 So it is six o'clock, I know Don thought he might or might not join us tonight. So we'll go ahead and get started. But I'll watch the participant list to see if he's coming in. So it is Monday, May 3rd, 2021. We are at the Morton Slick Ward. We are meeting via Zoom again. And so we'll start off, we have general public comment tonight. We have a few guests. And then a fairly early adjournment depending on how things go. So we're gonna start now with general public comment. So if there's anyone that's joining us tonight for general public comment, come on off mute and share what you'd like to share, please. This is Craig, may I speak? Matt, Craig, yep, go ahead. Hi, so like word, Craig Ashkello, I live on Living Tree Lane, which is a new private road off Freeman Hill Road. Been here six years. And we have approved PUD or plan unit development with seven units from 2015. And while all the lots remain in the same place, it turns out that one driveway is ending up with three, serving three houses. So the zoning administrator, David came out and visited, I'll let him speak for himself, but I think to determine that, we need to create another private road here. So before you tonight should be an application with three of our top names. We have a homeowners association. So the HOA got together and did one of our first big decisions. And we came up with a list of our top three choices. I'll leave it there if you have any questions. And if I may, I pass the mic over to our new neighbor, Paige Finkelstein, who's a resident here in our plan unit development. Thank you, Tom. Yep, thank you, Craig. Paige, go ahead. Hi, I'm Paige, like Craig said, it's really nice to meet everyone. My husband and I are going to be one of the units off of this drive that we're hoping you'll approve our name choice to become a private road. So I'm just here to observe and show support. And it's really nice to see everyone. All right, well, thank you and welcome to town. Really a nice area up there. All right, any other general public comment before we move on? Right, let's see no one with their hand up were screaming in the background. We'll go ahead and move on the agenda. So we have Cheryl and she's here to talk about the validation and general resolution related to article seven, which was the sidewalk loan. So, Cheryl, if you want to come off mute, please and do share. You just text me and she's having, she can't hear the meeting. Okay. Technically technical difficulties. All right, so, well, she's trying to go ahead with that. Why don't we go ahead and let her fill with, she can come in and out and I can let her back in. I see that Tori is here from the school board. So why don't we just go ahead and we'll take 15 minutes, 15 or 20 minutes with Tori and then we'll pick up with Cheryl and she's available at that point. That's all right. It sounds like she's calling in. So our next guest tonight is Tori Smith. Welcome Tori. Tori is the select board that does the letter board chair, the school board chair for the Howard Union, unified district and based on what we heard last week or their last call, last select board meeting, there were some questions on the school board voting, revoting again with the merger with the seventh and eighth grades. So Tori has jumped on to just kind of give us an update, kind of what's going on. We hear lots of things read some things but this way it's coming right from someone who knows and then if we have a few questions, the board is welcome to go ahead and ask. But again, welcome Tori, thank you very much. So if you can just let us know what's coming up and maybe some reasons behind that and we can go from there. Sure, thanks. Thanks for having me tonight. It's nice to see you all. And also joining us is Tim Jones, who's the vice chair with me and we've been working together for a couple of months now and I'm just really excited about our collaborative efforts. Tim lives in Fauston and he's been on the board for I think this is the third year. So could you pepper me with a couple more questions so I have a little bit better sense of what I can tell you? Yeah, so I don't want to waste your time. Yeah, no, that's fine. So we understand that you guys, even if I'm wrong or as a board, we're going to be voting again to merge the CrossFit work students with the middle school students up at the Harwood High School and the timeline there. And just really the reasonings by that and just really what is the plan going forward with mergers or not and students changing just so that we can understand some, we're better equipped to support or not. Okay, I will try to answer and ask additional questions if I haven't covered enough bases. And Tim, feel free to jump in and contribute as well. So back in, I think it was December, the board voted to merge the seventh and eighth grades at CrossFit Brook in the fall of 2022. So a year from now or a little over a year from now, almost two years from the time it voted. And we have been frankly not doing much about it since then, partly because it's sort of, there wasn't much of a rush and we needed to sort of figure out, the next step we thought was to figure out what we would need to do as a district to be prepared for that. And in this case, the first big thing would be to make some facilities decisions. Would CrossFit Brook need an addition or not in order to have enough space for the students to thrive there? So that's actually where the board work has been focused and in January, the board put together sort of a list of requests of information and then basically in March, a report came up answering those questions. Okay, it would cost this much to do a two room addition, this much to do a four room, this much to do a six. You could do it using annexes, which are like temporary buildings or you could do it using a permanent addition. And these are the impacts on students. This would mean that, there'd be plenty of room for everybody. This would mean that there'd be plenty of room for regular classrooms, but maybe we would need a music teacher to float around the school, that kind of thing. So that's the information we've been looking at. And the goal is to make a decision about that facility's decision in the end of May. And then after that, the principals and staff will know what size space they're working with when it will happen and they can start planning around that. And that's when the real detail work starts happening. And that won't be carried out by the board, that would be carried out by the people in the schools and communicating with parents and families as well to make sure that their concerns and questions were being answered in that. After the new board was elected in a town meeting day, in the first meeting, a motion was made to reconsider the merger of the seventh and eighth grade at CrossFit Brook. And so that has gone on the table, well, not gone on the table, it is on the agenda for the same day as this other facilities vote. So my prediction is that we will start that meeting with a vote about to merge or not to merge. And then if we vote to continue the merger, then we will take up the facilities question and continue moving forward. In terms of why that was brought up, I don't know the exact reasoning behind the motion. I think actually Lisa may have been the person who made the motion, so she may have been able to fill that in for you. I do, I know that these decisions in our group have often been not enormous majorities, they're often 50, 40 or 60, 40. And we did have several new members to the board. And it seems like maybe they had different position than previous board members. So it is a possibility to overturn the past work of the board. So we'll see what happens at the end of May. Does that answer your question? One thought I had was I have occasionally seen in the newspaper references to changes at Mortown that are on the docket for the board and for the community. And I just wanted to say that that is not something that's on the docket at this time. About two years ago, the board did develop a long-term plan, but the plan was really like, this is the direction we think we're gonna go, but we're gonna need to finalize each of these decisions. And so as you probably know, that plan had sort of three components. The one was merging the seven and eight across it, one was moving the fifth and sixth graders at Mortown over to cross it, and one was the possibility of closing faced in. But none of those are final decisions. And at this time, there is no discussion or agenda planning around moving the Mortown fifth and sixth graders over. So nothing's happening behind the scenes in front of the scenes anywhere about that at this time. You must have questions. Or Tim, maybe you have additions. I'm sorry, I was on mute Tim. Did you want to add anything? No, no, I think that really encapsulates what we've been doing just to accentuate that we've had facilities committees on both the high school and the middle school as well. So I think the work that we have been doing as representative of the board, even though there's been turnover here in March, this really started probably last summer. We started the year speaking about this, obviously put it on the back burner some for all things COVID related, but certainly at the end of the year picked up steam. So I think it's been a broad group of board members working on this up to and including folks that have joined the board recently. So again, I think it's really focused on facilities. And I think, sorry, I'm at a good point of the longer term planning aspects of this. Certainly, I think the seven, eight decisions been on the table since before I joined. So again, the longer term elements of Mortown and Fason certainly are conversations that need to be had into the future. But I think everybody's focused on this component of it right now. Thanks, and Tori, thanks for that update. And certainly it's nice to hear that, certainly in the near future that Mortown is, there's no plans to shuttle these students. But with that decision to move the seventh and eighth, so you're looking at what the facility changes would be and you'll learn that later this month. What is the ultimate goal though? Why do you feel that you need to merge those students, I guess is the question. Is there any, what's the big impetus behind that? Each board member will have different reasons if they're choosing to support either side. This process really started a couple years ago after a difficult budget season where we were looking at a number of factors that are really driving the property taxes up pretty rapidly. So a lot of the property taxes, I'm not sure if it's as complicated for town budgets as it is for the school budget, but we put together a certain, we have control of our certain set of numbers, but then the state actually controls a huge number of the sort of multipliers and dividers that are going to create our tax rate. So if we look at what's happening in our district and how that's playing out in the tax rate because of the state formula, things like declining enrollment, which have been sort of happening across our district, not in each town, but have as a whole across our district been happening consistently for 10 or 15 years now. And it is actually happening through almost all of Vermont, almost all of New England, even all of the Northeast. Like this is not a problem of our districts explicitly, but it is a problem in our district. Declining enrollment basically drives our per student costs up and the per student cost is one of the major factors in the tax rate. So that's the declining enrollment also sort of, it's tricky because you don't just lose like 30 kids in one school and now you can drop a class. What happens typically is, you know, you lose two or three kids in each school, which at the elementary school level doesn't necessarily such a big deal, but when you lose two or three kids from each school and we have, you know, five feeding elementary schools, that's going to be 10 to 15 kids in each graduating class in high school. And so suddenly that's like, that's a substantive number of kids, right? So anyways, it feels to me like one of the things that's happened is these little drops that are coming out of the elementary school populations are then hitting the high school in a pretty detrimental way, which then has historically before we were united, it was more obvious because the high school budget would have to make these huge cuts every year, but the local, the elementary schools wouldn't have to, because they just have these little drips, but Harvard would have these drop lets, I don't know, or they'd lose a quarter cup instead of a drop. So we were seeing declining enrollment and we were seeing also when the district merged, we received a pretty great tax benefit for five years. So the first year we were going to get 10 cents off our property tax, the next year was eight cents, next year six cents. So we were really insulated even for the last four or five years from our rising taxes by this tax incentive that we had. Well, this coming year will be the last year that we have it. So one of the things the board could see is that even though we haven't had to raise taxes very much in the last couple of years, we're almost done with that tax incentive. And now we're going to have to actually cover our community every bit of the tax rate increase. And so we were looking at almost like a little kind of cliff that we were going to fall off of. And that year that the tax or the budget year before we came up with the motion that really started all this, we had looked at cutting, I think it was just $300,000 from, it was probably a $38 million budget then, which doesn't seem like very much, but suddenly we're looking at maybe either cutting foreign language in the elementary schools or cutting all the behavioral, we had just hired a bunch of basically specialists who could try to work with kids before they needed, like kids who were on the cusp, maybe not quite special ed, but they weren't thriving. So could we bring in a specialist who could try to work with those kids individually, help support them, get a little extra growth that year and allow them to stay thriving instead of having, I mean, we hope that all children thrive in our special education, but if we could just kind of keep them thriving and mainstream that felt like an even better solution and just to make sure every kid was getting what they needed. So we were looking at having to cut that suddenly. So a $300,000 cut, for example, that's for teachers. So we kept seeing that every year, we kept trying to plug these little holes, plug these little holes. And it was like, we were just eroding programs slowly. And that's a terrible feeling for schools. It's a terrible feeling for districts. So we said, basically, we need to take a more holistic look at what's going on, how we're spending money, where it's going, what resources are being, how they're being allocated. And the other, of course, a huge thing that's been on people's minds for almost a decade now is the need for a bond at Harwood. So Harwood is a 50 or 60 year old building. And although it has been actually incredibly maintained by our district and our facilities folks, it's still a pretty old building. It has original HVAC, it has original PAs. Like you can't get an announcement to go through the whole building at once, which is that's not a safe, optimal environment in this moment. We have leaky roofs, we have, oh, sorry, I'm getting some kind of feedback. We have asbestos in the lab tables and the flooring. We have about $20 million in essential repairs that have to happen. These are not luxury repairs. So one of the things that we also knew was coming down the pipe we've got. So we've got declining student enrollment. We've got this tax incentive that we're gonna lose. And we know we need to get a bond to fix the high school, which is gonna be another increase in taxes. So the board just realized we have to take a look and kind of put everything on the table. And let's see if we can find some ways to kind of use our resources a little more efficiently and still deliver the great education that we believe in and we count on. So that started this whole like analysis and we set up lists of questions we needed to know, not just enrollment, but building costs, class distribution, class sizes. And we kind of looked at all these pieces of the puzzle and that's where we kind of came up with the plan. So it is funny that money is often the thing that starts a conversation. But at every step of the way, the conversation has always been about money and outcomes, not just money. And when we look at this middle school merger, actually money has barely been on the table in our recent conversations. It's been a lot about, well, what's the programming gonna be like when we do it? Is it gonna be just as good? Is it gonna be better? We've seen some inequities between the two middle schools. Harwood and Crosset do not offer the same opportunities for their students. They're not necessarily better, one better than the other, but they're not the same. We've seen a pretty significant exodus from Harwood Middle School over to Crosset Brook Middle School which has been kind of pushing Crosset at the seams at the same time that it's like asphyxiating Harwood a little. So, all these things have led the board toward this path and down this path. I know that's a long-winded answer, but it's like such a complicated ecosystem that people are trying to navigate and plan around. No, I think that was a really good answer. And I think something everyone needs to hear. And I think like I said, we hear drips of it and drips of what these plans and mergers are and what the value is to our communities. So, certainly having you here to explain a little of that and some of the motivations behind it. Let me ask some of the other board members. We have four or three other board members here tonight. John, Ray or Callie, do you have any questions? For Tori or Tim, we have a few more minutes before. We need to run with them. I have a question. Thank you, Tori and Tim, for showing up tonight. Mine is more of a logistics question, I think. It sounds like you're gonna vote next month on the merger again and then the facilities. It just seems like to me that you would want to know the cost of the facility improvements before you would vote on the merger. Can you, and I know you've touched upon it, that it's not all about the money, but it seems like that's a pretty important factor in deciding on how you would vote. Could you just explain that a little bit further to me in the whole sequence of things? Sure. To some degree, the sequence is goofy because the last time the board made a decision about this, the decision was that we're merging. And then the next thing the board decided was now figure out how we're gonna do that. This new thing about whether we're gonna merge on or not is an add-on. It's not the will of the board not to merge. The will of the board is still to merge until we hear otherwise. So that's just to sort of, that's to acknowledge that this process is awkward. This week, Tim and I are putting together an agenda and an outline for a discussion which will take a closer look at the numbers. This report that came out in March actually does have, it has cost information. It doesn't have savings information in it. So I did resurrect some savings information from about a little over a year ago. And the savings a year ago for this move was predicted to be about $700,000 a year. That's almost 10 teachers a year. So if we can cut $700,000 out of the budget, that's like not having to cut 10 teachers out of the budget. Does that kind of make sense? Because we can save all that money without cutting programs to our kids. But there will be costs associated with a building expansion. And I think what you'll see in our, it'll come out in our leadership packet this week which comes out on Friday. And I actually strongly advise you to just always take a look, not just at our agenda, but this report that Tim and I put out before every meeting, because it really gives you a sense of sort of the between the lines of the agenda. You know, you guys as select board members, you of course know how to read your own agenda and understand what's really gonna happen at the meeting. But probably some of your community members haven't kind of learned exactly what that implies. So Tim and I make this report to try to be really clear about what's gonna happen and what it's gonna be like. So this week I really do hope to let people dig into seeing the savings opportunities, which this is all very rough, right? We're not, these are not, these are just rough to give you a sense of the scale and to look at the costs depending on if we do temporary, if we do permanent, you know, I even, I'm pretty sure I've got to run my models by the finance director before they get publicized. But I think I've been able to create a model that shows, okay, if we pay for the temporary one for three years and at the same time we start paying on the bond, this is what it's gonna cost every year. So I think that might be the kind