know there's nothing more than you say and your your payment is late because you're affected by covid and we could say no problem and cut that penalty in half but not necessarily cut it straight across the board for everybody. If you think that's too hard to manage then I you know that's my only comment there. Yeah I I really don't think that that's feasible you know there are some people if you if you ask them you know they're gonna they're just gonna say yes because they think it's a way to get some mercy. I think that for me I think it's really more an all or nothing thing that's the way we've done it throughout this whole emergency when the when the EFUD commissioners decided to waive base charges they waived base charges for everyone for those you know there were people who didn't have any problem they could have paid their water bill without an without an issue but there's there's really not a good way for us to be selective about that so so EFUD just you know they waived the base charges for for everyone for the UDAG loans that are outstanding they they treated all the the borrowers the same way when we cut the tax rate from 55 cents to 51 cents we do it for everybody so I think it's I think it's all for one and one for all um and I just don't think there's a way that we can be the arbiter of who's impacted by COVID what is being impacted by COVID really mean you know so I don't think that's feasible. Mike good. Bill I read your memo I kind of agree with it a hundred percent but I'm also it's funny Mark almost parroted my thoughts I hate to reward people who just hey I didn't get around to it and I know it may not be maybe that's just my own personal opinion you know I had one year that I couldn't get you know I usually pay my taxes on the due date I hate paying any early and I wound up running into traffic getting back from the northeast kingdom because of construction and I can't be you know I just ate the cost I hated because I paid the next day but you do it I hate to reward people who just are tardy and I just I don't know if there's I kind of agree with Mark but if it's going to be a really all or nothing I probably would lean more to saying let's just you know wave wave the penalties down to the amount that you propose the four percent yeah I mean I really don't think and you know Karen's on the line and I'm not going to ask you to speak but putting putting staff in the position to hear somebody's story or having to decide whether this one merits being forgiven and that one doesn't that's that's very difficult to do can't you just the penalty is never easy charging the penalty is never easy and what I always tell people is like this is not my company this is the taxpayer's money we've got to treat everybody equally and the easiest way to do that is to say you're late late means late and the penalty applies now you know if we had gotten to today and I saw that it was you know delinquencies were 10 15 percent higher than they were last year well you know I I I think you know 2.3 times you know more than twice as much outstanding I I have a hard time that people are just saying well I'm gonna I'm gonna gamble and not pay my taxes because I think the town is gonna forgive that I mean that that's a lot of gambling four hundred thousand dollars more than last year to me it seems like you know to me it signals that there are people hurting out there so that's how that's how I looked at it but bill the number is lower so that's got to be some major prop like a couple of large properties that must have been short there's there's there's a couple of large properties there's there's no question about that but um you know see see I don't want staff to be an arbiter I understand what their problem is but even something you have a little form my delinquency was caused by COVID they sign it done don't don't have to you know and and that's kind of in their conscience that if they sign that that they're saying it's due to COVID it's it's a done deal but if they can in good conscience sign that I have no problem charging someone the full amount Chris go ahead I've probably got too many comments and questions here obviously and property taxes is probably one of the least exciting things that people have to deal with during their course of the year when it comes to their finances um between the between 2019 2020 we're talking about 300 and oh where's the figure here difference is 400 24 versus 419 so we're talking about no it's it's the difference is 419 Chris right it was 300 something last year and 700 something sorry you're right um so I was looking at the two that's yeah that's irrelevant at this point so I I didn't quite understand you said in the last two years that the delinquencies were 47 each correct no what I said a number of taxpayers delinquent both years was 47 yeah so there's 95 new people on this there's 95 people on the list this year that weren't on the delinquent list last year there were 155 people on the delinquent list a year ago less people this year you know I was surprised at that that was that was a surprise but of when you look at the two lists there's 47 that were delinquent last year and 47 that were delinquent this year there's 95 new people between this year and last year I'm not saying they were never on there before and I want to make clear I'm not I'm not advocating for reducing this penalty we've talked about it a number of times during the year and you know when I looked at it I said well especially because there were people that that used the credit cards to pay even though it was a small number I feel they need to get some consideration if you folks decide you know what we've done a lot already for COVID we cut the tax rate by four cents um you know if I just done things uh if you decide that you're going to just leave it as the voters authorized I don't have any heartburn about that I'm just trying to present some information to you if