 Okay. At this time, I'm going to turn the podium over to our representative, Kirk White. He's here for a few brief minutes. He's got a scoop to go to Hancock. Kirk is a resident of Bethel, so I don't have to ask for your permission for him to speak. So, Kirk, the podium is yours. Thank you. Good morning. I figured I would tell you a little bit about what's going on in my play and what my own committee is working on at this point. The state legislature as a whole is really focusing on a few important topics. One of the big ones is workforce development. As you may have noticed, it's hard to get employees if you're an employer. We don't really have enough of a workforce, and a lot of our workforce needs upscaling. The legislature has been putting a lot of effort and energy into creating better pipeline programs for people to get necessary credentials and degrees and other things that will allow them to work in our communities sooner, quicker, better. Some of that is putting money toward nursing education. We have a nursing shortage. We're paying traveling nurses three times what a local nurse gets, and so that's putting a big pressure on all of our health costs. It's just snowballs, and so we've been working a lot to try to get more nursing staff, but the nursing staff problem is that there weren't enough instructors, so you have to get that. We're working on all that. We're spending a lot of time working on promoting education in career and technical education. Back when I was a young lad doing the school here, basically the guidance counselor for the most part tried to push you into college. And we've had, now at this point, generations of people pushing and wanting to go to college. Nobody went to tech school. Try and find a plumber or electrician now on short notice. So we're really trying to change that around. Our career and technical education programs have been neglected. They're underfunded. It's really hard for people to get through those programs. And so we're really working on all that. So we're really trying to build our workforce so we have employees and our businesses can grow and prosper. The other problem that we experience that the legislature is working on is that once you've got someone that wants to work for your company, perhaps they are from away, they can't find a place to live. And so we have a housing shortage, a affordable housing shortage. If you want to buy a million dollar house, those are being built. But otherwise affordable housing is really short these days. And so I've had a number of employers talk to me about we had trouble getting people to work. We found a way to get people to come to work, but they don't have a place to live. So we're working on that. Another piece of it is then if they're of family age that even if they do find a place to live, they often can't find childcare. That's affordable as well. And some of that's our childcare force hasn't been developed. We don't have enough people doing that work. It's not sustainable for people to have that. So the legislature again is working on that. Another piece that the legislature who holds working on is a thing called capacity. If you go out into that back room, you'll see that there are a lot of people looking for volunteers to help with various tasks including the town of Eppel. And really what we have is a lot of small towns don't have enough people to do the jobs that need to be done. And there are times when your town can benefit from writing grants, getting support from the regional health corporations and the regional planning commissions and other kind of organizations like that. But honestly they're too busy doing the day-to-day tasks to actually fill out that paperwork. So the town, the state is working on trying to find ways to support towns in that kind of work by making some of those services more available to towns, helping towns work together on grants and those kind of things. So again, we're spending a lot of time on that. My own committee is the Commerce and Economic Development Committee that I'm on. Commerce is an exciting world of insurance regulation. And although most of the legislators have this week off as a vacation, tomorrow I get on a plane and fly to a four-day conference on insurance regulation. And I suspect that's going to be just a thrill a minute. But we need to do that in order to be able to perform the duty there in my committee. The other piece that my committee does is economic development. And again, we're really deep into this workforce development piece. But we're also working on such things as data privacy. What happens when people steal your data? And your data is everywhere. And if somebody, if your friend takes a picture of a crowd of people together and they post it on Facebook, there's somebody scanning that picture and your data is already in there. And so how do we protect people from those kinds of issues? We're also, again, working on grants and other things to help businesses get through these challenges in place and a variety of other kind of workforce and economic development. More money to help our towns grow and prosper. So that's what I'm doing in a nutshell. If you don't already know, I have an email list that I send out, newsletters and information informing people about what's going on and how the systems work so that you can make that system work for you. A lot of people don't, you know, state government is not intuitive on how things work. There are, you know, back doors and weird twists and things that just get in the way of people being able to get what they need done. And so I try to educate people on how they can actually understand the system and how they can use me to better help them get through the system. And so I have a newsletter that goes out by email. I also post it on front of the porch forum. I've said that phrase three times and I hadn't kind of never heard it the first time yet. And so if you really want to get into the minutiae of various bills and things that's going on, you can go there and sign up for that. There's three parts to it. It's an exciting read. So with that I will, I have to be off on the handcump, but please if you want to ever have concerns or questions about bills, if you're having trouble with a state agency and they seem to have you blocked to get through something that you're trying to accomplish, contact me because I want to help and help you through those processes. So thank you. Thank you. You can find me on the state legislature page or that's probably the easiest. But my home phone number, my mailing address, I have no data privacy. It's all out there. So thank you. Good meeting. Thanks very much. And I did see that his post on front porch form and they are quite lengthy and involved, but he's working for us so appreciate that again. Okay, as I mentioned, it's been a while since we've been here and apologies to the slight word, but I want to just read through a list of names here that usually are in the seats out here. And more specifically, we're involved in how the town works in some capacity, whether it be fire department, member of boards. So I'm doing this at the peril of leading someone out. And I don't want people here today to feel timid about raising their hand and correcting what I do. I'll go over that. But also I'm just emphasizing, if I've missed someone that means a lot to you, you know, attended and was special to the town, please mention their name in a minute. So this is since 2020, the last time we met, here are three of the names that I've noted. Laura Rubines. John Washburn. Joyce Richardson. John Young. Kim Helbergate. Geneva Geico. Stalwart, just about every select board meeting she would be at. Just to see what's going on. Nelda Putney. Susie Fedek. Lorraine Putnam. Tim Mills. I don't know about Tim. Carol Ketchum. My predecessor here at the podium. Just a mentor to me over the years. Willis Whitaker. Longtime Postmaster. Derek Wright. Carl Russell. Select board chair, not that long ago. And for many years, dedicated to the town in various capacities. Richard Adams. Davis Dimmock. Victoria Weber. And Rosalie Benson. My wife for 44 years. So I'm going to take a minute. Margaret Daniels. Thank you. Margaret was a treasure. She ran the store downtown. I forget the name of it. Thank you. And with her daughter. And she had the most amazing pictures that she would sell there. The whole world. Mission for the enterprise that they were doing there. Was special. And she'll be missed greatly. So thank you. Anyone else that I missed on that? Peter Hart. I did have them here. Missed him. Peter Hart. Longtime Fire Department. Member. As well as other capacities. Good friend of mine. As well over the years. Schoolmate. Classmate here at Whitcomb. I'm sorry. Dan Prestridge. Very good. Yes. Dan was involved in many of them. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Some of these are just kind of briefly went through the old town reports. Some may or may not have been entered there. Because as in the case of my wife. Passed away in a. Not in Bethel. And is not being buried in Bethel. So. Two of these in particular. Who the. The town report this year is dedicated to. We don't usually do this. Maybe a brief mention. But I'm going to elaborate a little bit on them. Because of their. Dedication to our town. And the first is Tim Mills. Thirty some odd years of service. In the. In the wastewater department. And then towards the end. In the water department as well. Yeah, I know. Tim. You'd see him in town during the day. I'm wondering why he wasn't at work. Well. He was working. You also may or may not have seen him. On weekends. In the fall. Sometimes. Sometimes. Holiday weekends. Running the. Effluent the sludge from the. From the wastewater plant. To a field. That was approved. For that to be inserted into the ground in that field. And he would run that tractor. And. For hours on the weekend. And I'd watch him go by my house. I'm thinking. That's that's dedication. That's what it's all about. The other thing that. People may not know about Tim is. Because. Our hunting camps were. Closed by. He was a avid hunter. Loved his hunting camp. And he loved his family. He loved having his family there. He would post pictures on Facebook. Of the meals he would create there. Just a great thing. And they had. That's Tim. Carl Russell. You we all. Most of us anyway saw Carl here. Down meetings. Went to select board meetings. Very dedicated. To that. As well as basketball road committee. Other committees that. Don't have. But. As always. There are people who you think you know but you don't. And. I've come to learn. That Carl was much more than what he. What we saw here. For instance. I never did this. Carl was a poet. And he wrote. A whole book of poems. I didn't count them. But there's. 28 pages of poetry. I contacted Lisa. His wife. This morning. And asked if I could mention that. And if she had extra copies. And there are extra copies at the back table. And I encourage you to pick up a copy. And read through it. You'll be blown away. Never. Never have a clue. Someone you think you know. He also was he and Lisa were instrumental. And I'm going to get the name of this wrong. With the draft. Horse or draft animal association. It started. 30 someone years ago I think. But they put this together. Starting it down home. Bringing in people who are interested in. Logging. Farm use of animals. Strictly. Being draft animals pulling that. A whole. Cloud. And dragging the logs. And he mentored. Many many. Person who was interested in this. And I'm sure some older people. So. I just wanted to mention that because. With my wife passing away. She would usually be sitting right up there next to Sandy Farrell. They don't receive. It's a town meeting. It's. Been made evident to me that. When you get an invitation. To. To do something with. A person. To meet them for a visit. Whatever. And you're busy. You don't have the time. Do it. Because you never know. About the people you'll meet. And to me. What we're doing here has a lot to do with that. Chat with someone you don't know. When there's time. Or just reacquaint yourselves with those that you do. Super super important. So anyway. I've gone on. Here more than I should have. But I thought that was important. So. Let's get on to almost business. And I apologize for this. I do need to go through some. Ground rules so to speak. Just to make it make us operate more efficiently. Or as efficient as possible. And again. It's been a couple of years. So call me on anything. Please. A main motion must be moved and seconded by the body. Then restated by the moderator. Before it is under consideration. And debate on the article may begin. The effect of a negative. Main motion. If someone were to make a negative motion. Is to make adoption of the main motion. Equivalent to doing nothing at all. And that needs. That cannot happen. We have to approve. Make a motion to approve an article. Have a statement. Make a motion to approve an article. Have a second. Even though you may not be in favor of it. Just so we can discuss it. And then we'll vote on it. You can vote for or against after that. That's just a procedure to get it on the floor to discuss it. Yes. At what point? I'll ask for motions. After I've stated an article. If you want to amend a motion. You can do that once it's on the floor for discussion. You can bring that amendment up at any time. Okay. And then we'll need a second force to discuss that. And that's a little bit further than my. Notes here, but. That amendment can be amended once. As well. So it gets a little confusing. That's where. We need to stay. So did I answer your question? Yeah, because we can't. We can't talk about or we can't bring up. An item that has not been warned. Otherwise. The general public would not know. Okay. So that's against it. So, but we can modify what's here. So keep that in mind. As. And to elaborate on that. Select boards. Do not have to accept. Petitions. For articles that are not associated with a normal scope of business. So that's that's where that. That comes into play. And. Just. Right here. So Robert's rules of orders are the basic rules of orders for the meeting, except for. Vermont State law takes precedence. The body cannot change Vermont law. And I'll. Mention that if we're trying to. But you can change. Robert's rules with a two thirds vote. If you just decided. So as I mentioned, articles may have only one amendment associated with them at a time and amendments to. That's as far as we can go on the amendments. But we can bring it back up and then amend it again. After you've spoken once on a particular article. I'm going to make sure everyone else who wants to speak has a chance to speak before I would if you want to speak again before I recognize you. And Robert's rules of orders. Gives a given speaker. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. Gives a given speaker. A limit of twice. To speak on an article. If you really feel motivated to speak a third time. The body here has the right to either say yes or no. So you get two chances. Third chance. It's up to the folks here today. This is your meeting, by the way, too. It's not the select board meeting. It's not my meeting. I'm here just to facilitate. I'm going to ask for a vote after a voice vote. Division of the house means a hand vote. So I'm going to ask for a vote at times. And we'll have a voice vote. I'll declare what I hear if it's discernible to me. If you disagree with that. Say I'd like to show a hands please and we'll do that. And then if you would like a paper ballot. Which I'm sure is going to come up. Any time after when it's time to vote. And if all it takes is seven people to agree with that to go to a paper ballot. And we'll do that. So what this means and what I've just said is that the moderator could ask for a voice vote declare a motion passed for failed then someone could request a hand count. There then must be a vote showing with a show of hands and moderator declares the motion passed for failed. And then someone could request a paper ballot. And then I would on that request with seven citizens agreeing. Now you can request that right at the start. When I call when I restate the motion and call for a vote you can ask them please I'm requesting a paper ballot at this time. And so hopefully everyone's got a paper ballot as they say. I think we'll have at least one of those today. So all motions remarks and discussions must be addressed to the moderator and I'll do my best to recognize you and again I'm encouraging folks to use the microphone here to ask any questions. That would be the best bet so everybody can hear really. I'll do my best to recognize you in the order in which you've raised your hands. But really what we've done in the past is when folks want to speak on an article just come up and line up and we'll go one at a time. And you must be recognized to speak you must be recognized to move the question or call the question. So when you think you've heard enough discussion you'd like to call the question you can do so once you're recognized and then we need the concurrence by two-thirds vote of the body to do that otherwise if that fails we'll continue with the discussion. Okay and your speeches must be confined to the merits of the question. You'll not be allowed to engage in personal attacks on a member of the body or their motives. And I think it's a fitting moment here to make note of the equity and inclusion committee's inclusion statement that the Select Board has made adopted this past year which is what we strive to do in town not only in all aspects of town but more especially at town meeting. So the declaration of inclusion the town of Bethel condemns racism and welcomes all persons regardless of race color religion national origin sex gender identity or expression age income or disability and wants everyone to feel safe and welcome in our community. As a town we formally condemn all discrimination in all of its forms commit to fair and equal treatment of everyone in our community and we'll strive to ensure all of our actions policies and operating procedures reflect this commitment. The town of Bethel has and will continue to be a place where individuals can live freely and express their opinions. And your Select Board adopted that on September 26th 2022 which I think is commendable. All right a couple more here here with me. Vermont State law prohibits consideration of articles that have not been warned. This means you cannot take binding action under the article of the business at the end of the meeting. We can do a straw vote gives the Select Board a good feeling for the consensus here if such a thing comes up. We can't amend warned articles such as they would deal with business that hasn't been warned and it's important for that fact. So reconsideration of an article is allowed and this is a very strange thing to some folks. Allowed by Vermont State law until a point is reached where the body has begun working on another article. This means that if you voted down an article a motion can be made to reopen consideration of this article by a person on the prevailing side. And yes I'll need to ask how you voted. However once the next article is on the floor so that means I've read following article and then it's been open for discussion. No more action can be taken on that previous article. So you're thinking why would this ever happen? Well if we voted on something and suddenly there's a piece of information that comes up that would totally change the prior article or how you voted on that prevailing side to say wait a minute if I had known that I probably would have voted different. And again that has to be the consensus of everyone here to go back to that prior article. A little complicated but there may come up a time when we need to do that. So my role as moderators to help you accomplish the business you intended to do please raise your hand and ask questions if you don't understand what's happening of you or if you think what's happening is wrong which you may and that's fine or if you want to do something but you don't know how to proceed. So please tell me if you feel I'm ruling improperly you have the right to challenge my decision by Robert Shull's order. So today I'm not sure if we have any visitors here that are just here visiting okay we have a couple great good to see you here. You can participate by speaking if the body agrees but you cannot vote unfortunately. So please I encourage you if you have a question ask it. So also on that regards our town manager, Teresa Kirby is not a resident of Bethel but she'll be likely and planning on making some presentations. So if there's no objection here today please allow Teresa to speak to those issues okay and that's great. I kind of probably went out of order because I'm assuming I'm going to be an electric moderator and stating all this and we haven't done that yet so we are going to do that right now and I'm going to read the warning. The legal voters of the town of Bethel are hereby warned and notified to meet at the White River Unified School campus gymnasium in Bethel on Tuesday, March 7th, 2023 at 10 a.m. to transact the following business from the floor. So let's get started finally. Thank you for being patient. Pam, you're on. Good morning. The floor is now open for nominations for moderator. Any other nominations? No further nominations. All in favor of Eric Benson as your moderator? Say aye. Aye. Those opposed? It's yours. Easy now. We'll see how you feel at the end of the meeting. Okay, well now it's my turn for carrying it on here. Article 2 to elect the town clerk for the term of one year, floor is open for nominations and technically they don't have to be seconded, but seconds are good if you want to support it. Thank you, Louise. Pam Brown's been nominated for the nominations. Any further nominations? Seeing none, all those in favor of electing Pam Brown as your town clerk for the ensuing year, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? And we've elected Pam Brown for that term. Pam's operating kind of on cruise control here because she had duties last night at the town budget meeting and a furnished one out last night, so... But thank you, Josh Tracy. Thank you. If there's a plug for Tracy's plumbing. Yes. Alright, article number 3 to elect the town treasurer for the term of one year, floor is open for nominations for town treasurer. Okay. Marine nominates Pam Brown for the nominations, for the nominations for treasurer. Seeing none, all those in favor of electing Pam Brown treasurer, say aye. Aye. Opposed? We've elected Pam Brown. And before we get to article number 4 Paul has asked to speak and I'll turn the podium over to him for a minute or two. Good morning, everybody. You're... You're all in your underwear. That's very nice. I appreciate that. Yes. So I just want to say a couple of thank yous. As you know, I'm not re-running for the position of select board. I just want to thank some folks who helped me out through my time on the board. So I want to thank you all of you here for taking the time to come in and participate. This is your meeting and this is a great crowd. I don't think I've seen a crowd this large in a number of years even before the pandemic hit. So when I first came on the board and Carl Russell were on the board, Carl was the chair and I just want to say thank you to Mo and to Carl wherever you are for helping me learn the ropes of how to be an effective select board member. Next I want to thank the current group here Dave, Linley, Jean and our fearless leader Chris. It was an honor and a privilege to be part of this and I'm very I wish you a lot of luck in the future. When the idea of the five select board member pattern was brought up there was a lot of discussion folks say you'll never find five people to agree on anything. So this is just a waste of time. It's been quite the opposite. Yes, we've had some discussions and a couple of heated discussions even but we've always been able to arrive at a consensus that we could agree on and we made the best decisions that we could for the benefit of the town. So I want to say thank you to the group for doing that and last but not least I want to say thank you to our excellent town manager Terese Kirby. He was hired. We knew he had a weak background in finance and probably one of the best things that he did while he was here was to bring Terese on board although I'm not quite sure if we picked her or she picked us I think she was looking for a challenge and she certainly found one here but she's always been available to chat when I was in the town office. She'd always sit down and had time for me to talk about finance or personal business too and I really appreciated her input and we're lucky to have her. Last but not least Pam, Kelly and Dietrich down at the town office they really make the place a happy, pleasant place to come in and hang around in and speak with they're a fine bunch of ladies and I'm going to miss spending time down there although I'm not going to be a stranger I'm still going to be part of town government in some way shape or form I'm getting involved as always committees to be involved in and so I'm looking forward to a different path in town government so that's it. Good day. Enjoy the rest of the meeting. Thank you for your service. Okay let's let's get right to it here. Article 4 to elect by ballot a select board member for a term of 3 years to succeed Palm Valley whose term expires and the floor is open for nominations okay Denise Gill-Mett has been nominated okay we'll take that as a second that was further nominations for select board member and this is for a 3 year term any further nominations one more time further nominations then I would entertain a motion that nominations cease and the clerk be directed to deposit one ballot in the name of Denise Gill-Mett do I have that nomination? I shall move. Okay so I'll call is there a second on that we can we can ask her if she'd like to speak she's been nominated and seconded yeah yeah please do Denise yeah I know you have a good voice but there are folks like I'm getting getting a little harder hi my name is Denise Gill-Mett and thank you everybody for coming out today I'm running because I love this wonderful community of basketball that we have here I've made it my home for the last 20 years and Mike and his sister Elma and Matt Gill-Mett also lived in Bethel in the late 30s early 1940s my dad used to talk about playing basketball in the town hall and how the water bucket could freeze because it was so cold in there I currently serve on the Bethel Planning Commission and housing has become a major issue for me along with everybody else in this town in many towns in Bethel and the Planning Commission is redoing some of the bylaws so we can hopefully make housing and building a little bit in this year I retired from the granted industry I was there for 34 years I was a SAM last year lead person an expediter I was active in the granted cutters association for the 23 years 18 of those years was as president I helped negotiate many unique contracts bargaining, industry relations for union members I developed many skills that I think were helping on the select board I also served on the Graded Group Insurance Trust Board and learned a lot of the complexities of the ever-changing healthcare system I currently volunteer for the Bethel Food Shelf, the Bethel Forward Festival and help to re-establish one of Vermont's oldest AA meetings here in Bethel and I would be proud to serve as a select board member and appreciate your vote Thank you Denise There's a motion on the floor and it's been seconded to instruct the clerk to place one ballot in the name of Denise Gomez for the term of three years for select board All those in favor say aye Opposed? Okay, the ayes appear to have it and do have it And article 5 To elect by ballot a select board member for a term of two years to succeed Chris Jarvis whose term expires Floor is open for nominations for the two year term for select board Any nominations for that position Okay, stand Nominates Chris Further nominations For the two year term of select board Further nominations Any further nominations Okay, seeing none I'll entertain the motion again that nomination ceases and the clerk be directed to cast one ballot in the name of Chris Jarvis If you'd like to speak go ahead Chris I was hoping that somebody out there this year would get the courage So I just wanted to thank everybody for their support over the years As Paul was alluding to back in 2016 we voted on as a community to go from a three person board to a five person board There was a lot of negativity that year about that will never work I ended up being the fourth person on the board so I was the very first that was elected after that discussion And I think a lot of times people will say I don't bring an agenda to the board I think we all bring some sort of agenda to the board regardless if it's a direct agenda or if it's something more broad that we want to see happen in our town At that time I was writing down some things from back then and some of the things if we go back to 2016 we were digging out of Irene we had budgets that were put together that were deficit funded we had some budgets that were voted on that then maybe weren't as accurate that came back to bite us like Paul said with the town office at least at that point wasn't a very friendly place to go in to do business and if you did you didn't want to go in there or deal with a lot of people in there and I think a lot of people at the time I think a lot of people agree with me is the town at that point just kind of lacked of future version of ourselves what is the vision for Bethel going forward it seemed like back then we did a lot of nearsightedness what is best for our pocket this year not necessarily what's going to help us 10 years down the road and then there was at least from what I used to see was there were a lot of transparency issues there were a lot of maybe hiding things and not being clear on things so again as Paula stated stole a lot of my thunder but I've been very proud to sit on the board for 7 years there has been a whole difference of people that I've interacted with the board that we have right now is fantastic Mo and others that have come before us and Carl that I've worked with for several years the really nice thing is we all come from a little bit different walk of life and it makes it interesting the conversations are good and again what Paula said is we always find a way to come back to the middle and to agree and that's really what local town type government is about it's not about a political agenda or being a blue or red person it's about let's address the articles have a good discussion and come together and figure out what's in the best interest of everybody in the town and I feel that no matter which board we've had over the last 7 years we've done a good job of putting our citizens first I think some things that you will see hopefully I'm wrong definitely correct me but our budgets have been realistic may not always be exactly what you wanted but they're realistic they provide these services that you like to have at the same time they've been balanced and responsible we've gone from deficit spending to having surplus in our budgets our town office is a friendly place to do business we have good people we have great town manager we have set up a lot of various futuristic funds to keep Buffalo moving forward we're saving money just like today we're putting away money for another day we're not just looking about this year what's going to be the best for us this year what's going to happen 5 and 10 and 15 and 20 years down the road we're catching up on infrastructure that was left behind for many years that's a tough hold to dig out of but we're working on that hard and we're being transparent I think anybody that comes to our meetings they see the transparency that we have and the last thing I just wanted to I think the biggest thing that I pride myself as being the chair the last couple of years is we have an interacting board