of information you're talking about, right? Does that sound right? And so we'll have a chance to dig into that this week or it'll actually be sorry on the 12th before we have this meeting on the 28th. And we had provided some sort of big numbers, but I think it was hard to read it in a kind of intuitive sense and really be able to see how it all comes together. So we're getting there. Okay, well, thank you. So that's very good. I have to thank you very much. Yeah. So Tori, do you mind sending maybe Sasha when you're sending out your agenda, send her the agenda in your little piece so we could, is that something you could do? Maybe I could ask Sasha, what do you get from us typically? Cause it's in the board packet every month. So if you get that, it is in that. Is it in that? Yes. I believe Sherilyn gets it as the question. So maybe Sherilyn can forward to you. So basically what happens is the front page of the packet is the agenda and then hopefully every month, the next page or two are the leadership report. And that also always includes links to, say we're having a discussion about the middle school. So like in our last week's report, we sort of said, this is what we're gonna talk about. And by the way, here are links to the relevant materials. And so it's a pretty easy way to get caught up to the materials that we're using, the resources that we're using and get a sense of how the discussion is gonna be framed. Not what people are gonna say, but how it'll be. Sure. Now that would be good. And Sherilyn in the future, yeah, maybe you could pass that to Sasha and she could send it out to the board. Although. Does that, and does that sound like what you're receiving, Sherilyn, the packet? I do not recall receiving any packets every week. I know we'll get the agendas, but I don't know. Oh, so you just get a one page thing. Okay. I'm happy to ask Shannon to, or Shannon and Laura to add you guys to that list. I don't see any problem with that, if they can add you to the agendas list. That sounds good. Now I like the idea of your explanation kind of between the lines. Yeah. I don't wanna do it, but. Right. I think some weeks it takes us 10 to 15 hours or maybe not 15, but it can be a huge investment of time. But boy, our meetings lately are so full that it feels like if we don't lay that groundwork, it's very hard to feel like we're really doing a thoughtful job with what we're considering. Yeah. Without many board members, it's difficult to let everyone have their time if it's really about type of stuff. Thanks, John. Did you have any questions or Callie? Yeah. I do. Hi, Tari and Tim. Good seeing you both again. And I was just wondering the other night at the board meeting, you were talking about whether to add two, four, six and whether they'd be permanent or annex and so on. And I'm just wondering, are you considering the pandemic and the fact that there are just so many unknowns going forward? Who knows in the future? I mean, the governor's done such a great job in Vermont. Who knows in the future, it might be the recommendation that class sizes be a lot smaller than they are now with social distancing and everything else. We just don't know what's going on. So I just am curious if that's come into play at all in terms of your discussions. Tim, I've been dominating. Would you like to take this one or would you like me to just keep going? You know, you're on a roll. Okay. Okay. Social distancing and the future of the district. This isn't unknown. I will tell you that I personally have a fear that this is our first pandemic and not our last, but I also feel like I can't go through life planning on living pandemic after pandemic after pandemic, right? Like how could we do that? If it turns out that social distancing becomes something that we have to plan around all the time, it does seem like districts all across Vermont will have to rethink a lot of things. And also what I have seen this year and last year is that when the districts were expected to pivot and pivot and pivot and to hire new staff in order to provide a different level of service or a different style of service to deal with the pandemic. The state has provided money for us to do that. So, John, I think it's fair to expect that if indeed, we continue to live in this semi-apocalyptic moment that we will have to be needing funding from the state to do that. The other thing actually is that for instance, right now we are able to do three-foot spacing with masks in our schools. It is working and the spread in our schools has been almost nil. So the other thing we've learned is that these protocols really work. They have been a lot of work. It has been a huge amount of effort for our students, for our teachers and of course for our custodial staff to develop all new protocols. But the kids have done a great job, the teachers have done a great job and we have seen almost no spread in our schools. A lot of the spread has occurred outside the schools and then been brought to the schools. But there's almost no evidence that the spreading is happening inside the buildings. And the K to six kiddos have been at this three-foot spacing for, or three to six-foot spacing for most of the year. And it's just the seven to 12 who've just gone to it last week. Actually, one other thing to think about is we'll have more research or we'll have more data by the end of the year. And all of these decisions and the implementation of these decisions is more than a year out, right? So again, we'll have another year to collect data and see, does it feel like we're gonna need social distancing? Right now, the word that we're getting is we're not likely to need more social distancing next year than what we're doing. I have heard that there's a possibility we'll need masking and we'll maybe need to continue some other protocols, but I think we'll have a better sense of where we are in August. But we still have a whole year after that. Do you feel like I've done a halfway decent job of answering you, you got me to have to pretend I was Dr. Fauci or Dr. Levine there. So hopefully I did. It sounded good, Tori, anyways. Thank you. Callie, did you have anything to do? I don't, you actually did a great job really explaining or answering any questions that I had and I really appreciate you guys taking the time to come in and have this conversation tonight because I think it's been helpful, at least for me. Thanks, we're glad to be here. I strongly feel that you have all people know about how complicated stuff is and how many interests, and I don't mean like political interests. I mean like the needs of the different groups that you're trying to meet anytime you're making a decision. And we definitely see that. And so I think we're glad to sort of share that perspective and context that we're working in. Tim, I bet you've got some thoughts to add here. No, I mean, I think, again, you close well there. It's a John's question. I think the chess match that everyone has watched play out this year has been just definitely handled by our administrators and all that support, all sports staff that have kept our schools open. I'm so very thankful and horrified to just look around the nation and see people that are so far behind us still. So I agree that normal may take on a new tone this fall, but hopefully that means all of our children are in school and I think our children will be prepared and as will our administration, our teachers, our support staff will be prepared to meet those challenges going forward. But I think we have come to that moment where now our schools are open and you sort of get that, it couldn't be any more constrictive than it is and we're making it work. And the schools are actually vibrant, joyful places too. That's been, I've been actually subbing because they were so desperate for subs that they even let the board members do it. But it has been, well, it's been a lot of work and it's been, I've had a lot of moments to relearn humility and practice humility, but boy, being around that kind of student energy and seeing the warmth and the connection and the joy and the play that is still happening in our schools has been a bright spot in challenging times. Now, that's great. The administration has done a great job and the teachers, everyone within the school and it's noticeable, I mean, from the outside. So that's great and thank you both for coming in. As Kelly said, it was beneficial and I think open communications with all of us work best. So again, thanks. And if there's anything ever you guys want from us or questions, this board certainly reach out at any time. Great. Well, thank you all. It's good to be here with you. All right, thanks. And so yeah, we'll go ahead and move on the agenda and thank everyone for having the patience. I know we kind of gone over but I thought it was important, good discussion. So it was worth it to go. So it sounds like or looks like Cheryl Lynn may have audio now. Unmute yourself now so we can hear you. You did unmute it. Can you hear me? I can now, Cheryl Lynn. So now we have Cheryl Lynn here to talk about some financial stuff. So go ahead, Cheryl Lynn. Hey, I sent all the board members the loan for the sidewalk that was approved. And I'm going to need at least three board member signatures. So if you could, three of you or all of you sign that and scan it back to me by nine tomorrow morning, that'd be appreciated so I could get it back to the bank. That being said, and with there, there's also the resolution that's part of the loan as well that needs to be adopted. And there's also a validation resolution, which is something that we normally don't have to do. That's due to the fact that it's over a five-year term. It's a 10-year term loan. So in order for that to this loan to go through the validation resolution needs to be signed off on, stating that we've done everything that we're supposed to do. We warned the article in the warning, Fortown meeting one time and anything that is over five years needs to be warned at least three times in the paper, which is why the validation resolution needs to be signed off on. It's gone to the attorneys, our town attorneys, the bank attorneys and this is just the next step for us to move forward with this loan. Very good. Did everyone have an opportunity to see that was sent today? So if you put it sometimes this evening, print that out and go ahead again, this is something that was approved. This is a 10-year loan. So there'll be 10 payments at $26,884.35 for nine of them. The other one, the last one's $0.40 plus accrued interest. So something we all, it was voted on, but just go ahead and sign that if you could and scan it over back to Shirlin and with the resolutions as well and she has in this packet, you'll notice any of the things that we need to adhere to for the certification is in there. So go ahead and read that if you have any questions on whether it's being done or not. And with that being said, Tom, I'm gonna need someone to make a motion to adopt the resolution and the validation resolution as well. All right. I move. Said motion. In a second. Second. Ms. Kelly. John, thank you. Any further discussion on the motion? Seeing them here, none. All in favor of motion vote aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you everyone. All right, anything else, Shirlin? I have two more things that I need to go over. Another article, article 11 for the self-contained breathing apparatuses. We need to look at funding for that. Stefan had given you guys the bids that you opened and the voters approved 22,000, the bid came in at $21,999. I went out to three other banks and they all put bids back in with, I asked for a three year and a five year term. And the lowest rate that I got for a three year term would be 1.59. The five year term is a 1.89. That would be through community bank as well. No one else could beat those rates at all. I just want to point out there that it was discussed with Stefan that he was looking at possibly going back to the voters again next year for another three self-contained breathing apparatuses. So I just wanted to remind you of the terms of the three and five year loans on there. I did speak with one other member on the finance committee and they were thinking about the same thing because if that's the case, then either we get to either come up with the money or put it into the budget next year. So that being said, I would recommend that. Well, we also have, we can just add this into the tax rate this year when we do the tax rate in June, right? Did you mean the 21,000? Yeah. No, you have to, no, you can't, you have to put it into the budget in order to put it into the tax rate. All right. All right, so are you wanting us to make a decision on that 21, on that tonight? I would because I believe Sasha may have a better answer, but I do believe that these have been ordered. So we're gonna have to have the financing for them. Set up. I just had an offer. So it's three or five years? Right, three years at 1.59, a payment of 75.67 or five years at 1.89 with a payment of 46.52. And so you and the other person on the finance committee, what was their recommendation? Recommended going to three years, just in case you guys decide not to put it in the budget and we have to finance again next year. Again, these loans can be paid off early without penalties. I would recommend next year, if you guys want to do this, maybe you just put it into the budget and then we don't have to worry about a payment, but we can discuss that in November. Very good. John, what do you think? Callie, thoughts? It's my thoughts to go ahead with what the finance committee says. Take any other thoughts? I agree, yeah. Yeah, I'm good. Callie, you think so? Yeah. All right, so I'm gonna move to go ahead with the three-year note for the scuba equipment. So second. I'll second. Callie, thank you. Callie's in there. Any further discussion? All right, it's all in favor of vote aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Here you go, Sherilyn. And the next is the town hall windows. We discussed, we did get a grant for that. The bid came back higher than the original bid due to the fact of their price changes. That being said, the total that the project is gonna cost is $5,350 more than planned on. We put $3,550 in the budget. The total job now is gonna cost $12,450. I'd also like to point out that we did put in building maintenance $5,500. $600 of that is already spoken for because of contracts with the elevator and the fire extinguishers and all. I went back today and looked back on the expenses in the previous year and assuming that nothing major happens with like the foundation or anything and expenses go other than that foundation project. We should only go over budget by about $600 if we do move forward. The preservation trust company has to approve anyone who does any of this work in this company that put a bid in on it is the one that they did approve. So we can't just go out and have just anyone do this job. Arcadia, the quote that I sent you is the one that needs to do the job. So I'd like to ask the board to move forward with this project before pricing goes up anymore. For Sherilyn and the job that's being considered is redoing all the windows. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. They're going to window. Yeah, they're going to restore them. The weather stripping is going to be done. The springs and all that are going to be done. It's going to hopefully help save on the heat. Heating on the building. So when we go in there and try to open a window, I'm going to be able to do it without breaking a back or a window or something, right? Any questions on Sherilyn's ask? I have a question. And I'm in favor of the project. I'm just wondering about the bid process because I didn't see where we had a formal bid opening for the project, which I thought, according to our purchasing policy, we're supposed to have a bid opening process. With this grant, I had to put it out to three companies and then they had to put it back to the preservation company or excuse me, preservation trust. And then they have to approve who's going to do the work. So you had sort of clarify, you did have three bids. The bids went to preservation trust. They opened them, they made the decision and awarded the bid to whatever the company is. And so is that the process? Yeah, I send them all to them. They're already open, but they all get sent to them to approve who's going to do it. And honestly, there was only two companies that responded back. And this is the only company that was going to be able to do the work, one because of the work that needs to be done. And one company didn't want to have anything to do with it. I think Ray had the questions we asked and we just had that purchasing order in another area. So we just want to make sure it's consistent along as long as you did everything as it was supposed to in this going to the historical society or whatever it went to, I think Paulifies there. Bray, are you satisfied with that? Yes, I am. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you. Don, what about yourself? Any questions on the projects? No. So Sherilyn, and I'll get to you, Kali, I just thought of some of those. So Sherilyn, you said we had, and I don't have my book in front of me, what did we put in 6,500 for maintenance? We put in 5,500 for building maintenance and for this grant, because it was supposed to be a matching grant was 3,550. It's 3,500. So we're gonna get another 3,550 from the preservation trust when the work is done. The total project is 12,450. Right, so you're looking for us to come up with around the difference between 9,000 so 3,500 roughly? No, it's gonna end up being 5,350 dollars. I thought you were getting, you were using, I was wondering how much money are we using out of the 5,500 that we already have? All of it, well, 5,350 dollars is what would be needed. Out of that 5,500 dollars that's put in the building maintenance, 5,350 would have to be used. And we've already used, what, 600 of it? We will have us by the end of it. We've only used 271, but one of the inspections hasn't happened yet. We'll end up, I mean, there's gonna be more maintenance on that building between now and the end of the year. But we can deal with that as it comes along. Callie, did you have any questions on the restoration? No, I think it's a great idea. All right, Sheryl, and I don't think you need them because that money is in the budgets. So you can go ahead, the board is in favor of using that towards that grant or towards that window project. Okay, so I can go ahead and let Arcadia know that they can move forward. And that project will be starting in the fall sometime. Very good, thank you, Sheryl. What else, anything else? No, that's all I have for financing, yeah. Thank you. Any other questions for Sheryl in while she's here? All right, so we're gonna move ahead. We have Clark Aminon there in the center square, or at least in my center square. Clark, thank you for your patience. I know we were expecting 630 and 615. You can be out on the river right now, casting flies around. So why don't you share with us what you have for housing needs on the Housing Needs Committee. Yeah, thanks for having me. Sort of seems like old times, so I'm not surprised or annoyed. Nice to see Santa Claus is still joining us too there, Jim, so you're looking good, looking good. And Walter hears your voice as well, Clark. I know Walter, gee whiz. Good to see you there, big guy. Hey, so I'll try to keep this fairly brief. You know, when you're working on the grant for the town office, I was required to go to housing training and the town was required to have a housing committee that was formed and didn't really go much beyond that, as we all know, and never really, there's no active projects or any kind of exploration of that going on. However, I felt that it was important to bring it up. Again, probably because of the focus that's been going on everywhere, particularly in Vermont and in our communities around affordable housing. And we have, and I think I'll just kind of let you know what basically two things that I have in mind. What I'd like to try to do in Moretown is take time to focus on how Moretown can participate in the affordable housing effort. And it's obviously going to be involving some volunteers within the town to take that on. And I'm not advocating for a particular approach to that at this point, but I did wanna bring it up to the select board that I think it's important to take a look at that. I will admit that I've had a fantasy as I take a look at some of the property that have kind of open spaces within the town as possible places for affordable housing projects. And actually that was when Craig was on earlier and I was reminded about the Living Tree Alliance and I took a look at the website that they have. And certainly that is also a way that towns can leverage the space that they have for affordable housing, even though I don't think that's necessarily what Living Tree is designed to do or purports to do, but nevertheless, it's an opportunity for a group of individuals and families to live in a particular spot and keep land open and available, but at the same time, create a sense of community amongst themselves and also contribute to the life of the town. The other issue that I think is related to affordable housing in more town is also the possibility of exploring some wastewater solutions in more town. Now, I'm not trying to point out any particular problem that I think we have right now. There's no obvious pollution into rivers or streams or other properties within more town. However, wastewater solutions have been used in some of the smaller villages. Rochester and Warren certainly is an example of that in the valley and Wolcott is also taking a look at this. The possibility of bringing in some kind of decentralized wastewater treatment facility in a particular place in town, perhaps the village, perhaps the junction of 102, but this would create an opportunity for residents to participate if they felt that they wanted to do so and they felt that it was affordable for them, but it could also be something that could provide some economic incentives for businesses to locate in parts of more town, given the opportunity to have wastewater systems that were robust enough to handle different types of treatment, whether it be some sort of commercial kitchen of some sort. We all know that more town school cannot produce its own meals because it doesn't have enough adequate wastewater treatment facilities in order to handle that. And if I'm mistaken at that point and that's changed, let me know, but at least that was my understanding in the past. So what I'd like to just have people respond to at this point is if you have a perspective of others in the town that have an interest in doing this, that you think that I could reach out to, that would be great and you don't necessarily have to throw them under the bus right now, but you could email me and let me know who those might be and I would happy to move forward on that. And also if you know as a select board that there are some initiatives that are being explored within more town, when I think, and I guess the last thing I'll say is my definition of affordable housing or exit, I've got to put out what my definition of affordable housing is because I'm not sure that I have enough expertise in that to offer a definition, but I certainly would imagine that if we could provide and develop some affordable housing in more town to help meet the demand, not only within our town, but also in the region, that it would be a place that may have sort of mixed housing. It may be traditional looking sort of apartment styles, AB manufactured homes, it could be a variety of things that we might be able to provide in more town. So I'm curious at this point with any particular perspectives that the board happens to have or some things that you would like me to take a look at which I'm happy to do and report back at a later date. Well, thanks, Clark. That was a nice explanation of a committee that we don't often hear from or really think about. Or ever hear from. Never hear from. Well, if for one person of the bus that I'm gonna do that right now is Ray, he did have some interest at one point of treatment facilities and such. So you two may wanna get together. I think anything that you can learn that's going out there, Clark, with affordable housing, there's gonna be a fair amount of money available and whether that's earmarked for affordable housing or not, I don't know. There may be money opportunities coming up. But if you were, now that you're retired, have a little opportunity to spend just kinda, what's happening with some of these other communities as far as affordable housing? How are they doing it? Because I think it can certainly enrich the community in a number of ways. Yeah, I mean, there's a few documents that are online with the state, which I can, yeah, I won't send them to you because they're pretty long and involved, but I'll take a look at them and perhaps get on in a month or so and provide you with a sort of a book report of sorts in terms of what those are. And I mean, I will actually mention another person and more down, and I think Ray, you and I may have chatted about this in the past, but Karen Horn was pretty well in the one document that I'm looking at now. Karen's actually mentioned in the acknowledgements, it's called Wastewater Solutions for Vermont Communities. So she's certainly aware of this and probably has a lot more perspective in terms of who's done it and what the outcomes have been. So I'm happy to reach out to Karen too and check in with her. Tom, can I make a comment? This is David. Yeah, I'm sorry, who was that? This is David's fact. Oh, David, yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry. Clark, the Planning Commission right now is starting their assessment on redoing the zoning in the town, the whole thing. And I know that affordable housing issue concerns are on their list of things to consider, different ways to encourage additional development in town. So they meet actually this Wednesday, I would suggest if you could attend that Zoom meeting that would get you in touch with the town committee who is in charge of the zoning. And that would be a good place to get additional support and Karen Horne is on the Planning Commission too. Right, right. David, what time's the meeting? 6.30, I believe. 6.30, okay. It's on the agenda on the town website with the link. It is, okay, and okay, great. So yeah, I'll see if I can make that. That's great, thanks. Thanks, David. Ray or John, did you have any others or Callie, anything for Clark? Yeah, I just, again, I've been wanting to get into this village sewer, because I think it is definitely going to have to happen at some point within the next years. So I think I would like to be involved with it in Clark and start working towards that goal of getting something for this town. So I meant to do it last year, but the whole COVID thing kind of put everything back a year. So it looks like we're heading out of it. I'll reach out to you sometime towards the end of the month. Yeah, okay. Start working towards it. Great, yeah. When I was taking a look at what other towns may be working on this at this point, there was a kickoff meeting or one of the meetings in Wolcott to try to explain this process or these solutions that was actually held in the middle of November in 2019. And there hasn't been anything else on their town website since that. So I think they also sort of came to a halt and maybe some other towns did too. But as we all know, there will be some significant monies that'll be coming in and perhaps some of that will, I feel part of the expression trickle into this particular funding stream too. So yeah, I think it's probably a good time to start focusing on this in more town. Thank you, Clark. Cool, all right, thanks everybody, nice to see you all. All right, so Ray will be in touch with you and you can move forward. John, I'm sorry. Yeah, I just wanted to mention it was good to see Lisa Sheppard's project on route two. So it'd be good to have more like. Oh, you mean the housing project that's right? Yeah, the big one right there, yeah. Gallagher Acres, right? Is that the one you mean? No, not Gallagher Acres. Next to the Sheppard Homestead there. Blanche Sheppard's house, next there. I think it's Riverwalk Drive. What's that? Oh, okay, right. I think it's Riverwalk Drive. Yeah, that's, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know, I think that what's been going on in that part of town is, and my sense is because of the convenience of being closer to the highway and Waterbury, you know, sort of a village center with services that that will continue. So, you know, Paige, can I ask you a question? Just, I don't, I don't, yeah. So, no, this is, you can answer carefully if you want, but I'm sort of curious in terms of moving into, you know, this, you know, kind of a co-housing or not kind of, it's co-housing project, is affordability part of the impetus when people think about moving into something like that? Definitely, and it's something our community cares about too. I think it's, I mean, so my husband and I are moving on a prefabricated house, which really cuts down our costs, and it's very, very small. So, I think that, and then the community was really like open to that because they want, you know, there to be affordable housing options. You know, the cost of our plot was still, you know, for us a significant financial investment. I like, I don't know that I'd call it quite affordable housing, but certainly much more affordable for us to be able to live in this kind of like beautiful acreage and to share resources with other families. And there are a lot of reasons that we chose living tree, but it's definitely something the community has talked about in our common house that we're building. There will be some bedrooms in there, and we've talked about ways that maybe we could rent those out inexpensively for people who want to be part of the community, but have more limited resources as well. So I would say it's, yeah, it's still tricky to do anytime. I think you're building or bringing anything and you're purchasing the land. It's still, you know, like, and I mean, some somewhat of an expense, but definitely way more affordable for us than like we had looked really briefly at buying land and building and that just, you know, wasn't really feasible for us. So it is a topic of discussion, even though I wouldn't say that that was why living tree started necessarily, or that's not my understanding. Yeah, that was my understanding too, that wasn't the overriding, you know, one of the overriding values that, but it seems to be a characteristic that is relatively, I would imagine, somewhat common in terms of co-housing developments and stuff. Yeah, absolutely, and this co-housing development, because we actually looked at communities all over the country and this is way more affordable than a lot of them, especially the ones in the Pacific Northwest where like the starting prices of a lot of the homes in this community were over half a million dollars, like completely inaccessible for most people, I think. So from the research we've done, I think that the living tree folks, the community we're now a part of, do care and have that as a goal as well. Yeah, right, and I would echo what you heard from a lot of folks when Craig was on earlier that welcome to Moortown, we're glad you're here. You're certainly the right age demographic that we're looking for, so I'll plan that you'll stay a long time. That's the plan, we're having a baby in a few weeks, so that'll probably tie us here