there's an inclination on the board that we need to do something more than that what I'm suggesting is is four percent if if you're all good with just leaving it at eight percent I mean we we we have that um interaction with taxpayers well rehearsed believe me you know that that's every year we there's going to be no matter whether it's four percent or eight percent if it's more than nothing there will be somebody who gets pretty hot under the car with Karen and me and you know that's just life so we're not worried about that we just want to be consistent that's all what I what I was a couple of things that I wanted to try to point out here was um and it's probably the amount is the amount you know around that that's owed that that is unofficially delinquent till after December 31st correct I mean we're not officially delinquent in that you can you know you can't act on it to with collection measures you know for tax sale or anything else but it's delinquent as far as penalty is concerned so does it make sense to what I don't want is for the people that were at regardless whether they paid by credit card regardless whether they gave up some they're big patients so that they can come up with the extra money because they're trapped from covid issues or whatever that paid on time and didn't use a credit card if we have to borrow uh unanticipated taxes or make up the difference somehow I don't want the people who've done everything they could and make their payments on time to have to take any of this on the pin is there any reason that we couldn't somehow offer the people that are soon to be considered malinquent um a payment plan of 4% penalty at this point um if they get on some form of a payment plan and again I'm just throwing this out yeah I I understand and um you know we we do have payment plans for the um for people who are delinquent that's our first that's our first um outreach to them please pay please pay your taxes and if you can't arrange a payment plan but you know as it as we have this discussion it occurs to me um maybe I don't know how you'd feel about this um but I believe the legislature has given you broad enough authority you could maybe make a decision right now and say look we understand COVID is um uh here we understand that it's been tough for people uh we will extend the the deadline for paying taxes without penalty until December 31st now you know there's a bunch of people every single year um you know there's one pretty large taxpayer that I know that that sent their tax bill um you know certified mail uh so we had to sign for it they didn't put it in the mail until Thursday and we didn't get it until today um but if you made a decision and publicized it look we're going to give a grace period this year you know one time only um if you still have outstanding taxes uh you're having till December 31st or December 30th whatever the you know the last Friday of the month is or something in December pay it by then and all bets are off no no penalty no interest and then on December 1st I mean on January 1st impose the 8% penalty so you I think you do have the ability to be proactive and one of the reasons why we didn't decide earlier to make a change in the delinquent uh penalty was because you folks said you know you don't want to advertise that to to you know then people say well there's no hurry then I don't have to pay so now we know there's 140 people that didn't pay as of Friday so I think it might be worth considering to just say we're going to give those 140 people a break until uh the end of December and if you can't pay by then uh we're real sorry but we're going to have to impose the penalty but I would still do it far or nothing I appreciate Mike's deciding to say you know if they sign a form um I'd rather not do that but that's just me but what about bills uh what about delinquencies prior to 2000 and to this year I mean are you going to waive those penalties are you suggesting we waive those two or not no so that's just that's just given actors your eye you know the the amount of outstanding taxes that would do before 2020 are very low now I mean by the time we get to February they were down to like $90,000 uh Karen might know off the top of her head but I think it's in the you know tens of thousands of dollars range now that are still outstanding but those those prior years have already had the penalty imposed on them and the interest has accrued to date now it's not possible to shut the interest off I think if you shut the interest off it shuts it off for the whole system if those people a break for a couple of months I don't think that's going to be a killing matter but I think you can uh make a decision to put this off Karen's trying to say something she'll probably contradict everything that you said I won't do that I I can continue to charge interest to 2018 and 2019 delinquencies and not charge interest to 2020 okay good so it was on a year by year basis so I guess I would amend my recommendation then and just ask you to uh suspend the to delay the date of imposing penalty and interest until uh you know December the 31st which is the Thursday you have any indication of uh I mean we didn't raise our tax rate last year but the education tax went up in dollar amount I mean it's irrelevant kind of to this conversation but you have any idea on what percentage of that money that's delinquent was a result of increase in taxes well I don't know I can't tell you how much of it as a result of increase in taxes I mean I don't have it in front of me but it's it's pretty easy to the the district gets between 75 and 80 percent of taxes built so you know we built we should have built about 17 million dollars this year uh and the state payments were about 1.6 million so that brought it down to you know 15 million 700 and something thousand and then we we gave back four cents and didn't collect 325,000 or something like that um you know as far as year-end stuff is concerned I look today um we have almost 11 million dollars in the bank right now because and in that uh was all the deposits that were made through Friday uh I know there's some some tax money waiting to go in today that probably hasn't been posted yet um in 20 days we're gonna have to pay the school districts all of the school taxes that we collected as of the due date so the same delinquency rate applies so um we're gonna have to end up paying the school somewhere north of 10 million dollars in 20 days uh and then between what we have left over and then when we do our borrowing for the capital projects that you authorized at the last meeting um I think we'll be going into 2021 with a little bit more than a million dollars cash on hand which is about normal for us to to move into the next the next this year so I think we're going to be okay on a cash flow basis but um anyway that's where we're at right now and one way or the other we have to make a decision on if we're going to impose penalty if so how much and if so when so consideration for pushing it off until the end of the year is that something the board's willing to think about or do Nat do you have it looks like you might be contemplating options I haven't fully formed my thoughts yet yeah no worries yeah I mean I think uh in the end of the day I want to make sure we're offering some kind of relief for people that are impacted by COVID um you know delaying the penalty lets you know the people that it wasn't COVID related avoid a penalty but if that means that it gives people time I think I would probably be supportive of the second recommendation which I want to make sure is clear is after the December day it goes to eight percent and one percent is that what's being suggested well that that's your choice so I think that you can do what you want I think I think pushing it off until the end of December makes good sense especially because there's some speculation that people might be kind of wondering or figuring that we're going to delay it um and unless you so you can make a motion that just puts off the penalty to the end of December and it's the eight percent it would have to go to one and a half percent I think right away in in January um that's both for you saying you had a concern that some people may have paid on time via credit card because of the timing and there's a three percent cost to them that if we do this December push we don't pick you know basically it potentially forced them to spend an extra three percent where if we did the four percent your original recommendation maybe those specific people wouldn't feel as you know hurt by the decision to extend it after the date and then they wouldn't have been forced to pay with a credit card and I don't think we want to be in the business of refunding credit card fees I think that is a potentially a big mistake so yeah I don't I don't want to do that either I mean I personally I'm I'm supportive of the four the original recommendation then just so the people that did pay with a credit card feel like there was a reason to pay on time um first a delay of a month and making the people that paid three percent really feel like maybe we hurt them by doing that is is my thought don't want to feel slighted right mark yeah I just I I hate the idea that you know you you forced yourself to make a payment on time try to do the to the right thing and someone can pay a month later and not have any extra cost beyond their bill um and these people put it on a credit card because they felt obligated to to to pay their obligation to the town so I'm supportive of the four percent reduction I don't I don't think I'm supportive of the delay that's why I kind of threw out the four percent you know uh you could sign up for payment plan you'd still get stuck with four percent so that those people that you know for whatever reason used a credit card wouldn't feel slighted but maybe that just gets into too much difficulty because I it's hard it's hard right now to tie any decision with regard to interest to a payment plan I mean Karen's got a lot of administrative work to do over the next little while and then as you said Chris when December 31st comes that's when we uh can you know after December 31st passes that's when we they all become technically delinquent and we have uh means to go forward for collection and our first step in that collection process is the offering of a payment plan so I get it I think that um if the board is leaning towards keeping the deadline and making it four percent I think that's a reasonable compromise and I think that it will take the wing out of the sales of some of the people who might want to complain because it's usually nine percent you know the people that that we're opening mail today and tomorrow uh normally we have to tell them it's nine percent and if we tell them this year hey it's four percent um I think even those people will go away a little happier than they normally are I don't like the idea of it all all going to the December 31st due date because one I don't think that's providing any COVID relief to people uh people who are hurting but giving them an extra month and a half doesn't really help them cutting the amount in half at least helps them in some way and again it doesn't hurt as much the people who went and took their charge cards out and paid the extra three percent so I think what you presented or initially is probably the best way to use a four percent I don't think you know again you know the person who's just delinquent and we'll we'll complain they'll probably be happy just getting you know paying half as much so I'm very much in favor of the four percent deal even if Katie I see you're nodding Nat or Katie I know you guys haven't really spoken on this if you guys are fine moving forward with Bill's original recommendation um we can go ahead and I think make a motion on this unless you did you have anything