during our select board meetings and I don't know how many people have gone to other towns but most of the time the meeting is the select board's meeting the public can come and visit the meeting and have there maybe one spot in the meeting where they can actually discuss something but if you've come to our meetings you'll see that we've been able to find a common ground between it's not just we have to wait until a public comment to have your comments for that meeting which we do have but there's frequently times throughout the meeting where we're able to have some interaction from the folks that are in either on the computer we do a hybrid method or in person that may want to comment on something that we're talking about we've been able to include that as well so when I lost a bet to Theresa I told her if she signed on for two more years with us I would go two more years so hopefully today I can earn your vote and I'll continue to work hard for the next two years thank you Chris okay I don't think we got a motion stop it no okay okay alright we haven't made that motion yet we have one more chance for you to nominate someone else for this position I'm not seeing any hands go up so now I will certainly entertain that motion to yes okay and that specifically would be that we close nominations and that clerk being instructed to just important because we do have to cast the ballot in the name of Chris Jarvis so all those in favor of doing that please say aye opposed the ayes have it and Chris Jarvis is elected for the two-year term Article 6 to elect by ballot the Lister to serve the one-year balance of a three-year term to succeed Pamela Brown whose term expires in 2024 the floor is open for nominations for a one-year term okay Paul Valley has been nominated we'll see not there yet for the nominations for the one year remaining one remaining year of the three-year term any other nominations last call on nominations I'd entertain that motion then that we cease nominations and that the clerk being instructed to cast one ballot in the name of Paul Valley okay thank you Denise is there a second on that motion slavko all right the motion has been made and seconded to elect Paul Valley for the one-year balance of three-year term as Lister all those in favor respond by saying aye opposed and the ayes have it and you've elected Paul Valley to elect Paul Valley Lister for a term of three years to succeed Judy Brigham whose term expires and the floor is now open for nominations for that term okay Judy has been nominated and are there further nominations for the three-year term any further nominations going three times for the nominations seeing none I'd entertain a motion that nomination ceases and that we instruct the clerk to place a ballot in the name of Judy Brigham for this Harold White first Louisa you seconding that okay we have a motion and the second to place the name of Judy Brigham on one ballot to be deposited in the box all those in favor say aye opposed put Judy back there where she's doing a fabulous job thank you Judy okay article eight to elect a trustee of public funds under section 24 of the Vermont Statutes for a term of three years to succeed Sandy Farrell whose term expires in 2023 the floor is open for nominations for trustee of public funds I see a hand back there again Sandy Farrell has been nominated to continue are there further nominations for trustee of public funds for the three-year term further nominations any further nominations for trustee of public funds seeing none someone would move that we cease nominations and that one ballot in the name of Sandy Farrell be placed in the ballot box Harold has made that nomination or motion do we have a second okay Rebecca I know you are Rebecca has seconded that so I'll in favor of Sandy Farrell have one ballot in the name of Sandy Farrell being deposited in the ballot box say aye opposed Sandy is again elected doing a fine job as trustee of public funds alright now we have article nine which is to elect a trustee of public funds under the same statute to serve a one-year balance of three-year term to succeed Paul Valley whose term expires this year floor is open for nominations on that stand Scott Putney is nominated further nominations further nominations for the one-year balance term for trustee of public funds any further nominations further nominations I would entertain a motion that we cease nominations thank you Louise and that one ballot be entered with the name of Scott Putney all those in favor say aye opposed okay that and Scott is elected to join trustee of public funds okay Chris do you want to speak on article 10 before we get too far into it one thing that I forgot to mention is that the maker of the motion for one of these articles has the right to speak first okay somewhere I've dropped that on so if you make a motion to move an article you're entitled to speak on that first so I'll just go through the overview of the town budget for anybody that was able to come in person or watch it through orca or online virtually be the same discussion that we had to select board meetings so we'll start with the revenues first the revenues for the budget that's proposed today is up $56,000 from previous of which $54,560 of that is the sale of our interest in the transfer station that we sold to Royalton on July 1st so that that increase of revenue will happen for the town of Bethel for the next five years and that will finish our deal with Royalton on our interest for the transfer station the cost side of things as we've kind of all seen if we've been to the grocery store or still up at the gas station or anything else is the cost side of things have gone up as well cost in our budget has gone up $263,000 over last year and I'll break down those pieces the first section is the benefits so benefits in our budget which benefits as health care retirement those are pieces that are sent from us from the state based on the increases that's happening at the state so the health insurance went up 22% year over year so these are things that we don't have any control over as a board unless we want to discontinue benefits to somebody which in this climate of like Kurt was talking about with attracting labor you know you're not going to find somebody to work for you if you're not going to take care of them with the benefits so so these are costs that have year over year that our benefits cost have gone up $35,000 that's not us making any changes to the benefits that's just the cost that has been given to us from the state of Vermont through retirement and health insurance the piece that we're all familiar with is inflation we hear inflation probably can't turn on the TV out here without inflation and inflation something else but the inflation is any of the costs that's happened you know in the last year and a half so the big movers for us here at town and we're not doing anything different this is to keep the services the same that we have provided the salt for instance has gone up about $30,000 that so salt has gone up about $30,000 and we've had diesel fuel for plowing we're doing other activities grading the roads has gone up and heat and oil for our buildings etc so the inflation pieces of it it's about $80,000 of our budget that's gone up those are the pieces that we haven't done anything different which is costing us more money to buy those things the next section is grant matches so Trees has done an awesome job of the state offers a grant what can we do we don't want to use the word free money because it's not free but it's money that our tax money goes into a pool and they get grants out so why shouldn't we try to get some of that money back whenever we can so Trees is always down there with their handout if that's either at the state level or talking to Bernie Sanders or somebody to get something we were able to secure four large grants for our town that are desperately needed to work on the infrastructure that normally we'd have to do ourselves so we every budget cycle we put some money aside in our funds so that we don't have to all of a sudden come do and ask for a lot of money we're trying to do a little bit of money over a long period of time so we were able to get secure an earmark money for Sand Hill road through Bernie Sanders so we were gifted $600,000 to do some work with that Bernie has given us all this money comes with some sort of match money so what we've part of this $60,000 is match money that we've put aside for that so the Sand Hill piece of it is us doing there will be a water infrastructure job that's separate from this this is the piece where it will come down to drainage saving it if anybody's driven up and down Sand Hill road you know that it's in dire need of some attention Christian Hill road we were able to secure a state grant for that and that work actually was bid on this week so that we anticipate that work to start in May so May and June if you live in Christian Hill road it might be a little busy for a month or so but maybe 10th of a mile that's the paid portion from 107 up we'll get redone Pleasant Street if anybody walks from in town to the school or from Sand Hill road to the school you know that the sidewalks from the intersection of Sand Hill road and Pleasant Street down to the school are at times below the grade level of the roadway that creates a lot of issues when it comes to freezing surfaces or water being on them so we were able to apply and get a we'll call it a sidewalk grant I think it's like a streetscape or a head so we were able to secure that that's something that you won't see for a year or two but we are putting that money aside so those sidewalks will all get redone and and then we have the Colbert that runs under Peabind road down by the intersection on the backside of Sand Hill road for anybody that drives out that direction you often see that that area gets flooded so there's we were able to get a structure grant for that so that's where $60,000 of ours is matching some of these grants I don't have the exact number but these grants here all said and done are I think around $1.2 million that we've secured for the town to do this work so some highway changes so if anybody lives on a dirt road gravel road you'll know that you know we've graded the road so many times there's not really anything left other than the old hard material that's underneath it wintertime we usually put a lot of sand down and sand is good temporarily but really adds no structure to the road over time so you put sand down it's good for a day or two and it just kind of gets swept to the side we've tried this year with mixing some manufactured sand or small 3-8 stone into our winter maintenance it costs a little bit more than natural sand but the intent is that when we're done with our winter maintenance that that road base that we're putting down will help will help with the overall road base going forward it won't just be sand that you can only use for one application it'll be manufactured sand and stone that will be left on the road that we can regrade with we've lost the color difference yeah so it does have a little bit we've filled a fair amount of complaints on the back road so the color of natural sand is usually a darker gray or tan color that you see pretty easily through the snow where the manufactured sand is more like chips so as it gets put down you can't see it as well through the snow but it's there the other thing is we've worked on we always talk about paved roads and how often should you repave your roads and we have that all set now we've been working on gravel roads how often should we be maintenance our gravel roads which we didn't have any type of gravel roads policy so we've established that every seven or eight years the gravel roads need to be added gravel now we could probably all sit here and think about the last time that some gravel got put on some of our roads and you know you probably count on your hand this many times so we've increased our budget to increase gravel that we can use to up the life on our roads the constable budget is up $10,000 a majority of that we've had pretty lengthy discussion on you know our commitment the select board has put forward over the years is to provide 20 hours of service to the community a week now again we can all sit here and say I can't remember the last time it was on the constable anywhere over the last couple years we used to be pretty lucky with sharing the constable with other communities the last few years our constables have full time jobs in other communities or other identities so one is full time Rutland County Sheriff the other one is full time employee of Royalton so usually when we get them is when they have opportunity like an overtime or they're not committed full time to their positions which has been challenging because some of them have had mandatory overtime because the Sheriff's department so Finn lacking help and then Royalton has been down a person so it's been very difficult to get our constable to come into the community and do the outreach that we wanted to do so one of the things that had come up when we had asked why can't we get your time is the amount of pay that we pay them versus when they can stay on overtime at their other job so we've added some wage money there to try to make it a little more competitive for them to want to come into town as well as it potentially gives us some opportunity that if we can't get the hours filled then there's some potential of contracting out with the Sheriff's department at times the White River Valley Ambulance is probably the largest increase in our budget you'll see that that's up $26,000 over last year moved over 20% and if you look through the details that they have in the report a majority of it is the same things that everybody's facing you can see right across the board it's healthcare retirement, a lot of benefit related things and also increase of salaries to attract good qualified individuals to perform services for us and the last $22,000 of the $263,000 in increases are all the little things that we would talk about on a normal year setting aside some wage increases for our employees supplies appropriation money things like that if you look at the page 54 so page 54 is what is this going to cost us and that's what we all want to know what is it going to cost us so the budget item if you look at the budget item what we would say is a normal budget that we're voting on on 10 typically we vote on what I'm calling the base budget with the White River Valley Ambulance and the human services pieces those are kind of the pieces that all fit into our budget on a normal year this year we do have on the warning a couple extra items that have been added so you'll see as we go through there is an item in there for for the Bethel library for extra funds for the Bethel library that they'll speak to at that point there's also another item on there for recreational facility to complete phase two of the skateboard park and then there is another one on item 15 which is a thousand dollars for the historic playhouse theater and Randolph so we don't get too confused so the base budget which is everything I just talked about plus the White River Valley Ambulance because we've got to have Ambulance services and our human services pieces those are all the identities that provide services to our town like stagecoach and those types of things we are looking at with our budget at a two cent increase for this year and then once you look into the page 54 you can see next to it where it says estimated tax on the far right column there it'll show what each one of those extra services will add to after this item that we vote on so for instance if you want to look at the added money to the town library if that would be an extra 1.3 cents that your taxes would go up if that's approved the other article of the skateboard park money for the Bethel recreation that would be an extra 1.4 cents so there's a total there if we voted in everything that's on your warning today that the total would be 4.7 cents total that you'd be looking at as individuals if you voted in everything today on an average home so right now $250,000 home is our median home value in Bethel $250,000 home that's about $185 a year increase in your taxes for all of them thank you Chris we'll have plenty of time to ask questions as soon as we get this put on the floor for discussion so we are again at article 10 and I'll read that shall the voters authorize total fund expenditures for operating expenses of $2,655,475 of which $2,164,713 shall be raised by taxes and $490,762 by non-tax revenues I'll entertain a motion and a second to get this to the discussion phase and again you don't have to agree with it just let's get it on okay Denise has moved it Bruce Butler okay second so the motion has been made and seconded let me read it one more time shall the voters authorize total fund expenditures for operating expenses of $2,655,475 of which $2,164,713 shall be raised by taxes and $490,762 by non-tax revenues okay so it's been moved and seconded we're open for discussion more questions just something I was supposed to mention earlier pages 36 and 37 in the budget description here the budget layout have been reversed so if you're reading down and you get to the bottom of 36 materials and you look on the next page we're in miscellaneous well we need to flip the page over and 38 is where that continues so it's a little confusing it got out of order when I went to the printers or somehow that got so if you're confused that's what happened so do we have any discussion on article 10 any questions of any sort this is our chance folks to ask questions about roads curious about what's going on what the paving plan is this is a huge chunk of money here and this is your chance to ask if you if you so desire good with it and we will go on to move the question okay very good I'm not seeing any hands go up I will call the question but I will read it one more time to so we're all clear article 10 shall the voters authorize total fund expenditures for operating expenses of $2,655,475 of which $2,164,713 shall be raised by taxes in $490,762 by non-tax revenues all in favor of article 10 signify by saying aye all those opposed in the article 10 carries very good we have a speaker who's requested to speak or two for article 11 which is the Bethel Library question and Lisa Campo you'd like to come forward good morning everybody for everyone who doesn't know me I'm Lisa Campo I'm one of the trustees at the Bethel Library and I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about today about the library and why we're making this request so you've got on your chairs a piece of paper that looks like this it sort of sums up the request and the request of libraries in local towns that have similar populations so that would be this one looks like this so like I said they're similar that we actually are the town of the most the highest population so we have about 1,900 folks and then everybody else Tumbridge has about 1,300 Chelsea has about 1,200 Rochester has about 1,100 so and as you can see the request that from taxes from other towns from the libraries they pay about 75% of the budget the annual budgets of the libraries somebody asked me earlier how many of them were municipal libraries and how many were the 501c3 which the Bethel Library is a 501c3 we're incorporated we're non-profit municipal library so and I don't know the answer to that question but I can find out for you and get back to you so anyway so that's that's the information for that we're asking for $35,000 all together $7,500 is in the budget that Chris talked about earlier the $27,500 is what this article covers and that will cover the operating budget for our library for the upcoming year so it's not extra funding per se we're not asking for anything additional above and beyond what the library spends right now so and then on the other side there's a lot of misinformation going around town about the library and so I just wanted to speak a little bit about that and then if anybody has any questions so the library is not owned by the town the funding has been this past year was $5,000 and we used that for purchasing new computers so the library is has new computers, we have a new printer and it makes us much more accessible for folks who need that resource so the Bethel Library does not have an endowment there was a lovely lady who lived in town, they married Brandleer who established a trust and the interest from that trust is divided between multiple entities where one of them has a quarterly amount of money it does not cover the costs of running our library so we've been taking from the investments and we've been drawing that down if we continue on the way we are probably the library probably about five more years five, six, seven more years and then the investments will be gone so the idea is that if we could get some support from the town for operating costs then we could work on building that back up so it's in a better place to support the library in the future alright so like I said the investment account does not it may have supported it back in the 60s when Mrs. Brandleer passed away but it does not any longer and so that's sort of where we're at and you can see that Tumbridge and Chelsea and Rochester are all supporting a 70% of the budget the rest is covered by grants donations we've been really lucky the last couple of years in terms of getting a couple of sizable donations and the townwide we did a townwide appeal which also brought in a lot of money not Tums but it made us feel very optimistic about the town and valuing their library so we felt good about that any questions? concerns? yeah over there to the right Lisa Julie hi there oh well thank you very much I appreciate it for the questions on the right Jeanette I can't hear you that's a great question ask that again I asked if any of that money will cover the steps that go into a library which we can't use right now right so the front steps are about probably I don't know they're at least 40 years old and they've started to deteriorate due to salt and snow and that kind of thing they are blocked off now we had somebody who fell and obviously we don't want that to happen again so we're working on grants to improve the accessibility of the library the Vermont Department of Libraries has a federal grant that's coming up and that would be money we would use to help support that we're going to fix that lock way and we're going to put a ramp on the back to improve the ADA accessibility to the building so thank you for asking that any further questions? do you want to speak? I was a treasurer of the library for 25 years the biggest change is that it's gone into the technology age and technology costs money when I first started 39 years ago at the library nobody had computers we weren't in the computer age now everybody needs access and critically with some people doing homeschooling having a lot of computer capability in the library has been beneficial to many people you have to constantly upgrade that stuff to keep it so it works well and it's not cheap unfortunately we've been lucky enough at the library to get a lot of stuff at a fairly low cost but it does break down after a while and has to be replaced so I just want to add that to what Lisa said and I wanted to thank the board for continuing on and I miss both Carol and Marilyn who are long time members of the board thank you Louise for the comments or questions article 11 yep Chris so one thing I just wanted to point out with so we were talking about the library budget and normally we appropriate it used to be $2,500 a year we started talking as a board saying what does $2,500 even do for the library is that appropriate sum of money to give them because it isn't again I think a lot of people think it's a town library but it's not a town library so we invited the library in to discuss what is your budget what is the long standing of the library look like and that's where the conversations so the library of our size from what we're being told should have a budget somewhere around $100,000 to $125,000 a year to be a fully functioning community library the current budget of our library is $50,000 so it's more than half what it should be the question that we put on for this year is so one part is we went from $2,500 three years ago to now $7,500 in the budget for an appropriation for it this year we're also asking for another $7,500 to get the library to where it should be minimally funded also this wouldn't just be a one time we're voting on a one time amount of money this year but based upon how the community feels and direction we want to go to the library is we're going to take that information to put it into future budgets so the way we see this is if it gets proof today then we are going to be looking at next year of appropriating $35,000 towards library or more in the future and I think what we were trying to do was inspire a conversation with the community is I mean library is a very important piece of the community and we want everybody to understand the funding that needs to happen to keep this in our community and to also build it into something better and the sheet that Lisa had out there is showing what other communities appropriate for money a year with those libraries that are in their community and as you can see they appropriate a lot more money than we have so I think one it's good this one time amount of money this year will help their budget for the next year but I think as a community we need to start thinking about what is the long term vision of our library and what do we think that that should be funded at so thank you thank you Chris yep Sandy hang on get your microphone I just wonder why the library is not on our appropriations list everyone hear that why is the library not on our regular appropriations list did you mean human services it's my fault no it's actually already in the town budget as an appropriations item it's just not in the human services section it's in the regular part of the budget as other appropriations that's $7,500 that we're talking about it's already in there it's a regular appropriation good question because we may not all realize that okay further questions on article 11 now Bennett did you want to speak on this article or did Lisa cover it okay all right so Bennett's available for questions as well any further discussion any further questions or should we move to a poll yep come right up to them yep thank you no any other questions what I'm asking is in the budget you've already budgeted for this price going to them correct not completely I'll let this slide for you oh so why is it in the budget already it doesn't include this 27 that's what I wanted to know great so everyone clear on that what this this $27,500 is over and above what's already been in the budget that we voted in in the prior question so this would be on top of that this one year only at this point okay Dan has asked that we move the vote Louise that's been moved in second and this is just to end discussion all those in favor of ending discussion say aye closed article 11 actually I haven't read it yet no I think we went right from Lisa okay am I apologies article 11 shall voters appropriate up to the additional sum of $27,500 to the Bethel library for continued service to Bethel residents okay now we're going to need a motion to approve so I'll entertain that motion first Denise and is that a second all right marine seconds any more discussion I'm already thank you all right so seeing no more discussion I'm going to if there's no objection we'll just go to the vote article 11 so this a yes vote is going to approve this one time appropriation of $27,500 everyone understands that article 11 shall the voters appropriate up to the additional sum $27,500 to the Bethel library for continued service to Bethel residents all those in favor say aye opposed and the ayes have it and article 11 passes all right let's see if I can do article 12 correct Ellie Griffin I think has a request to speak on article 11 okay just Ellie just to just to alleviate confusion like I created last time let me get it on the floor and we'll consider this okay article 12 shall the voters appropriate up to the additional sum of $30,000 to the recreation facility improvement capital fund to complete phase 2 of the skate park we'll need a motion to approve and then a second thank you second Marie very good so we will move we will now open the floor for discussion right up to the microphone Ellie thank you for having me this is Ellie Griffin from the Bethel recreation committee and this is something we've been working on for a long time and so I'd like to tell you about it in August 2011 the Bethel Recreation Committee and the slack board met at the recreation center we discussed the condition of the facilities there had not been meaningful improvements in years everyone agreed it was time to make needed improvements with the approval of the slack board we held a survey in 2012 to get residents feedback and that was when we discovered there was a need for a skating park we commissioned the Vermont intricate architect to draw up a master plan and at the March 2013 town meeting the master plan was presented to the voters the voters expressed their viewpoints later that week later that year the slack board agreed to the master plan proposal so first was the new pool house and when it was completed the recreation committee immediately started working on the next part of the plan a skate park a place for people of all ages to exercise and have fun and we are so excited and we really appreciate you the voters for your amazing support because at 2016 and 2017 town meetings voted funds for us to build the skate park with the funds from your votes in addition to fundraising and grants we built the first base of the skate park it has been a wonderful addition to our town people from around Vermont in addition to other neighborhood states have enjoyed it for six months of the year from April to October they're using our skate park we have successfully run a workshop in the summers teaching participants how to use a skateboard we cannot thank you enough for your continued enthusiasm and supporting us at yarn sales coin drops raffles, banjo concerts and family fun Friday for the sales bottle drives, t-shirts sales online fundraisers and our 5k race in addition to the bathroom recreation committee's fundraising efforts the middle schoolers spoke they said to us we want to help you we want to do a fundraiser and we were so surprised because we did not ask them and then they did their fundraiser and they presented us with a big check of $730 because it's so important to those middle schoolers the Bethel Recreation Committee and the skateboard supporters are ready to build that second phase and complete Bethel's skate park this summer through the fundraising efforts and incredible generous donations the Bethel Recreation Committee has raised $22,174.60 for phase two and additionally we have received $26,400 from the land wire conservation grant and $10,000 from the Tehran Foundation so our current total sits at $58,574.60 and we discovered that all we need to complete the project is $30,000 I would just like to take a moment to share with you some words from an actual skateboarder that has been skateboarding over 21 years he says Bethel's little skate park has done so much for our community in a very short time skate parks provide a specific need for the youth that is often the youth that is often neglected stigmatized and discouraged this person goes to the new Bethel park at least once a week and every time he goes there he talks to others at the park a lot of the people that he talks to aren't even from Bethel people come from Randolph Brookfield, Chelsea Whirlton, Tumbridge Stockbridge and other towns alternate skate crowds are constantly surging for where they can go expanding the park will only increase tourism for Bethel sure the skate park is free but visitors have to eat their lunch they have to buy gas they may want to drink after their 2 hour workout at the skate park so an investment in this park is an investment in the town the Bethel skate park is more than a place to hang out it's for an important and often neglected group of people that just want to fit in somewhere and have fun and and so that we want to finish this skate park and all of you it's your help with $30,000 thank you all okay I see a visitor on one of our you know our young people would like to speak are you all okay with having her speak anyone opposed to that excellent just let us know who you are and go ahead I'm Naomi Kinsley and just so you know no children were harmed in the completion of this writing assignment nothing about the skate park the mini ramps and box junk but what I also love is the community that worked hard so that me and many other kids in addition to the skate park will allow more kids like me to have more fun thank you I'm Shane Kinsley I'm a Bethel resident I started writing and it positively changed my life I learned that kids need dragons to slay opportunities to develop grit and an outlet we warned they may start wearing ironically funny and irreverent t-shirts they speak in a new slang for all the tricks they're working on they will probably even make some new friends maybe even find a mentor these alternative kids sports are underrepresented everywhere communities don't think twice about investing in regular sports be it resurfacing in gymnasium new uniforms field maintenance etc I ask you to give these other kids a chance to impress you not by showing off but by demonstrating ownership in their accomplishments by tackling something that's difficult and developing the attitude to persist until that next task is complete thank you for your consideration thank you very much further questions or comments yeah okay well let me get you in I would like a big thank you to Bethel because she has worked so tirelessly on this project for so many years just to support our kids it's not even like kids that she has in her family she just loves all of the kids and if we don't start supporting our kids I mean Vermont is becoming such a great state right and it's the future of the kids that we really need to be thinking about we're already ruining the planet for them we better give them some physical outlets to keep them healthy to support what we're leaving behind for them so I encourage everybody to vote for this okay just remind me of your name Mary Anderson thank you very much I was entirely supporter of the rec center as a whole for years I appreciate that okay we've had a motion to move the question it has not been seconded yet so come speak my name is Julie Nelson Bethel resident thank you Ellie for all your work amazing work I do definitely apply alternative physical activity and alternative resources in our town however I do have a question or an opinion is any additional monies what about the rest of the other people that might want other recreational facilities shouldn't this money be used for projects that can be inclusive of more people in our town in other words more alternative choices other than just the skateboard just wanted to say that thank you Ellie has a response it looks like this is one of the projects incorporated in the master plan that was formed in 2013 brought to the voters at town meeting and a select board approved so this is just one of the projects and then then after we complete this project that we've been working on for a long time then we have other projects to work on in the future and for including all because we did a survey in 2012 and we found the according to the survey there are certain components we did the trail building was one of the components and we did the trails from grants we did the trails from the center to the school we're still working on and doing trails with the conservation committee so we're coordinating with other committees to further things like the trails and and we have other projects according to the plan and we will be working on them in addition after we get this project done okay and so we made from the survey and we found what people wanted from all ages from elderly to little kids to all ages so we're going by what we got from the survey and just a point of clarification too maybe is that this is an additional expenditure what's in the budget for the rec center 10,000 okay so there's money that goes in every year for everything over there this isn't a one-time additional expenditure to complete that part of rec center's facility we're certainly more over there besides the rec park the skate park so we have a motion on the floor to end debate we have a second for louise so we'll just call a vote on that it needs a two-thirds majority so all those in favor of ending debate on article 12 respond by saying aye opposed very good, let me read it one more time before we actually vote on it article 12 show the voters appropriate up to the additional sum of 30,000 dollars to the recreation facility improvement capital fund to complete phase 2 of the skate park all those in favor respond by saying aye opposed the nays were heard but the article does appear to carry and does carry okay I'm going to just suspend our work here for just a couple of minutes our senator Dick McCormick has arrived and he would like to say a word or two so hang in there for a few minutes for Dick McCormick thank you I'm savvy enough politician to know you shouldn't talk for long just before lunch so I'm going to I'll be brief first of all I've come to thank you for your votes in the last election I'm honored and when people say I'm humbled someone gets an honor like that I wonder why are you humbled you should be proud of it but it is humbling because it's a responsibility I face it fully aware that no one is perfect at least of all me and that I do my best Winter County as you know as three state senators Allison Clarkson Rebecca White and myself and we have split up the county to try to get at least one of us to every town meeting and to bring greetings from others but then we're all trying to get to one another's towns as well but in any case I bring greetings from Senator White and Senator Clarkson I'm 75 years old this is the first time in my life that I have been on the team in which I am the quiet member these are dynamic women I don't have time to talk about the whole legislative news I'm going to talk about two bills that I'm involved in that leaves a lot unsaid I serve under the senate natural resources and energy committee we have just passed senate bill 5 you have probably heard about it I want to stress something about it it passes the details off to the public utilities condition to develop the details of the program I have two years to do it and nothing gets implemented until there is yet another vote by the legislature so this is a work in progress if you have gotten frightening notices in your fuel bill if you have gotten read scary letters to the editor and so on I am asking you to reserve judgment we have time it is a work in progress you have probably been told that the legislature is going to force you to change how you eat your house that is not a difference of opinion that is a fat truly untrue statement no one is forcing anyone to do anything what the bill is intended to do is to make it easier to switch fuels if you choose to and the reason people would want to choose to switch their fuels is two-fold one fossil fuels are too expensive you know that right now there are Vermonters who just can't afford to eat their houses fossil fuels are too expensive the more benign and environmentally responsible alternatives are cheaper they are not more expensive they are cheaper but they are expensive to get into and that is what the bill is aiming at is developing a way for it to be cheaper to get into the cheaper approach there is rhetoric about the elitists forcing their ideology down people's throats this is about global warming which is not an ideology in science and it's real and you don't need me to tell you that 40 years ago we spoke of global warming in the future tense this and that is going to happen we are here now we are in the future it's real and the other thing it's about is the expense of eating there are people who are having trouble getting by and this is aims at helping the other bill that I'm involved in now and the natural resources and energy committee is the housing bill and we have a housing shortage Vermont has the oldest housing stock in the country which is part of our charm it's all these beautiful old buildings but a lot of them are not as serviceable as they were and we need more housing for people there are people who come here to work they get jobs and then leave because they can't find a place an affordable place to live the bill that has just come from the economic development committee and is now in the natural resources and energy committee has I think some very good provisions and in particular ways to expedite developing in areas that are already developed infilling to try to concentrate development so we can get the needed development and not cause sprawl all over our countryside one thing that I am troubled by in the bill as it comes from economic development and that we'll be working on is that it has Act 250 exemptions as an incentive to building there are 49 other states and in 47 of them those states also have housing problems and they don't have Act 250 there are real estate bargains in the Dakotas but I do not buy the argument that Act 250 has caused housing shortage but I think any regulatory system is to the people who do the development that we need to have done and I think we can make Act 250 faster and cheaper and what I am proposing is what is called an umbrella permit we already have them for industrial parks and planned unit developments like ski areas and that is that a municipality to get an Act 250 permit for particular designated areas that they want developed and then if someone wants to develop in that area they would put in for an amendment to an existing permit that goes much faster and it's much cheaper and I think that will give us a cheaper faster process without diminishing our capacity to protect our environment we in Vermont for the last 50 years have served ourselves well I'm a Democrat I've pretty much dedicated my career in politics to the preservation of a Republican law being Davis the people who gave us Act 250 was all Republicans and they did a good job and I'm proud to be to work on preserving their work I bet everyone would like to get on with the meeting thank you for your votes again and thank you for letting me speak at our meeting thank you and he's indicated he'll be around to the end of the meeting so if you have something in particular you'd like to talk to him about I'm sure he'd be willing to speak with you okay let's move on to Article 13 Article 13, shall the voters take a total of $26,350 to the following social service agencies pursuant to Statute 24 and that list is actually on a page in the town report that I thought was mentioned there and that's none Page 68, thank you Paul so I'll entertain a motion to approve and a second before discussion do I see a motion to approve Article 13 okay Mr. Butler and a second okay your name did you get that thank you very much it's been moved and seconded Article 13, shall the voters appropriate a total of $26,350 to the social service agencies listed on page 68 by Section 24 the Vermont Statutes and even though Mr. Butler made the motion if he's okay with it we'll let Paul speak on this, okay thank you okay all still in your renderer okay so each year traditionally the town of Bethel has set aside money in their budget to help support some of the local and regional nonprofit organizations that have a direct impact on the citizens of Bethel there is a committee consisting of Sandy Farrell Stan Capron Scott Plutney and myself we ask every year that these organizations submit paperwork to us that shows first of all that they are non-profit secondly exactly how much they're asking for and thirdly and most importantly how many citizens in the town of Bethel they actually service during that last the previous year and what impact they have on the citizens of Bethel so that we usually ask that that all be turned into the town office by the December 1st and then during the first week of December we meet as a group we review each request we talk about what the historical data tells us about the organization if we've had any kind of direct contact with that organization we ask a lot of questions about exactly who they service in the town of Bethel and then we arrive in an appropriation number that we then pass along to the select board and in turn it gets passed along to you folks for approval so on page 68 you'll see the list this year of the various organizations we urge you if you know of a local nonprofit organization that would like to request an appropriation they should contact the town office by early October I think it's October 15th so they can get that paperwork in and file for an appropriation are there any questions regarding these okay thank you okay I'll ask again if there are questions or comments regarding the human service agency article alright seeing none then I'll call the vote article 13 shall the voters appropriate a total of $26,350 to the social service agencies listed on page 68 all those in favor say aye opposed the article carries article 14 shall the voters appropriate up to the sum of $153,048 to the WhiteWare Valley ambulance incorporated for continued service to Bethel residents I'll need a motion to approve in a second before discussion okay Denise makes the motion is there a second yep Amy I was making the second article 14 shall the voters appropriate up to the sum of $153,048 to the WhiteWare Valley ambulance incorporated for continued service to Bethel residents and I believe David you have something to talk and Denise if you're okay with that you made the motion okay David Elder Getty will speak to that our Bethel Fire Chief before we even start I just started this fall late winter I want to recognize Neil Fox he did my position for a long long time he was dedicated to this service and I don't think they recognized for it so I would like to take a moment to recognize Neil Chris Contreras Chris took most of the thunder out of my speech the WhiteWare Valley is just like every other business right now between fuel costs vehicles trying to find help everything else their costs have all gone up hair game every year switching from one to the other trying to keep it to like what is an acceptable 10 to 15% increase every year I have a list here of the basic costs of what has gone up I have multiple copies if anybody's interested but Chris covered most of it there is a few statistics so that you know I would like to read Bethel had a total of 259 calls last year 162 were 911 and 95 are what we call no transport that was going to assist people as we look around and see this aging community I listen to it on my page constantly and it tends to be the same people for a short run of time and whenever they go on a no transport they don't get the ability buddy it comes out of their pocket but I see no way around this it's a very added service there is nobody else to call when you've fallen one of the interesting statistics though is Randolph is obviously the highest and Bethel the second but if you break down the calls percentage wise Bethel and Randolph are very close for population versus the amount of calls so we are towards the top what I've witnessed with White River Valley is they do everything they can do to keep the budget down they're very thrifty they had a little trouble with one of their money makers they do what they call long distance transport so if somebody has to go from Gifford to Dartmouth or to a nursing home they can transport well for about six months they couldn't transport anybody because one of the ambulances was broke and it basically was not parts available and the way the world seems to be working right now so that put a bit of a stain in their budget but all in all I'm behind 110% in learning as we go and I would give you encouragement to vote past this and realistically we don't have another alternative and I think they do a good job for the amount of pay thank you thank you David thank you for your service do we have questions on article 14 I'm Gene Kraus from here in Bethel I want to personally thank the White River Valley ambulance I have had the misfortune of needing their services twice recently once was about a month ago when I rolled my pre-dice just between here and Randolph and the ambulance showed up the fire department showed up and everybody showed up and everybody was absolutely convinced that I needed to be taken care of and so I want to commend them and thank them and support them with my vote thank you further questions or comments on article 14 any further questions or comments okay seeing none I will call the vote again article 14 request states shall the voters appropriate up to the sum of $153,048 to the White River Valley ambulance incorporated for continued service to Bethel residents all those in favor respond by saying aye opposed motion carries article is accepted by the way while we were passing out a few accolades here I'd like to thank Seth Stoddard sitting up there on the top of the bleachers handling all of our microphone sound system through his little iPad right there and doing a fantastic job Seth's company is Backroad Audio and he does a lot of concerts and this type of functions in the area that anybody needs that type of service and I'm especially happy to say that Seth who grew up here in Bethel went through this very school that we're sitting in graduated from Whitcomb a few years ago not too many but thank you Seth okay so here we are at article 15 shall the town authorize the expenditure of $1,000 for the not-for-profit operation of the Friends of the Historic Playhouse Theater in Randolph take a motion and a second to put the article on the floor for discussion Bennett is making that motion Bennett Law we have a second from Owen Dan Yukata thank you I think I'm starting to wear out here very good so the motion has been made and seconded and Bennett I believe would like to speak on this article light would speak but I'm happy to speak I'm chair of the board of the Friends of the Historic Playhouse Theater which is the nonprofit that now owns and operates the Playhouse Movie Theater in Randolph I haven't seen many of you with the movies so that explains why we're not yet profitable from operations and so we are trying really hard to keep the movie theater open I think it's I personally feel it's a value to the broader community here Bethel does not have its own movie theater as it doesn't have its own OLE or big grocery store or hospital or anything else we rely on other local communities for assistance with we Chris Jarvis asked earlier what does $1,000 really do $1,000 in this case helps because the voters in Braintree gave us $1,000 at their town meeting earlier and the folks in Randolph gave us $5,000 and we're just trying to get a little ball work you know a little safety net so that until we work ourselves up to where people are coming back to the movies so I ask for your consideration and appreciate it very much thank you Bennett any questions or comments comment article 15 yes come right on up speak my great aunt was who taught art in the school as some of you have lived long enough to know I can't say enough good things about the playhouse if you haven't gone you should go they really try to get a diversity of movies it's hard because sometimes you have to to meet the bills have like what I call a kiddie movie there you know for a length of time they endeavor not to do that and they call it the loss of the shared experience when everybody is home streaming and just watching their television so in addition to this in my opinion measly amount of $1,000 I encourage you all to go thank you very much for the comments or questions on article 15 not seeing hands go up so there's no objection we'll go ahead and call the question article 15 shall the town voters authorize the expenditure of $1,000 for the not-for-profit operation of the Friends of the Historic Playhouse Theatre in Randolph Vermont all those in favor respond by saying aye aye opposed the ayes have it and article 15 is carried article 60 shall the voters authorize payment for property taxes in four equal installments with the due dates being August 15, 2023 November 15, 2023 February 15, 2024 and May 15, 2024 by delivery to the town office postmark on or before that date let's have a motion to approve and a second Slovko has made the motion do I see a second Luis thank you all right and seconded one more time shall the voters authorize payment of the real and personal property taxes in four equal installments with the due dates being August 15 November 15, 2023 February 15, May 15, 2024 by delivery to the town office postmark on or before that date we have floors open for discussion if there's any four equal installments and this is how it's been historically seeing no people jumping up or hands going up any comments there no okay then article 16 shall the voters authorize payment of the real and personal property taxes in four equal installments with due dates being August 15th November 15th of 2023 May 15th sorry February 15th and May 15th of 2024 by delivery to the town office postmark on or before that date all in favor of article 16 respond by saying aye in the opposition seeing none the article passes and is approved okay on to article 17 shall the town of Bethel elect its town officers by Australian ballot floors open for nomination this is a pretty significant change from the town and be happy to entertain any discussion yep no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment no comment the same as speaking for the first time. Hello, I'm Jesse Blotke. I want to voice some support for passing this article. I'm gonna read a letter that I wrote as part of the Equity and Inclusion Committee. In support of Article 17, to use the Australian ballot system to elect town officers. Australian ballot, or secret ballot, is a method of voting anonymously by a ballot on Town Meeting Day today. Under the system of voting, polls are open from 10 a.m. til 7 p.m. Voters can show up within this time frame to vote by marking a printed ballot. This method was successfully used in 2021 to vote on town issues with a 47% increase in turnout, and allows for people to come and vote by ballot at a time that fits in their schedule on Town Meeting Day. Voters may also request an absentee ballot in advance from the town clerk's office, which can be returned at their convenience, or can be turned in any time during the day on Town Meeting Day. As the Equity and Inclusion Committee, a committee of the town of Bethel, one of our goals is to increase specific engagement. We believe it's important to vote yes to elect officers by Australian ballot, as this will allow more people the chance to weigh in and use their voice to vote. Town Meeting is a unique and special way to conduct town business, and it's wonderful to have a day dedicated to vote on the town's budget and officers. However, even though Town Meeting Day is considered a state holiday, the law allows employees the right to take unpaid leave from work, subject to the essential operation of the business or government, and must give at least seven days notice to take advantage of this right. Not everyone can afford an unpaid day off work to join a town meeting discussion. Not everyone's able to leave children unattended to come to a meeting and participate. Some folks are disabled and or don't have transportation to get to town meeting and participate. If we truly want Bethel's Affairs to be a representation of all our voting-engaged citizens, we should vote yes from the floor on Article 17 to elect Bethel's Town Officers by Australian ballot. Thank you. Okay, Jesse, thank you. And just one correction, Jesse, I think you mentioned the time that the ballots are open has been eight, 10 a.m. It's actually eight a.m., okay? So just, but thanks very much for your input on that. Again, I'm Gene Krauss, and I'm speaking as an individual, not as a member of the Select Board, and I want to make that very, very clear. Today is a really important day. You know, 58 years ago, what happened? It's called Bloody Sunday. Some people were beaten because they wanted the right to vote because some people had had the tradition of excluding people from the vote. Now, I went to my first town meeting 52 years ago, fell in love. I thought this is the greatest thing since, slice cheese, but guess what? We have unintentionally made it so that some people who are citizens and members of our community cannot vote. They may be in a nursing home. They may be in the hospital. They may have a health condition. They may not have transportation, but they have to get here in this particular place within a two hour framework in order to cast a vote. This motion does not, does not replace town meeting. It's still coming. We'll still have pie. We'll still talk about the important things that are going on in the town. We'll still vote on a budget. We'll still have an opportunity after the meeting to come and talk about whatever, but in our culture, we have an opportunity today to stand up and to stand tall for the right of every person to cast a ballot. This makes that possible in the election of officers. And as for finding people, my arm was twisted two years ago. My arm was twisted two years ago, and that vote was by Australian ballot because of COVID. So it is not necessary to find people. We can find people. We can twist arms. We just have to do it in a more disciplined way. Please vote yes. Thank you. Move just a little closer. Can you hear me now? Here we go. Close here, I'm the co-chair of the Bethel Energy Committee. And my first town meeting in Bethel, I remember thinking I was so lucky that I could afford to have the day off that both me and my husband had a running car where we could get here from East Bethel. And I thought about all the other town meetings I missed when I was working two jobs, when my car didn't run very well. And I felt so lucky, but beyond lucky, I felt privileged to be here voting. And voting is not a privilege, it is a right for the record. So as the co-chair of the Energy Committee, I spend hours, hours each month contributing to this town. Sometimes I go to select board meetings, I go to my own meetings, I chair them, warn them, write up the minutes. So these hours really add up. And putting this meeting on top of all those hours, you know, from my perspective, I don't have a lot of work here. Like I can vote with the rest of the town, but it's more of a formality for what's happening throughout the year. I see select board meetings as the heart of the community, not this one, but this one is great. I don't, I do want to say this is a good time to get together and I am happy to see everyone who made it through the winter. But I will share with you that I don't feel good right now physically from the top down. My head hurts, I have a headache from sitting in this room. My face is red, you all can probably see it. And I can see some of you have red faces too. We might want to check the ventilation. I don't know what's up with that. My heart's racing. I've recently had heart palpitations. So I don't really want to be somewhere where my heart's racing like this, but I do want to be part of this discussion. My, from my waist down, my legs and my glutes are in pain from sitting for two hours and two and a half hours now, just sitting. At home I have an ergonomic office chair where I don't sit like this when I do computer work. So my body feels that and I'm sweating. Can anybody see this? It's pouring out of me, that's, I'm wearing a shirt under this. I'm sweating through one shirt into my sweatshirt. So I'm very uncomfortable, but I wanted to share that with you all because I imagine some of you also might be uncomfortable. You see me sitting on the bench and oh, she's silly for sitting on hardwood. I weigh 260 pounds. I can't fit in one of these chairs. And I weigh that much due to a lack of healthy opportunities in this town, go skate park. So to finish up, and sorry to get a lost track, going back. Going forward, we need to evolve. We need to evolve as a community. And if we don't, we risk leaving ourselves vulnerable to anybody who wants to come in and do whatever they want in this town because this is a very small town meeting. I've heard very little opposition about pretty much anything. And you know, I don't really see this as a discussion forum. I just see it as a social event. So I think we should take this, turn it into paper ballots, and on Saturday, have a non-creation party. Celebrate the people we just elected. Get ourselves together for the March and have that moment because I do like this moment. I like seeing everyone who I've seen throughout the year at tables, and I do want us to continue gathering at the beginning of March, but not necessarily in this manner. And I meant to have a friendlier tone for all of that. So it always comes out. So thank you all for listening. Thank you, Nicole. You're good. Do we have up for the comments, questions on this most important narrative? I'm a lifelong remuner. Except for one day that I spent in a ham show when I was born. So, I've lived in Bethel since 2005. I grew up in Windsor, Vermont. The, you know, I've done a lot of, over the last couple of weeks, talking about this, a lot of research, and what is town meeting, you know? Just like Nicole had said, you know, so everybody sees it a little bit different. But if you look at town meeting day, town meeting day can be traced back to 1630s in the earliest New England settlements. It is a unique New England tradition. There are spots of it throughout the country that you will see some town meeting, but nothing like in New England. It is the purest form of democracy that you can get. We are here today conducting business one v one. We all have the same equal opportunity and power to vote on any article, as well as amend that article if you see fit. I know that today we're talking about voting Australian ballot for our members of the Select Board and other members that we vote on town meeting day. But that can open the door for who's to say next year that maybe we want to take town meeting day off, like look at Royalton. Royalton was supposed to conduct all their meetings by Australian ballot, but have a town meeting day where we come together this year. Royalton's not doing that. It's been done all virtually. My doing some research and then I was talking with a colleague and I had listened to a VPR episode just recently with this lady named Susan Clark. I don't know if a lot of you know her, but she's a researcher. She spends a lot of time researching town meeting day. And it has been shown over the years and she talked about this that regardless of what we do, within reason, so we could go from a Tuesday to a Saturday, Tuesday during the day to a Tuesday at night. People are going to do their civic duties the same regardless of how we evolve the process. So we're going to get reasonably the same amount of people that are going to come out vote or be attentive to the articles as we are in person. The one thing I do disagree with that comment that was made is I believe that today is the heart of the town and this is the most important meeting of the year. Today we are putting forth who is going to represent us and in this case myself and others behind me to represent you on the day-to-day operations and the bi-weekly meetings for the rest of the year. It's a very, very important today. I think it's a great opportunity to meet people that is going to serve with you. As Louise said, mentioned there are times where I was nominated from the floor seven years ago never thinking that I was going to do that. It just happened that day. We went from three to five and someone's like, you'd be great at that. You know, it was an opportunity. It was probably something that I would not have done from a paper ballot. I like to think that I've done an okay job. One, my only experience in the Australian ballot method was our experience that we had two years ago when we did have a contested board seat. And my opinion on this is I see town reading day being, you're going to have someone come and represent yourself not based upon if they are Democrat or Republican. And two years ago, quickly there was a lot of targeting to one candidate versus the other. There was quickly a political side to this thing that shouldn't come with local government. Local government should just be, we put our parties aside. We're here, we're taking in the issues and we're trying to figure this thing out. I did not like the way that that worked. You know, you have to take out an ad in the paper and they had some discussions and quickly there were some of our local representatives had gathered to favor one person versus the other and it just took away from the whole town meeting field. I can tell you that I'll never take out an ad in the paper to run for select board. I do this as a civic duty, not doing this as a career opportunity or something else. So lastly, I just wanted to say that I believe in tradition, I believe that everybody does have the opportunity to come out and vote on today. And as we've seen in the past and other people have documented that just because you changed to Australian ballot doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna get more people out here. A majority of the areas, if you look at the state of Vermont, 77 communities out of 252 still do in-person meeting 100%. We are one of them. A majority of the other ones do a hybrid method. A lot of the reasons why people go to Australian ballot isn't necessarily because of accessibility of somebody that may not be able to make it here today. It's because they can't physically fit in a gymnasium to be represented to vote. So we are lucky if you look around today there's plenty of space where people can show up today. Back in the other days or cities they can't get people into the gym to hear it. People, they don't have the opportunity to get in to hear on town meeting day. So that's why they've had to go to Australian ballot. We're lucky. We're a small community. We have plenty of space. We have the opportunity for everybody here to conduct business upon the day. That's my opinion. Thank you. Thanks person. Speaking of support of this, simply for well, for a lot of reasons, but access is a big component. Something occurred to me all sitting over there. Not everybody may be far from everybody. Most of the people I know are either retired or self-employed. Therefore have the opportunity to come down in the middle of the day on Tuesday. For me that's just a really interesting data point considering who is here, who's able to be here and why are they able to be here. I mean to Nicole's point there's a lot of reasons why some of them might not be able to come or choose not to come. But changing to an Australian ballot will significantly increase the access that everybody has to participate in the demographic process. I don't hear this as a referendum on town hall. Town hall will remain, or sorry, town meeting as it is and as it has been since 1600s. And thank you Andrew. That point comes back for you. Back on up. I am Nancy Peugeot. I have lived here for nine years. I'd love town meeting. I would not miss town meeting. I love pie. I've tried at least five different pies today. But I think voting for select board, I find it really kind of strange. Like the first year I came to town meeting here nine years ago, I had no idea who these people are. All of a sudden somebody's being nominated from the floor. We don't know anything about them unless we're part of the in group and we're expected to vote for them. Whereas if it's an Australian ballot, then we have some time to actually see who the people are that are running and have a more educated vote instead of just going by okay, everybody here seems to really like this person. I guess I'll vote for them too. Thank you. Okay. Thanks very much for your points. Oh, I'm sorry. My name is Becky Bess. I live in East Bethel and I've lived in Bethel for, which is I hate to admit it, 36 years my whole life. And I've been going to town meeting since before I could vote. I've been voting in Bethel since I was 18 years old. At least my 18th birthday I went and registered. My mom took lots of embarrassing photos. And I loved town meeting. Even when I was in college, I came from four states away to make it here, which was an ordeal. And so my major reaction when I first saw this was, oh, here we go. More of these folks from not here changing stuff again. But then I wrote a few opinions on it and I thought about it. And I realized this is something we need to do. It's not about losing our traditions. It's not about diminishing town meeting. It's about being fair. It's about that there are people who cannot be here today. My mom is one of them. That same mom who took me when I was 18 years old to register to vote. Because she had work requirements. She's in a healthcare profession and she could not get coverage to take care of the people she needed to take care of so that she could be here. So she can't vote today. And that's not fair. She pays taxes in this town. She's part of the community. She's been here literally every other town meeting of my life. So I'll say it again. It's not about losing our traditions. It's not about diminishing town meeting. It's not about losing our community. It's about being fair and allowing the community to actually have access to the right to vote. Thank you. Thank you Rebecca. Danny Dover from Bethel. I wasn't going to speak on this but I'm in favor of it. I love town meeting and this is not about ending town meeting whatsoever. It's about the election of officers of people who are going to represent you. It seems that everybody in town should have the opportunity to vote on who's going to represent them. And it'd be plenty of time for people to get to know them through letters to the editor or they want to print something themselves. Facebook, social media, whatever. Plenty of opportunities. Zoom, some kind of a Zoom meeting, whatever. At least you get to know who's going to represent you. But I also wanted to say something about, something about, people are talking about tradition. The tradition of town meeting. We'll take a look at the tradition of town meeting and how the town meeting has changed. When the town meeting started, think about it, back in the 1700s, virtually 100% of the town would have been agrarian. Everybody was a farmer, almost everyone. So of course everybody was able to attend a town meeting if they wanted to. It was a time of great egalitarian and egalitarian community. Then as things developed, there were factories. So there were farmers, there were people who were self-employed at home and then there were people who went to factories. Those people could not come to town meeting. And so it's evolved over time. Times have changed. Yes, we have our tradition, but we have to acknowledge how our lives, our culture and our economy have changed, thank you. Thank you, Danny. My name's Teal Salon and I've lived here for, I don't know what 10 or 11 years, anyway. I'm not gonna add too much, but I think a lot of great things have already been said. I remember going to town meeting when I was like a little with my parents and I really value it as an experience for a community. I think it's really important, but I support this member because in my own experience, there have been many, many years when from our household, only one of us has been able to vote because the other one was home when we had kids that were too sick to come or just too little to leave in the cafeteria. And during the pandemic, when we had the opportunity to come and vote by Australian ballot, we both got to vote and it was so much easier. And one of us didn't have to take time off from work. We didn't have to worry about the kids. I'm really glad that I'm here today and that we're all here today. And I don't think that anybody's talking about doing away with this tradition. I think we're just trying to make it so that more people who can't be in the room have a voice. So I'm gonna say yes to this one. Awesome. Thank you. Hi everyone. I'm Rebecca Stone. I'm a visiting job of how long I've lived here, but probably about 12 or 13 years. Some of you who know me know in my day job, I work in community engagement and planning practice around Vermont and actually across North America. I'm glad Chris mentioned Susan Clark in middle sex because I've had the joy and pleasure of working with her and learning with her over the years. Some of you might remember, she came and spoke in Bethel more years ago than I would ever call, right? Closer to 10 than the five I wanna say was. She gave a great talk about town meeting. I think she's one of the foremost experts. And not just town meeting, but how we can really improve civic engagement and community building and local democracy every day of the year in our communities. How we can look at something like town meeting, which is wonderful for many people and not wonderful for many others and find ways of identifying what we wanna keep, what's working, what's special, and what needs to be changed and how we can do that. I've had the honor in Bethel of working with Bethel Revitalization Initiative and Bethel University, which are some of those ways I think we can increase civic engagement outside of town meeting. And I've had the honor of working with Rick and Pam and others on the town meeting committee looking at how we can improve this event. So I just wanna share a couple of thoughts with all that in mind. I actually talked to Susan this fall after she delivered a great talk on polarization and local democracy. And I had in mind a lot of the points that many of you have made here today, arguing that the equitable inclusion aspect of this is so important these days. We cannot ignore it. And that seems to be a real vote for moving toward Australian ballot. And Susan said, really interestingly, many Vermont communities are having this conversation right now. And many of them seem to be moving in that direction. But there are just as many where the people who are really concerned about equity and inclusion are arguing hard to keep town meeting and pointing out the aspects of town meeting that actually include people in ways that Australian ballots don't. I'm not saying this because I'm gonna vote against it. In fact, I probably will vote for this if it goes. What I do wanna point out is I think this is a more complex issue. It's not just a yes or a no vote. There's so many ways that we can improve the town meeting experience whether or not we approve this ballot initiative. And there's so many ways that I think we need to look at what's not great about Australian ballot voting. What might we lose? What will that not help us gain? Or who would be left out of that? And if we do choose to move to that system, I think we have to do that work of making sure we're not gonna lose too much and that we are still including people. So I hope others will do that. I think in some ways, town meeting committee needs to evolve. We need a new party in Bethel to really think about what civic engagement should look like year round. What are all the different things that we want out of local democracy and making decisions together? What are the barriers people are facing whether it's town meeting or Australian ballot voting? And how can we meaningfully address those and overcome them? Thanks. Thanks Rebecca. I see Louise wants to speak again but before she does twice on the same particle. Anyone else who hasn't spoken yet has a floor. Okay. You're next. Go ahead and share your mind. Lorraine Merlin, I just have a simple question. If like today, there's only one nominee, you don't have a vote. The regular ballot for the justice of the pieces, there's only, yeah we gotta choose seven, there's only seven people. So I just would like somebody to answer how does one candidate work? As a procedural answer, they would be on the ballot as one person, right? They get to be on the ballot as one person, yeah. I just find that the point was for me to answer. Yeah, okay. Hi, my name is Thomas Meek. I live in Bethel since 2010. And I grew up in East Germany under communism. And as some of you might know, there was no democracy in East Germany. So my voice was not heard for the first 23 years of my life. I could not vote my voice. If I opened my mouth, I had the possibility to go into jail. I'm very fortunate of living in this country and in this town. And that we have a functioning democracy. But I also believe that a functioning democracy is the best if it has as many voices as possible. And this vote today will give the opportunity to a lot more people to vote and be part of this process. So that's why I encourage everybody to vote yes. Thank you for your perspective. Any other people want to speak before? Louise has a second chance. Go ahead. I would like to propose that the Listers be excluded from that. The office of Lister for the town of Bethel requires a very limited skill set that not just anybody can take and come on board on. It's a very technical job. It is not a simple job. And we need to be able to interview and talk with people before they even consider it. It's very difficult to find people who are even willing to do it. It's very math oriented, very computer oriented. And there are new rules coming out always from the state. There's constant change. And the learning curve for being a Lister can be two to three years. It's that complex job. I don't think Listers should be voted by Australian ballot. Okay, so you're proposing an amendment to exclude the Listers from this question. Okay, we have that motion on the floor. We need to deal with that. Is there a second to that motion to exclude the amendment? Listers, Denise is making that, seconding that. Now we can have discussion on this amendment only at this point. We'll go back to the main article in a minute. So any discussion on an amendment to article 17 to exclude the Listers? Therese, why don't we go ahead? You know more about what I do. Just go ahead and talk. So I'm not sure we can legally change this because it specifically states, shall the town of Bethel elect its town officers by Australian ballot? So currently Listers are elected officials. So I'm unsure how that would work if we would have to vote in another year to point them or are you suggesting vote them from the floor? I'm just unclear if we can legally do that because the statute, when you go to vote these certain questions about moving from a floor vote to an Australian ballot vote, they're specifically written in statute and I would need to research that. So I mean, while I'm okay, I guess here's the thing. You can vote it that way, but I'm not sure we can legally do it that way. So it may come that you try to exclude the Listers, but maybe the law won't actually allow that and they may get sucked into the Australian ballot anyways. I just, since I wasn't aware that that would be a question, I didn't research it. So I'm not sure what our legal options are here right now. So I just want to be open and clear and honest. I'm not sure. I'm not saying no, but I'm saying I don't know. So. Okay, and I certainly can't say that I know, and that's probably not something we could find in the next five minutes. Okay, I think it would be prudent for us to maybe just take a quick break here. I know it's getting late, but this is a technical question. And if we do do something, if we vote on this, if we pass this amendment and it gets included with the article and we approve the article with the amendment in it and it goes against state law, then the whole thing is rejected. So it wouldn't hurt if we wanted to take five minutes and just take a quick break if everyone's okay with that. I know it's getting late, but it's important. This is all part of the process. Let's just take a few minutes and I'll call you back when we get to that point. I think everyone needs to come back. It does not appear that we can break out the elected officers. So I'm going to rule the amendment out of order at this point, Louise. And if there's objection, enough objection to that, you can challenge the moderator on this one. But according to, we looked up statute 17, section 2680, subsection B, which seems to indicate that the elected officers are all the elected officers. So apparently you cannot break that out. So let me see if there are people who object to us ruling the amendment out of order. If you object to that, just raise your hand so we can see, Louise, thank you. Okay, so we're ruling that out of order. That puts us back to the main article, shall the town of Bethel elect the town officers by Australian ballot. So anyone who would still like to speak on that, that hasn't, go ahead, Amy, you're up. Let me speak. I believe earlier when I was in the bathroom, there was a mention of a NPR news article that I don't know the name of the woman, but one of the things that she said, she referred to Frank Bryant, who was a professor at UVM, a political science professor, and she said that he was kind of like the foremost person who came to study of town meetings. And apparently in all his research of town meetings, he didn't see where there was any skewing of one way or another Democrat, Republican, low income, high income, that already the town meetings may not be able to take in everybody's vote, but at least it was representative of the populations of the town. I also wanna say that here we have a really transparent way of voting. Everybody can see hands going up for votes or eyes and nays so there's no, in this time of people not trusting the voting systems. This is pretty transparent. That's all I have to say. Thank you, Amy. Okay, Gene, unless there's nobody else who'd like to speak, Gene, we'd like to speak again, okay? This is not a statement for or against. This is a statement of personal privilege. It was implied earlier that when I ran for this office, it was a contested off run and that somehow it became partisan. It did not become partisan. Neither I nor my opponent ever made any reference to what our individual private political alliances were, any indication that any or assumptions that people may have drawn are assumptions that they drew in and of themselves. It had nothing to do with me arguing a particular political position. And I just want that understood and I want it clear. All right, thank you for that. Further discussion on article 17. Or do we, hold on, we have one more here to speak. Hi, my name's Lisa McCrory. I'm really mixed on this. I hear all the arguments for Australian ballot and then I also echo the sentiments that by seeing each other's faces, like I've been listening to both sides and I'm like, oh yeah, I get that. And my mind just keeps going back and forth and getting changed constantly because I'm hearing your voices, I'm hearing your perspective. I wouldn't skip that in an Australian ballot. But I understand the equity, inclusivity, people with jobs. So the thing that's dawning on me is it's more the culture. We're losing that culture of town meeting because of lifestyles, because of how we've been changing as a community over the last so many decades. So if we went to Australian ballot, what I would hope is gonna happen is that we're gonna find a way to reinvigorate community, to foster and to keep the ability or the desire to come together to share space, to talk budget. Otherwise, it's gonna be really easy for us to continue falling asleep and drifting away and being just a name on a piece of paper or a voice without a face. And I think that how many levels we're missing, we're losing that in our communities already. We need ways to bring ourselves together and to share meals and to get to know one another from all sides of the spectrum. And if we keep moving towards these efficiencies of Australian ballot, we're gonna lose each other even more. And we can argue jobs and access, but we can also create systems that encourage or enable people to take a half a day off from work, whether it's getting a paid time off. There's so many ways we can creatively try to figure that out. Having another day or an evening town meeting. I know that if we change it, it doesn't guarantee that people are gonna show up. But I think that there needs to be some more careful thought put into this should we go to Australian ballot so that we can continue having the bonds of community together. I just think back the year that my husband got elected to select board. It was a very contentious year. We were in the town hall and the number of people that came to town meeting that year to vote was overwhelming. It was a fire hazard. It was, there were lines of people still waiting to come into the town hall and things got held up because people were still coming in to sign in. It was amazing. It was amazing. And the energy that was there, you can't get that in an Australian ballot. You can't get that. You know, we, I don't wanna lose that. So I just wanted to throw that out there. It sounds like that's kind of the direction where it's leaning. So let's also work on how can we keep the glue in our community together so that we can see each other's faces and get to know each other a little bit better. Thanks. Thank you, Lisa. Very interesting. I wonder if we can look at this as not an either or. Because really, I think most of us would agree as in a lot of things, both sides, there's truth on both sides. What would happen if we go to Australian ballot but request that the select board, I mean, we're still gonna have town meeting. My understanding is this vote would happen on town meeting day, is that correct? That's correct. So we still can come down here and we can still have the candidates here. And those of us who can make it and want to can talk to the candidates. I'm sorry. No? No, we can't. We can't. If it's on the same day, if we moved town meeting to Monday night or Saturday, I see. We could. Well, then that's a possibility too to think about. I mean, there's maybe ways to be a little bit more creative than one box or the other box. And I just wanna throw that out there. I'm not saying I have the answers, but I don't know if we wanna make an amendment that the two don't happen on the same day so that we can have this discussion or I leave that to you because. Thank you, Mary, very much for that. And we couldn't go that route today because it would need to be warned for that type of thing to happen. But we can talk about that in another business and maybe have a struggle. Just, yeah, I'll get you right after. Oh, my name is Leonard and I've been living in the town of Bethel for over a decade now. It is my understanding that we are only talking about electing these people, the officials, by Australian ballot. That does not preclude in my opinion town meetings, gatherings to discuss, to give our opinions, to give what we want on other issues like budgets and this, that, and the other. What scares me most of all is I look around this room and I know there are more people of my persuasion who do not come to these meetings because they can't afford to, who live in this town. They will, and I have spoken to some of them, they will meet up on candidates, meet up on issues and vote. They just don't have the ability, the time, the money. They cannot take off of work. It is great to say we can come up with some other things but some businesses you just cannot leave your work. You don't get paid, you can't miss a day of pay. I am missing a day of patents for this today but I feel like I can't afford to. I am privileged to afford that. There are too many people, look around you. Look around you right now who's going to cast the vote. It's not the majority of the population of Bethel casting this vote today. It is not, and we should all be terribly concerned about that, terribly. It's not about political persuasion. It's about the people of town. It's not even about the color of your skin. It's about the people that live in this town. All of us, there are a handful of people here by comparison who are going to cast a vote on whether this should be an Australian ballot. That is disenfranchising your friends, neighbors, relatives and others. So we just want to think about that seriously and I vote that we say yes to this. Just a minute, did you want to speak on the bleachers? Okay. You were first to be recognized before the speaker, our next one in line. Is there a second to call the question? This is parliamentary procedure. Mary, is that a second? All right, so we have a motion and a second to cease discussion and to call the question. Can I just, all those in favor of ceasing discussion say aye? Aye. Opposed? Aye. Aye. Okay, the ayes have it, and I'm sorry, but that's parliamentary procedure. That's part of the meeting. So we will call the question. Article 17, shall the town of Bethel elect its town officers by Australian ballot? We'll try this, attempt this by voice vote first. David, you have the right to ask for a paper ballot. Let me see hands who would prefer a paper ballot. I need to see more than seven, and I have that. Folks, mark your ballot, yes, approves. Article 17 will go to Australian ballot for elected officials. Articles one to nine, no, defeats the article. No defeats the article. Mark your ballots, form a line on the right side of the hall by your standards. I got to close just yet, you know. Oh yeah, hands gonna protect the, protect the names. So you need to have, you need to have your name tag on in order to cast your ballot. Thank you. For civil civil authority members, please be ready to count your ballots. I can't, I can't, I don't know if I can help you sign it. I can't either. You can't either? I saw number one, I didn't even know it wasn't this one. I don't know if you see it, I don't know if you see it. Yeah, I see your cards, I'm not hearing this from the card. Hmm, that should be it. It's all those firsts, right? That's what I'm gonna say. Yeah? I have to be ashamed of that. I already had my card. I know, I was, and you guys made me proud, I like it. Has everyone voted before the box is closed? Wait a minute, just a minute, just a minute. Has everyone voted who has not voted? One more time, strike three here. Has everyone voted on article 17? Okay, the ballot box is now closed. The Board of Civil Authority members, we need you to come up here and count. You're probably not. 70 more. Oh, this is hard to talk about. That's why not, Mr. National Professionalist. We have to figure it out. They just can't put it in that question. So we had exactly 100 votes cast. 65, yes, 35, no, article 17 passes. The article 18, shall the town provide notice of the availability of the annual report by postcard mailed to all registered voters at least 30 days before the annual meeting instead of mailing the report to the voters of the town pursuant to statute 24, section 1682A. Can I entertain a motion here to approve and a second before we have a discussion? Denise has made that motion. Is there a second? And Leonard. Leonard, thank you. So article 18, shall the town provide notice of the availability of the annual report by postcard mailed to all registered voters at least 30 days before the annual meeting instead of mailing the report to the voters of the town pursuant to statute. Discussion, floor is open for discussion on article 18. This would change. Instead of getting the report in the mail. Can I say I love this idea. A lot of times we're sending out booklets of paper, what is it, like 50 or 100 pages. It's a whole book of paper. Is it 100% what, recycled paper? I doubt it, because that's expensive. I don't think so, no. So these are trees we're talking about. We need to save the trees. If we can do anything to reduce paper, we can. I assume there'll still be paper copies available. Yes. Yeah, I'm in favor of this. Save the trees. No questions, so if you, because it's funny, this comes on in the heat of talking about accessibility and having people be informed and making it easy. So if we do a postcard, would it have within someone say, oh, I do want a copy. How do you make it easy for people to get it? How would that happen? So what would happen is we would send a postcard telling everybody that it was available and where they could pick it up. They could pick it up at the town office, the library, maybe other places, hardware store, wherever we found places. And you could also request a copy of the email to you. You just would call and speak to Pam or Kelly or Ditchie or myself and someone would mail you a copy. It will also be a PDF online, just like it is now on our website. So. And all of those options would be clearly indicated on the postcard. You could pick it up, you can call, I would suggest you add an email to town office. Sure. And, or you can access it online. Right. Okay, thank you. Yep, you're welcome. Okay, Joanne, thanks for that question. Any further questions on Article 18? Seeing none, I'd entertain a motion. Actually, we don't need that. Just want to make sure no one else has anything to say about Article 18. Okay, then I'll call the question here. 18th, shall the town provide notice of the availability of the annual report by postcard, mail to all registered voters at least 30 days before the annual meeting, instead of mailing the report to the voters in the town. All those in favor of Article 18, say aye. Aye. Most. Article 18 passes. Now, we'll move to discussion of the items to be voted on by Australian Ballot that is being voted on in the lobby of the elementary school until 7 p.m. tonight. The following articles will be voted by Australian Ballot, polls open to the left. Tuesday, March 7th, today from 8 to 7 at the Waterloo Unified Middle School, Bethel Campus, actually in the elementary lobby. Article I, shall the voters of the town of Bethel permit the operation of cannabis retailers in the town. There was a handout on that, I believe it was at the back of the, at the, yeah, where you checked in. We can have discussion on this. We don't need to move anything. The floor is open for discussion on Article I. If anyone has questions, comments on that part. Okay, not seeing anybody requesting to speak on it. So let's go to Article II. Shall the general obligation, bonds, or notes of the town of Bethel be issued in an aggregate amount, not to exceed $2,500,000 subject to reduction by state and federal grants in aid and other financial assistance to be issued to fund the costs and expenses of making capital improvements to the water system of the town of Bethel? Therese Dijonski? So I just wanted to let you know that due to the fact that we, the town, did not meet all of our standard bonding notifications, the bond vote being held today is going to be considered advisory or non-binding. So I encourage you all to vote because you need to vote for cannabis and you need to vote for your school board officials. So what's gonna happen is we will have a tally and we'll figure out, you know, hey, maybe we did a really good job getting you the information. We did a mailer, it's in town report, et cetera. We are going to have another bond vote or a bond vote. It will be considered a special meeting and it's gonna be on Tuesday, April 18th. And you will vote just in the same place you're voting now. Is that the middle school? Do I call that middle school? Elementary school lobby. Elementary school lobby, excuse me. So I still encourage you to vote today but we are asking you to come back and vote on Tuesday, April 18th. At the checkout when you go to vote, there is a bright colored piece of paper there that explains to you all of the ways that you can get an absentee ballot. You can request it by phone. You can stop in the office. And we will be signing all the rebonding information on our March 13th select board meeting. So apologize for the error, but I still do encourage you to vote and just letting you know we will be voting again. