 Confirming that as chair of the Rochester Select Board, I find that due to the state of emergency declared by Governor Scott as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and pursuant to addendum six to executive order 01-20 and act 92, this public body is authorized to meet electronically in accordance with act 92. There's no physical location to observe and listen contemporaneously to this meeting. However, in accordance with the temporary amendments to the open meeting law, I confirm that we are providing public access to the meeting using the Zoom platform. And you can access this platform either by going to the posted warnings around town, going to the town website or requesting a link from the town clerk. And there's still, everyone I see is pretty visible. Sometimes when it only shows up as a phone number, we ask someone to identify themselves. So we have record of who is all in the meeting, but I think that it's all pretty obvious here. And before we start, does anyone have any additions to the agenda tonight? Going once, going twice? All right, everybody's hungry. Nope. Not adding anything to the agenda. I will make a statement. Okay. All right. So first we have the meetings from, or the minutes from the January 11th select board meeting. And I've read those and they looked, let me add, let Jeffrey in here. I've got a little something to say about those minutes, Zoom. Yep. I just want to, I want to make it clear that it's not the select board's responsibility to seek out the Rochester Planning and Zoning Board for the school subdivision. That's the school board's job. And down in the minutes for our executive session, it just says select board recommend meeting with Rochester Planning and Zoning. We recommend that the school board meets with them, not us. So I just want to make that clear in our minutes. There's several places in there where it kind of states that maybe we're responsible for that. And I want to make sure that that's not the case. All right. So you're going to move to accept the minutes with those corrections. I just want to put a line in there to say that the Rochester Select Board is not responsible for the subdivision of the school. That's what I'd like to do because there's several indicators. It would be too hard to go back through the minutes to pick out everywhere where that might show up. So I really think that we just need a line in there that clarifies it for us. All right. As an amendment to the minutes. And there's just a couple of small typos where it says June called the at 6.02. It should be the meeting at 6.02. And under Jones updates, the third line down says speaking would be trans the work they will provide. Just a couple of typos. All right. Now, is it accurate that what we say about the town budget there too? I thought our budget has all the appropriations in it. The, that's, it's not the number for the budget is set and then the appropriation. So the total is if, with all the appropriations pass, is that Nancy, do you want to speak to that? What we have listed on the warning is only the budgeted items, the appropriations, including the library, Bertha, and what's the third one? Recycling. Recycling will be in addition to that million dollar figure. Okay. I was under the impression with my conversation with Greg the other day that everything was in there. Even all the articles. No. So Nancy, the appropriations that are not included are the library, the recycling, and what was the other one? The ambulance. We are voting separately on the library request, the WERVA request, and the recycling request. There are three items. Plus, we will also be voting on all of those social service appropriation requests. And also reserve funds. So social service appropriation requests and reserve funds, thank you. It hasn't changed for many other year. Okay, well, that's what I thought, but I just wanted to make sure I had it correct, thank you. Okay. All right, so I moved to approve those minutes with the stated corrections, the IFO corrections, and adding the sentence that it's not the select board's responsibility to approach the planning board about subdivision. I second that. All in favor? All right. And then we have the minutes for the special select board meeting on January 21st, which addressed a couple of issues. One about the change in the sidewalk maintenance contract and then a letter of support for the big town projects application for the better places grant. I saw there were some corrections in the recording of that. In the middle, the improvements for the streetscape and helping to find the sidewalk between the gallery building and heading down Pevine Drive. It's heading down route 100 towards Pevine Drive, not on Pevine Drive. That's one change that should be there. We're going to go another that said south. Isn't it heading north? And on the direction you're headed. I don't know which way you're going. Yeah, yeah. I think that was pretty clear if you're headed from the gallery. You're heading north if you're from at the gallery. It says, if you start from the bottom and head south towards the old Simpson building, so that should be north. Oh, that's what I wrote down in the article that'll go in this week, going north. Yeah, okay. That's what threw me that north. Yep. Okay. So any other corrections on those minutes? Then I'd move to approve those as corrected. Second that. And all in favor? Aye. Okay. Alrighty. Minutes. We don't have any guests. I guess we're all guests. So Joan, what have you got for updates for us tonight? There you go. Not much really. I'm spending a lot of time doing FEMA paperwork. Same, same. Same, same. Yeah. FEMA. That's my, that's what I'm doing right now. Yeah. How did you, did you talk to the state at all about the paving when we walked through the village there, Joan, at all? Yeah, I sent last week, was it? Yeah, last week full report to Chris Bump, who I assume was going to distribute it to all those different people on his previous email in V-trans. I haven't heard back from him. I guess I think the next step is for them. Some of those people from V-trans to go and do their own site inspection. And hopefully we'll hear back from them at some point. It may not be soon. I think just everything at the state level is moving a lot slower than normal. But eventually we should hear back from him. Excuse me, Joan. So the full report you sent to Chris Bump was about the site inspection in the village. Was that it? Yeah, it was a walk through that Frank, Puder and I did just to delineate where the trouble spots were. OK, thank you. All right, thank you, Joan. Tony Goopy, you're here tonight? Yes. The library still is doing porch pickup. And you can hear me. Yeah, we're going to have a trustee position open. Lynn Maltz is retiring, resigning. And we didn't make the cut off, I guess, for the ballot. But Sandy Lincoln will run as a write-in. OK, so she's going to run as a write-in. I guess we just make sure to make that known on our informational meetings. Yeah, that would be nice. Yeah. Yes, thank you. OK. All right, we've had terms of the highway. We had that last sloppy storm. We had had a couple of trucks off the road, but no significant damage, luckily. So we're, I guess, ready for the next storm. It's supposed to come tomorrow night, right? Did you guys see the picture of the UPS truck? I did see that, yeah. I asked the UPS driver the other day if that was him, and he smiled and shook his head and said it was the other guy. Well, I talked to Diane White today about something else, and she told me that she had cut the picture out of the paper. Because, and that same UPS driver dropped off a package at her house today, and she showed him the picture and said, look, you made the paper, and he was all excited. Yeah, that's a pretty, pretty slippery storm, yeah. I think it's going to be colder for this next one. It shouldn't be so wet, yeah. But we'll find out, yeah. Don't have anything on utilities. The new business, I guess this is really the biggest topic now is how we're going to navigate the town, the non-town meeting or the cyber town meeting. So, Frank, do you want to talk about that? We're going to have scheduled two informational meetings. We have dates for those. One will be our regular select board meeting, which is Monday, February 22. And the other one will be Thursday, February 25, both starting at 6 PM. Thursday, February 25, and both at 6 PM. And they're both Zoom, right? Yes, yeah. And there is an agenda, an informational meeting procedure for the remote Zoom meeting that Nancy put together, which we can post throughout the village and make it apparent on how to get into the town meeting and all of that. Also, the ballots have been completed and have been sent to Spaulding Press. And it's a 32 article, 31 articles in one question, or 33, I guess, with one question and the rest are articles. 33 articles in one question, you said? OK, thank you. Yeah, 32 articles in one question. Of those 32 articles, 11 of them are for elected officials. And two are to change the clerk and treasurer to three-year term. And 18 or 19 are articles devoted to budget and money issues. Nancy, something you want to say? Can I just comment on the informational meetings? We were advised by the town attorney that the informational meetings are strictly for financial discussions, not for candidate discussion. So I think that these candidates for positions are going to have to be out there making sure that people are aware. Sandy wasn't the only one that did not get her consent form in. And these other people are going to have to get out there to get their write-ins in. But Jim Barlow said that this is not a candidate's forum. It is for discussion of the financial business of the town. And when you see the agenda for the meetings, you'll see that the candidates are not listed as financial. But they could be discussed at maybe the select board that follows after, right? Yes. Yeah, they could. So excuse me, am I correct that the regular select board meeting, Monday, February 22nd, will start out with the info meeting and then become regular select board meeting or vice versa? Yeah. Yeah, they'll start out with the informational meeting and then the select board meeting will follow it. All right, thank you. And you're right, Julie, that could be added to the agenda of the select board meeting to discuss them if candidates have statements they want to make. And that's on the Monday night meeting. And will invitations go out for that? Or how are you going to handle it? It's in the town report. It'll be posted all over town. I'll send it as a notification as well. It'll be on the web. It will be on the website. Yeah. With a link? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I can send the link out with a notification. Thank you, Julie. You're welcome. Should be interesting. Be a little anti-climactic, actually, to have the informational meetings and then just do a ballot at home. I mean, hopefully this is the only year we'll have to do that. Well, you don't have to do your ballot at home. You can go down to the school from 10 to 7 on Monday the 1st, which is the normal town meeting day. OK, so I should probably mention that that's your option. You can go to the school or you can put your ballot in the drop box at the town office. Is that how you would do it? Or would you mail it? I can't remember what we were going to do with the ones that if you didn't go down to the school. Julie, do you want to deal with it? It's just like the election. So you can request a ballot and I can either mail it or you can pick it up. You can come in and vote. You can drop off your ballot. It's just like the election was done. Right, OK, thank you. Yeah. The only thing that's different are the hours. And the hours will be from 10 to 7 so that they don't freeze down there. And so that's Monday the 1st you're doing it or Tuesday the 2nd, Monday? The first meeting is the first. OK, that's what I thought. All week first Monday. Yeah, OK. And what we should kind of you should also note that there is a school board vote on Tuesday. Yeah, he was supposed to be sending me some information about that. Hopefully he will. Thank you. All right. Pat, you said earlier that you had something that you wanted to talk about. Yes, on the subject of election procedures, the select board would like to practice transparency and provide a follow-up statement to concerns raised by Robert Franks in our September 28, 2020 select board. Robert has provided this statement to the select board in the town. I want to thank the town of Rochester, Vermont, for taking heed to the law of our state, your town and our voting district to make certain that proper voting station laws were put forth in the proper US way. With confidence, I trust that all boards of civil authorities in our voting district take responsibility to ensure their oath is responsible, knowledgeable, enduring, and abiding by the Vermont Constitution, our US Constitution, and our freedoms of speech. I just wanted to add a little comment that I'd like to thank the Rochester Board of Civil Authority for their multiple and continual efforts and meetings to keep our town government ahead of and compliant with the ever-changing laws related to the election process. It's almost been a moving target in this last year. And thank you so much for those of you that are out there on the Board of Civil Authority and for our point person, Frank, for guiding the way through this so that we stay compliant and the people our constituents are happy. Excuse me, Patty, I couldn't get that all down. Is there any way you could email me a little something about that, just so that I, or don't... Yep. I'm news at ourherald.com. You have my email. Thank you very much, Patty. I'm sorry, I wanted to make sure I get it in correctly. Yes. Thank you. All right, thank you, Pat. It's pretty slim agenda tonight. Is there anything else that anyone would like to talk about before we hit the spotlight? Has John come in to sign his contract yet, Julie? He's coming in tomorrow. Coming in tomorrow, yeah. He is, we need to make sure that he's going to shovel out the hydrants. There's a lot of them I noticed in the area. He just came and got the map of those this afternoon. Good, good from me. So he's off. Yeah, yeah. Great. Yeah, in fact, I think they started shoveling some of them out, but yeah. Terry, it spoke to me about it. And I wanted to make sure we... Yeah, especially with another strong comment. Yep. Thank you. All right. I have a comment. Yep. So it's just, some of you already know this, but this week I think we're gonna begin a fundraising project to raise money to build replacement structures at the school for the tents that couldn't hold the snow. So we're gonna start doing that this week. A donor in town has already given money for two of them, one for each school. So we're looking for money to raise another one here in Rochester and another one in Stockbridge. So Stockbridge will raise their own money and we're gonna raise one with the PTO. How much it costed one of us? I think it's about five grand. All right. Maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less. And they'll be assembled by volunteers with help with Greg and his people. This is Greg Ryan's structures made here in Rochester. I don't know how familiar you are with that, but we're gonna put up some videos and stuff on the fundraising site. So I'm just kind of alerting people that it's coming. Rob? Yeah. At some point, maybe I could, if you want, it took me to call more attention to this. I could write a little separate article about this if you wanna talk about it. That'd be great. In fact, I was gonna contact you about that and give you all the stuff. We're just finalizing the stuff this week. If you would like to do that, I'm working at home so you can call my home number. Oh, that's great, yeah. I'll send you some printed stuff or some text. Sure, all right, thank you very much. And as soon as the website is up, that'll have the pictures and videos and stuff on it. And I hope it happens this week. So thanks a lot for that. Next problem. Are they more temporary kind of thing, structures or are they permanent? You know, they're interesting because they can be temporary. You can put them up in a day, you can take them down in a day. They don't have a foundation, but if they're putting them up, they'll probably last for 50 years. They're made of timber and fireflies. Yeah. They're really very interesting structures. And he's been working with Cricket to make sure it clears state code for snow load and everything. So they're one, it's a wonderful project. And everybody will get an email with a link to the fundraising site. So, and this is about shelters for the COVID to get kids outdoors, but they'll continue to be in use after and when COVID goes away, hopefully COVID is going away. Yeah, yeah. When are they planning on putting that up, you know? You know, I think Greg's gonna be ready to put the first two up in a couple of weeks, say two or three weeks. And then we'll be raising money, both in Stockbridge and Rochester for the other two. And of course, however long it takes to raise the money, we'll determine how long those will go up. But he hopes to get a couple of them up within two or three weeks. He's building them now up at his shop in Brazil. All right. No, good. All right. Anything else, anyone? If not, thank you all for stepping out on this chilly evening. And I'll see you, see you around town, behind your mask. Yeah. Right. Good night all. Good night.