else you want to say am I talking okay um you knew yourself again Katie I was gonna say I am in support of Bill's original recommendation I'm good to call the question okay I'll make a motion then to uh what do we do authorized bill to uh change the late change the change the late fee presented from eight percent to four percent with no penalty in it or no interest until the first of the year or 2020 only and I had one other question are you gonna make the interest until the first of the year I I suggested until April 1st so I just want to be clear it doesn't matter to me but that's right too yeah my original recommendation was April do you want to make that change Chris that April the mic issues I think that was a yes I saw you nodding um do I have a second I second that any uh Chris you said you had some further discussion you had a question yeah I mean this is all in lieu of being what happens now and the first of the year um COVID heading in the direction that it's headed but we still have we still have the option to make changes later on as well if if in other words if things get so ridiculous with this COVID that you know economics of it becomes really unbearable for some people what happens at that point yeah you won't you won't have the ability to revisit this because clearly you know um if this motion passes tomorrow Karen's gonna push a button that applies four percent penalty to everybody who was late this year and then we'll talk about interest for the 2021 sometime in the February March timeframe um special considerations that have been given to the select boards I think are limited right now basically through town meetings so you know you'll have the option to uh you know allow votes on budgets and the like to be by Australian ballot for town meeting that I think the legislature will have to they're going to be playing it by year of course and if this doesn't get any better for quite some time they may leave these provisions in place for for next year I think they want to try to be allow as much flexibility as possible without having the burden of having to call special town meetings but right now I think this is limited to the 2020 2021 through uh through town meeting and then after that it reverts back to the way it was I think the the thing that you'll have to think about moving forward um is that you know when you make these decisions we've already had people in the past kind of question why is an eight percent penalty necessary it's punitive you know so you've got it now there it may it may generate conversation in the future um if we decide to have um Australian balloting for our for our town meeting the law reverts back to the way it was but I would suspect that we'll have some people pushing let's do this permanently but you know those are just conversations that we'll have to have but I think the genie's out of the bottle so to speak and there will be some people who push for more permanency in these uh in these decisions that you're making but for now I think this is the right one for this time for a penalty in interest okay we have a motion that's been made in second in uh any further discussion all those in favor please say hi all right okay great thank you thank you just as an aside I just have a comment to make I think it's it's a really testament to our citizenry that we only had $743,000 in delinquency I am not belittling that that's a small amount but to be quite honest I was expecting a much higher delinquency so I think our water burry people stepped up and Bill we're going to move to managers items discuss COVID-19 resurgence and impact on municipal operations yeah so I think all of you are well aware that the governor on Friday extended the state of emergency with more restrictions than there have been of late through December 15th um and um in that um I I sent you an excerpt of several that were in the governor's uh executive order the other day and there's one section uh I don't remember the letter right now because I don't have it in front of me but there was one section that basically said uh businesses including municipalities should try to limit in person uh in person uh business as much as possible army talked to you already about the fact that uh on Friday after the governor's directive was made she immediately moved back to just curbside only um library services so nobody's coming in the building we on the municipal side had opened the building a little bit more than it had been earlier in the year when we were closed completely um except for staff we have been allowing appointment only um visits into the municipal building I'm thinking based on a zoom meeting that I had uh at 6 30 tonight at 6 o'clock tonight right before this meeting that um I think we're probably gonna revert for the time being to the building is just close to the public I'm gonna have a staff meeting tomorrow I'll work with staff and as many people as practicable will be asked to work from home I'm not planning to lay anybody off right now you know that would be a difficult thing to do and still provide the services that we need but I can't rule that out in the future if this persists right now there's no uh you know cares acts that if you lay people off you know there's no no supplement to the to the state benefits that you get so if people get laid off right now it's a definite loss of income for them and that isn't the primary concern of the municipality we have to be concerned first about the taxpayers but I will be slow to lay off people um and and actually cut hours if that can be avoided I will avoid that we did have some of the public bodies who are moving back towards meeting in person the planning commission for instance uh the cemetery commissioners met in person really last week that will be stopped for the time being the the governor's office and dr levine at the health department are really trying to restrict gatherings from multiple households the meeting that I was on tonight was called by secretary of administration like smith and dr levine was was on there as well they had invited washington county state senators and representatives along with municipal officials to take part in this meeting things in washington and orange county are pretty dicey right now and they are trying to put a cap on it so this does not uh the situation in these two counties don't spread to the other 12 counties in the state um in the past two weeks there are 233 new cases in washington and orange county combined um there are 50 situations in washington and orange county in a situation as dr levine described it is not quite an outbreak but um a situation of great concern where there are small core groups where there are one or more cases reported they reported that the four seasons rest home in northfield has a significant outbreak in their uh in their population um they are pretty certain that it was a staff member who brought it in uh they're pretty much closed and the only contact that the that the patients if you will have with the outside world right now are with staff who come and go from home so uh they are very concerned about this situation uh dr levine places the blame squarely on uh parties and social gatherings that happened at halloween in particular um and then of course we we've all read about the uh the outbreak that started at the skating rink in montpelier and it was not at the rink itself and people playing the sports it was the people that were together and they were they were socializing uh uh afterwards and uh not in safe circumstances i did ask um not not in the form of recommending but i did ask whether there was any consideration being given in these counties to clamp down on restaurants or other public facilities a little bit more than the state directive that we all got on friday bars are closed restaurants can be open mark knows this they have to see only people from the same household can go into a restaurant together they've got um pretty stringent rules as far as seating is concerned and and dr levine said you know uh right now we think restaurants can be open and be open safely provided that the the uh the restaurant management um imposes the limits and the restrictions that we put on and they said if if everybody behaved as if they were in a restaurant when there were no social gatherings we wouldn't have this problem so people going into a restaurant being adequately spaced apart being with only people that they're in the same household with and wearing masks they believe that allowing these businesses to continue to operate is well within the safety factor but uh there's a strong concern about people who are gathering with friends uh for those of you who are deer hunters i i hadn't heard this but uh if you go to the deer camp and you go with somebody who is outside your household uh you're supposed to quarantine 14 days when you come back from deer camp just as if you went to to new york or massachusetts so uh they're trying to get that word out so um anyway i think given out of this uh you know their goals are to keep the health system functioning they're concerned that the emergency rooms and the beds at cvh are starting to fill up at a pace that's faster than that they would like uh they believe keeping schools open is reasonable and can be done safely provided the schools um follow all of the directives that they have been issued but uh if there is uh an outbreak and they said you know we don't get too concerned if one person in the school gets sick uh they're told to go home and quarantine unlike a few weeks ago when one person from a school got sick they just had that person quarantine the rest of their family was able to kind of come and go as they pleased now if a family member gets sick and and is asked to to stay home from school uh if they have brothers or sisters uh those kids won't be able to go to school either but their goal is to keep the health system functioning properly keep schools open and as best as possible keep workplaces open but um i think given all that we're gonna revert to more or less being close to the public at the municipal facilities we'll be getting this information out uh barb was on the call as well i'm sure she's working we'll get information out to front porch forum uh secretary smith promised that they would try to get a template that provides consistent information out to all municipalities so that we can all push that same information out together so anyway um yeah just a clarification we have been close to the public all along yeah except we're open by appointment and i'm not sure to the resident to the public not professionals right title searches and lawyers are coming by appointment right but the public has been coming by appointment too of late i think there's been people coming into the zoning offices there's been there's been people in the building i think we're gonna revert for the time being back to the way it was in uh in april and may is what i'm saying so are you saying we will be asking us to do this for a couple of weeks you know hopefully this doesn't have to extend for months and months but uh you know probably between now and in the middle of december are you saying we won't be taking any appointments i mean i don't know yet carla okay i just want to understand and i'm not sure everyone saw but i saw i did check and it's on me in a special site but the coven pop-up that's now in town um right what are great nuances so yeah the uh the dr levine indicated that they are working now to uh get 14 permanent new new permanent testing sites up the watery site is one of them uh the watery site is not an on-demand site you do need an appointment to go there but um they're trying to make testing uh much more accessible throughout the the state and these two counties in particular right now so you know i'll keep you posted as best as possible but i think that for the foreseeable future we're going to have to continue to meet by zoom when we meet i was hoping that maybe by this time we would be back meeting together but that's not going to be the case for another couple weeks anyway um i don't know if you have the answer to this or even inkling i know neighboring towns and their highway departments if things go keep going negatively um they're looking at rearranging highway department schedules um and possibly like cutting back on help is this something that you've been thinking of if it's a possibility because with winter we can't really cut back you know 20 hours because say if there's a major snow storm or something like that so just wondering if that's on your radar yeah i nothing definitive yet katie i did talk to bill woodruff the public works director on friday just to start thinking about what we might have to do uh for the time being we're leaving things as they are in the public works departments um we'll be encouraging them to spend as little time together as possible you know we're we're moving pretty much past the time of year where there's lots of activities where you know they're building something or working on maintaining a project where they have to be working shoulder to shoulder um and certainly you know in snow storms they'll be pretty isolated they're all in their own vehicles but yeah we're we're thinking about it but i don't have any uh definite directive right now to share all right any other questions on this topic or we'll move to um can someone remind me what the addition was i didn't write it down mike i think you would add yeah it just out of curiosity because we're now starting to receive to receive the water barrier reader i almost said record but that's in the past uh as our little cat she has she has the paper in front of us i'm looking at that being you know that's going to be the most red source of information in town other than you know you know the valley paper is is a good paper they've been doing a yeoman's job the times argus really doesn't cover that heavily waterbury but i think bill there there are paper of record technically right yeah the times argus is our paper of record right now um lisa is on the car um lisa do you have the capability of um printing legal notices as and and the like you know printing agendas uh in particular you know drb or planning commission type stuff public notices i i'm psyched to hear that everybody is has seen this and kate thanks for having one handy it was our first one and this is a project with the times argus so they their advertising department can probably talk with you about how they would want to do that i don't know if they would switch the contract to be um ads just landing in the reader and not the times argus i think that you would probably still want to have the ability to put ads in a daily paper because this is just a weekly sometimes there's there's there's occasions that come up that you need to have the flexibility to put something in sooner rather than later right um yeah so we we've always when the waterway record was in place um that was our paper of record but the times argus was the alternate publish all of our legal notices in the waterway record but on occasion there were times that because of certain deadlines and how long before meeting something had to be published if that was the case we would put it in the times argus so right i guess the question is and i can reach out to the people at the times argus um you know can we have things published in the reader if we do that is that it is that at a lower rate or you know um the times argus and and you know i subscribe to the times argus and think it's a really good paper they have a lot of local coverage um but compared to the waterway record it was it's very expensive for for these legal notices right now it's our only only alternative so we can read to them um and uh i don't think you should change the paper of record at this point if we can get it in the reader we will um but i think the times argus is the best for right now until we get some further information not changing that it's probably a good idea it was more to bring up a discussion on you know to look at the future because i think more people would get value by seeing it in the reader because it's going to come into everyone's mailbox i did shoot an email over at the beginning of the meeting when that item came up i i sent a message over to the publisher who i've been working with today on deadline stuff and he sent me the name of the person that um you should probably talk with on the advertising end who could probably um you could discuss this with if you wanted to know what prices would be or how that would work um this is all a new thing for them too so you just you know that to me lisa yeah i'll be happy to thank you yeah thanks everybody thank you thanks um unless there's anything else for this evening i will take a motion one last thing yeah um currently you want to chime in about orders we really need orders to get signed last week i think they weren't signed at all so that has been the case but they came back in record speed today oh good great i was i was quick on the draw bill today why don't you take responsibility to try to be the one that does it yeah we're only waiting till thursday or friday to get checks out to our vendors and taxpayers my problem is when i'm a camp or something like that i don't have access to any scanners or anything like that okay can you remind can that be digitally signed because i think that's a big problem for me it can be on your iphone you can um sign it on your iphone and send it back i try to do it if i see it on my lunch break thank you thank you all right i'll take a motion motion to adjourn give it to katie now would you like to second i would like to second all those in favor please say hi hi hi good night everybody thank you all thank you for achieving you too