as well. There you go, another person in the school too. Yeah, yeah, the school discussion was relevant, I was excited too. Indeed, I could see you watching them. So anyway, folks, yeah, Ray, let's talk. I'll plan to get, David, thanks a lot for reminding me about the planning commission. I'm sure John Siegel will be shocked and amazed to see another person joining the meeting, so I'll be happy to be there. So I'll plan often. Thank you very much. It was, yeah, you're welcome. Brought me back to the days that you'd be on the board. Yeah. All right, so now we have, we have David. How long, buddy? David, thank you for your patience, and I guess Paige, you too, because you were waiting on the E-9-1 discussion, I think. So, David, if you want to come off mute, kind of share what you got going on with us tonight. Okay, the first issue I'll address is the living tree lane, living tree community road name, so that Paige doesn't have to stay here for all night. All right. Okay, so this is a PUD. All the lot locations are predefined. The driveway, which we're there putting in now that will service two houses in the back is now also becoming the emergency access to a house which is in front of him, which means that there will be three houses served by that driveway for emergency vehicle purposes, and that triggers a private road name requirement or a road name requirement according to the state E-9-1 regulations. The house that's in the front had been assigned an address on living tree lane, but as I said, their access changed from living tree lane to this new driveway, so that address will have to change. And I've been in contact with that owner through Craig, and she is amenable to having the address changed to accommodate the E-9-1 requirements. So the select board has the ultimate authority to pick the road name, what is customary in this case is the E-9-1 coordinator asks the people affected for their preference, and if that preference is acceptable to the select board, it just helps cut down the pain of address change. So the members of the community, I guess went through quite a process, and they came up with three names that they would like to have considered. Their third choice is Hemlock Way. Their second choice is Community Lane, and their number one choice is Bird Song Way. I have done research on the name Bird Song Way. There is not another bird song way in the state, so there's essentially no chance of any confusion. So it should be accepted by the E-9-1 board, and I would recommend that the select board adopts Bird Song Way as the name for the new private road per the residence's wishes. All right, so moved. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Callie. Any further discussion? All in favor vote aye. Aye. Aye. All right, so it is Bird Song Way, very nice name. Very good name. Excellent. Okay, the next issue is a address change in the Gallagher acres development that the state E-9-1 folks are telling me should be made because the current numbering is not accurate, is confusing, and is in violation of the E-9-1 standards. I forwarded the email that I got from the state that shows the four properties in question. Did everybody get a chance to look at those? Yes. Okay. So this will mean changing the address for four people. And before I went in, wrote the letters and assigned new numbers. A, there also should be a name decision. And I did not want to proceed with this until I was sure that the select board would approve the change. I don't want another issue as happened with the Barnes application where I assigned a number based on the E-9-1 requirements and the board overrode me and asked me or directed me to change it back. Have you had any discussions with the people out there at all, David? No, I didn't want to rile them up if you were going to say no, don't do it. Well, I guess, I mean, I like to follow what 911 has to say, but I guess I haven't been out there and I haven't, you know, and again, I did see your letter tonight. I guess I got it, so I don't know how I feel on that without at least checking with the residents or seeing what kind of uproar there is going to be with changing someone's address. That's everyone else thing. David, did they give you a, like a timeframe like, okay, we need it done by the 1st of June or anything like that, is there any time? No, this is actually festered for a while. Yeah, this is stuff that looked like when I read it that JB had been tossing around at one point. So I don't think another month or so. These things are not fun. So that's why I'm getting the ducks lined up to make sure if I proceed with this address change we're all in sync and it's going to carry through. And then the question would be for selecting the name, how much do you want me to be involved trying to coordinate these four people to select a road name? I can just do it in a letter or get interactive which is going to take more of my time. So I'd like a little direction on what you think I should expend his effort to try to make them happy. Well, I don't think you need to babysit these people and help them make the name. I think in a letter, if it's for responsible people they should be able to come up with a name and give them a reasonable time period to do that. But I don't think you have to hold a hand right through it now. That's why I can try to do that. No matter how polite you are in a letter sometimes they're not well-received. Yeah, sometimes you follow up with a call or you even call beforehand and say, look, I'm going to send you a letter. It's going to be talking about so you understand it because oftentimes you get a letter from the town and all of a sudden there becomes this certain amount of panic and you don't really read everything that's there. So either a follow up call or even a call prior to say look, we're doing this. And then with the communication behind that with the letters, the reason we're doing it is for your safety or for the protection of the people there. And then it typically will have a better outcome. So depending on how you deliver that message, if you go in and you just say, I'm changing your address, you're going to get some significant pushback. But if you use, you know, a good reasoning why you need to do it and it may not be that painful, but I can see where it'd be somewhat painful, regardless. Can I say that when the letter goes out, perhaps the select board, have it be a joint letter with the select board and the zoning administrator and possibly suggest to them that invite them to a meeting in the first meeting in June and discuss it with them. So it kind of eases the transition or something like that. What do you think about that? So do you want me to invite them to indicate that this name change has got to happen and invite them to the select board meeting to discuss it? Is that what you're... I think we should tell them that we've been directed to do this and if they have some concerns that they want to bring to the town, we should let them come to the select board and address them with us. Yeah, I think we're certainly welcome to, if they have, David, if you get a significant pushback, maybe invite them. But I don't think we need to open up that door. I don't know where, I don't mind having them at the meeting, but if David does a good job explaining a letter, why we're doing it, follow up with a call to them. And then if there's significant pushback and then we can certainly have them come to the meeting at that point. Yeah, honestly, I'm okay with that, Tom. Long as they have the, long as it's clear to them that they are, if they have some, that they can come to the select board and address their concerns. Yeah, I think so, David, in the letter, just include, you know, at some point in the letter, if there's significant interest to talk about this or however you want to put that, you know, the select board is certainly willing and able to do that along with you. Okay, excuse me, I had a cough on you. Sorry. All right, so I will identify those people and get the letter out to them. Very good. What else you got for us? We're at 15 zoning points at this point this year, that's almost exactly what we were last time this year. I've been approached by Green Mountain Power who is looking to give away, essentially give away. I don't want to put a price tag on it, but the old schoolhouse on Route 100B up by the middle section. Oh yeah, yeah. They're realizing it's no value to them. And rather than let it fall apart, they're looking is an opportunity to transfer it to the town, to the historical society. In my last contact, they had not received any contact from the historical society. So I don't know if there is interest on the part of the town or the historical society to take over this building to get this property. So if you could forward that information to Sasha, she can send it out to the board. And so we can take a look at that. I haven't, this is the first that I've, or that we were offered the property. And then, you know, we can discuss as a board that may be other uses. I mean, we were just talking about affordable housing. I don't know if that's a candidate for something like that, but yeah, I think it's something we should certainly take a look at to see if it is of any value to us. As a zoning administrator and, you know, knowing and being a little familiar with the property, do you see any value to the town of it? The wastewater is going to be an issue to determine. And I've been working with Robert Pelosi, the district engineer to try to determine how much land would have to go this and what the wastewater requirements would be. It depends on a final determination of the status of the building from a wastewater perspective. He was saying he could probably view it as an abandoned, non-functional building. So it's not even considered a structure and doesn't need any wastewater. However, the downside is if the town does want to take it over and develop it where wastewater is required, then you've got to have the land to do it where you just have a building with land and nothing can be done with it. So very preliminary still. But I thought you aware that this is what they're looking at doing. All right, we'll certainly make us keep us appraised of what's going on and you know, certainly it's good to do. I'll give Sasha updates and I'll appraise the board of them. Thank you. Does Don know about this? John, he's in the past, he did a lot of work on that. Don Wexler. Yeah, Don Wexler. I don't know. Right. We can make him aware, certainly. David, would that building be, it must be in the flood plain or floodway or something, isn't it? No. It's not. No, it's high. It's very high. Okay, all right. Yeah, I forget it's up there, Ray. There's been a bad day for a lot of people. If it gets that high, there will be no power station left. Yeah, the power station is below that. All right, David, anything else first? Martin Cameron had asked me about a storage unit in the lot where the town, you know, the town gravel pit is. I had given him some information and then I went to give him, I did give him new information via phone message, but he, I guess he's on medical leave right now. So that has been delayed. Okay. It's development in the flood hazard area, so it's got to go through all the hoops that we went through on Dickerson Road. And I told him that I would do the applications and I've learned that since this is a storage structure only and not an occupied structure, it will not need a certificate of elevation, which is going to save $900 in engineering fees, but it still has to go through the permit process and it will have to be vented for flood. By venting, I mean openings of a certain amount, one square inch of vent per square foot of floor space that's in the flood hazard area so that the pressure equalizes the working the way in and out of the building or structure. So it can be done. It's not as expensive, but it's still got to have the permit and be reviewed by the state and go through the DRB. So do you know when Martin is going to be back and up to speed? He should be back later this week. He just needs to get a medical letter let his knees back to where it needs to be, which I anticipate him getting. So towards the end of this week or beginning of next week, I'm sure he'll be, he'll get in touch with you or if you want to reach out to him again, David, just to let him know you have your stuff, that would be fine. Yeah, I'll give him a week or so to get reacclimated to work. He's probably got a heck of a backlog. Yeah, I think so. The guy's been doing a good job trying to keep that to a minimum, but yes, I'm sure he'd appreciate that. Okay, I will contact him. Anything else? I don't think nothing, nothing for me at this point. Any of the other members of the board have any questions for David? All right, I guess not. David, thank you for joining us tonight and thank you for your patience. Appreciate it. Again, I have been working with the planning commission on suggestions to improve the zoning and they are really attutely aware of the need for additional housing and are looking at different ways to modify the zoning to accomplish that. Well, I'm sure that there's a lot of brain power around that table. They can come up with something and make it so people are still not doing what we should be doing with the environment and building where we shouldn't be, but sounds good. Thank you, David. All right, so we're gonna go ahead and move on to reports of communications. Sasha, why don't we go ahead and start with you? You wanna share what you have for the board tonight? Yeah, Jerry Casels was going to join the meeting. He must have forgot about it. He's interested in using the town hall He started driving school for teenagers and would like to know if he could hold classes at the old town hall. There will be 12 students in a class Mondays and Wednesday nights, 5.30 to eight, starting June 3rd through July. And that was in the basement, is that correct? Yeah, yes. And do you know if we have library hours at that time? I do not know. But again, 5.30, now that's right, 5.30 to eight? Yes. And Monday in Wednesday or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday? Monday and Wednesday nights. Monday. And he was looking how much it was gonna cost him, is that what his question is, or if we would allow him to do it? I think both. All right, what's everyone think? And Ray, Callie? My feeling is if it follows the state guidelines as far as COVID requirements, I don't have a problem with it. Yep, same with me. It would be nice to get a little bit of income from it, but. Yeah, so what, in such, I don't know what was, he suggested what he wanted to pay, or do we, I can't remember us. We've done some of these things in the past. He is in the community. I mean, I don't know what, I don't know what do you guys think per class, and considering it, the place will have to be cleaned, just the downstairs. So why don't we, do you wanna, I don't know, what, 50 bucks a night, does that sound reasonable, or too much, too little, or what do you guys think? I really don't have a good handle on the cleaning cost. Certainly it shouldn't be a town expense. So the fee is gonna be enough to cover the cleaning plus electricity and heating and all that other stuff. So I guess I think it depends on what the cleaning cost would be, would determine, all those factors together would determine the rate, in my opinion. All right, so we, I'll work with Cheryl and try to come up with, or Sasha, you can, what it might cost to clean the place. And again, I think it's good that we just have people using and I'm not looking to make a big profit here. I just wanna, I don't want it as racist. I just don't wanna cost me something either. Yeah, yep, okay. So you let them know that. So yeah, we're willing to let you use it. We're just trying to figure out what it's gonna cost us. We'll pass that on to you. Okay. Steve Robbins reached out and he'd like permission to have their meetings outside behind the town office. Who was that that reached out? Steve Robbins for the record. Yeah. I don't have any problem with that. I didn't think you would. I had a call from Dean Molton today, just wanting an update on his property pins. I can give you a update. Okay. It'll be within two weeks. Okay. Thank you, Ray. We're getting easy to it. Also, I know Sherwin had talked about it before. She got the grant for the plate compactor. I just wanted to remind everybody it needs to get ordered soon. Yeah, I talked to Martin the other day and did remind him about that. So I think that's when he gets back. One of the first things he did. I think the other guys were looking into it a little bit but he is aware of that. Okay. Yes, it's Stefan. I got three different quotes together for the plate compactor. Martin just got to sit down and see what makes sense. We all talked about it and have, what makes sense to us working in the ditches but we want to run it through Martin and then get it to you guys. Thank you, Stefan. That's all I have. Thank you, Sasha. John, how about you tonight? So I don't forget you like to do last week. I got a call or email from Angelo at the Commons Connominium Association about dog issue there. Stefan, does that resolve? It is not. I have to reach out to the dog owner and talk to her just so you guys are all aware. I was home today, I have a cold and it's kind of taken me down but I do plan on at least contacting the dog owner tomorrow and trying to figure out what's going on a little better. Okay. I guess there's been an issue with going after like UPS and maybe biting some people or what, I guess you've just been harassing the neighbors there. Yes, it appears to be that there's not, there hasn't actually been any bites. It's just been snarling teeth and harassing because it hasn't been leashed. Okay. Okay. Are you trying to be honest? Nope, that's it. All right. All right, Callie, what you have for us? Not much. I did talk to Stefan on Sunday about a dog issue. He called me and I called him back. Oh, I'm gonna stop. He had it pretty well figured out. And we also chatted really quick about how Fountain Forestry had talked to Stefan about some burn sites. They came up to do a site visit up on the Herringbrook side of what they own and had had a conversation with him about some burn sites up there. And probably some other concerns I would assume but just chatted really quick about that. So other than that, that's it. If you'd like, I can go in depth a little bit on that if you guys want to hear about it. Oh, sure. We're gonna come up with some stuff on what's going on there. So I talked to Fountain Forestry. They take care of 2100 acres up there. And they did a site visit last week and their concern is mostly that where there's burn spots where the people have been having fires on their property up there. And the biggest part, that's their income that they could potentially burn down up there. And he asked about options with checking it out and writing fines or whatnot for burning up there. And I also talked to my supervisor for the state fire wardens and he agreed that it's absolutely unacceptable for somebody to burn on a property without permission. So I've been going up there a little bit more to try to assess to see if there's somebody burning up there and I've been getting the word out that I will be up there kind of patrolling and I will be writing fines. Just something, hopefully it helps deter people from doing it, but it's something that the town can do fairly easily to try to help make it, make the issue go away. I think that's good, Stefan. Just be careful when you put yourself in those situations as well. Just mind that too. Absolutely. Stefan, who was it that you met with from Fountain Forestry? Jeff, something or other. Langman? Yeah, Jeff Long made. I did try to reach out to him. In fact, I left him a message today about the meeting with Catelyn and myself as far as generally the road and what's happened up there and what's found forestry we'd like to see up there. So, okay, I just wanna make sure that Jeff was still the correct contact and sounds like he is. So, I'm hoping to hear back from him within a few days and we could pursue the other issue of the road damage and what's going on up there with him as well. Absolutely, he mentioned it to me about the road damage and the off trails onto their property that are just getting spun up and eroded away. And he said he was gonna be doing some more work hopefully up there to protect the, put up more barriers and such and more signage. And he brought up the idea of posting it all off, you know, no trespassing, which is something they were thought about a couple of years ago, but didn't really wanna close it all off. But, you know, it's becoming an option for them again, he said. No, and that's what we're trying to avoid. It's a well used case of land by a lot of the local people and unfortunately, it's being destroyed by a lot of non-local people. So, anyway, let's hang on about that, but I'm pursuing something with him. Yeah. Thank you, Stefan, Ray. Sorry, Ray, what about, do you just share that? Anything else, Ray, that you have? Uh, I did wanna talk about it, I don't know if you wanna talk about it right here, but as you know, I do sign a lot of invoices from the town garage and there's two that really stuck with me was a new fuel tank for the truck. I believe that it might have been around $4,500, which I don't think was in the budget. And then there was another one today for some suspension work. I think it was almost $2,000, so I'm just a little concerned about no more insiding these invoices. I don't really hear about this stuff until the work is already done. Nobody says, we have this problem. You should be aware of this. It's like, okay, we had the problem, here's the invoice. It seems like it should be, here's the problem. I'm gonna get some pricing to fix it. I understand there's some kinds of emergencies, but it just seems like it's procedure now to just spend money and then expect the town to pay for it. I just would like to see a little bit more communication here. I know, I think that's reasonable. Once Martin gets back, we can have him in the board meeting or maybe sit down with him and just pull over some of those things. I think in the last year and a half, things have gotten away a little bit because of, again, I guess we're playing everything on COVID now, but oftentimes I used to hear when there was a breakdown and such and that we had things going on. So yeah, I think we need to address that with the crew and Martin and just make sure that we were on the same page. 4,500 for a fuel tank. So I can explain that a little bit. It was a high amount for the fuel tank. It was 1,500. I don't know where the 4,500 came from. It was $1,537 and it was actively leaking on the floor of the shop and out at the pump. So as opposed to having some sort of environmental issue, we immediately brought it before it leaked all out to Sheldon's to get fixed. I think the amount of 4,500 is correct. I know his truck was up previous at Sheldon's for some break work because the breaks weren't working properly, but the 4,500 should not have, it shouldn't have been a thing because I asked for a price from them before anything happened and it was $1,500. It was still high in my eyes, but it shouldn't have been 4,500. It was a combination of a couple of invoices. It wasn't just that, Stefan. Oh, okay, I just, I heard the 4,500. I'm like, that's an awful lot for the fuel tank because I talked to him, so I thought I had an idea of what it was. Okay. Thank you. So yeah, Ray, why don't we plan a meeting sometime next week with Martin just so that we can make sure that we're seeing these things before they're happening or as Stefan says, some of the leaky gas tank or fuel tank, I guess there's not a lot you can do about it, but certainly it wouldn't hurt to have a little heads up with this stuff prior to signing off on it. Yeah, and Stefan, I think it was the right decision to get it fixed. I just, And I didn't even think about, this has happened since Martin's been out and the first thought in our eyes was, well, let's get it so we don't end up having to have it towed and have leaking fuel and have that all dealt with. Let's get it there, get it so that it's in their yard and they can take care of it before we have to have it towed and such. Okay. Thank you, Stefan. So Ray, anything else you got there? Nope, I'm good, thank you. Thank you. I think I'm all set, we did, yeah, I guess we can move ahead. So we have the minutes of April 19th to go ahead and approve. I make a motion to approve the April 19th. Thank you, Ray. Thank you. I mean, Callie, thank you. All in favor of the meeting minutes. Well, they need to be amended. Hey, John, do you have a chance to take a look at that? Take yourself off mute. Sorry, yes, I did see it and I will make the adjustments on it for the executive sessions. All right, so that adjustment made for executive session, was that the only thing, John? Yeah, yeah, that was it, yeah. All right. So in the motions out there, all in favor vote aye. With the adjustments. As amended. As amended. As amended. I amend my motion. To conclude as amended, Ray, thank you. Now the new motion, the minutes as amended for April 19th. All in favor vote aye. Aye. Aye. All right, very good. So let's go ahead, we've got some old business. Did we get the sand bit things straightened out? Sasha, did you hear anything? Nothing. I haven't heard anything. So, well, again, it's really a martin knees out so we can't really get back to us on that anyways. The other thing, there were a few people we were working on, was it pricing on the parking lot out there that we were gonna get to the board, the Harvard union board, is that something that, I know, I think Ray, you were working on that with Sherilyn and John, maybe? Right. We did have a meeting last week. Do you wanna talk about that now? We don't have to go into it. I just wanna make sure that you guys are, that it's being, that you're working on it. I guess is all I want. Yeah, Ray and I need to touch base in terms of meeting with the neighbors. All right, so when you guys are good, I just wanna make sure everyone's moving forward that we're on time with that to them. That's about it with old business, I think. New business. So I have a couple of things. One, I was thinking that June 7th, which is the first Monday in June that we're scheduled for a meeting that we would or could meet at the town office. We'll be able to, at that point, be, I guess, is three feet we need now. We can mask, it's my knowledge. No one needs to tell me enough, but I think we're all vaccinated. Is everyone's thoughts on that? I would like very much for that to happen. John, are you comfortable with that? Yeah, fine by me. Kelly, how are you? So we will go ahead and do that. If Don is very much opposed, we can do a Skype for him. And Sasha, you're all right with attending that as well. Yeah. Very good. So we'll plan that for the 7th of June, getting back to meeting there. The other new business that we had, we may have brought it up a little bit. Are we going to do anything for Morfest this fall? We've got the money in the budget. I know, and I, Lindsey, I don't know Lindsey's last name, but she's on the school, she was on the school part. She contacted Leanne, my wife, to see if there was anything going on that she would be willing to work on it from the school perspective. So I mean, there's a little bit of energy there to start with. I just don't know what everyone's thoughts are. I guess my thought is, you know, I think I'd like to see something. I'm just not sure. You know, when or what? What's everybody thinking? What were you thinking, Tom? Well, I think, you know, I think fireworks seem to be a big draw for people. I was thinking of having a big bonfire fireworks, have the fire department there and the corn roast, maybe the select board could do a pig roast. Sometime early September, just do that and just have everyone come and if we can get some music as well, that would probably be the other third thing that we need. We have food, we have some music and they would probably do a beer tent. I would imagine the school part would, you know, nothing. I mean, something nice like that, but just an opportunity for an all right, this is what we're having and everyone can come down and enjoy an evening. Yeah, I got to start it. I like the idea. You know, and it's not too commercially where it's, you know, we're having vendors and that type of pressure, it's more people just to come down and see people again, you know. Fire department could raise a little money with the corn roasts or whatever if they wanted it, it's not, it would be good to see them. We want to, we were just discussing doing it as well. So, yeah, and you could do, you know, and you do the pigs too or whatever. So, you know, just something kind of low key like that, but you know, anyone could come but, you know, really focused towards our more town people and just, hey, we've come through this pandemic hopefully at that point, you know, and we can always cancel, but if we don't schedule something, we won't be doing anything. Right. Probably have to get on the fire work. Again, our schedule pretty quickly, I would guess, right? Yeah, but being an off, you know, maybe not a week, you know, a holiday type thing, it might be a little easier, but yeah, I think you'd want to get a contract there fairly quick and also if they were, you know, finding some kind of a band to play or something, but you know, I can mention it to those two people who had expressed interest, they could put something out on the front porch form to form some kind of a committee or group to do it. Let's see what they come up with and then report back to us. Sounds good. That sounds copusac with everybody. Yep. All right. I think that's all I had. Yeah, I think everything else is stuff. Yeah, we're all good. I thought it was good tonight. Getting Tori to come. I know we had originally talked about sending a letter but she was able to come, her and Tony, so I thought that was better and I think it's good to have the communication there. So hopefully we can keep that open and you know, in the loop there with that a little bit. Yeah, no, that was really good. I mean, I sat in on the section of their meeting the other night that dealt with the merger and it was a question and answer for the board members and both Lisa and Kristen had some good questions. But you know, there's still, you know, a lot is up in the air. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I did, so I did have actually today just want to make. The mood seems, I was just gonna say, I heard from Christine Sullivan actually reached out to me today from the Harwood board. I didn't speak whether she left the message I was in the meeting at the time. So there isn't, at least they're reaching out a little bit at this point. Yeah, exactly, yeah, which is a good sign and things seem to be okay, so. Yeah, well, you know, continue to monitor that and you know, offer our input when we can, I guess. All right, so if there's nothing that's tending here but I don't think there is, we can probably get out of here. I do want to remind everyone though to please sign both the financing and the other declaration and get it sent back to Sherilyn if we could. Make her happy, because you know how she gets. Well, there's three places that need to be signed on that note. I didn't think you were still on, Sherilyn. What the hell are you? Just so you can't see me. It's getting late. Yeah, yeah, so she's here. So anyways, we appreciate that everybody and I move to adjourn. Second. All in favor of what I. Aye. Thank you, everyone. I'll be in touch, John. Okay.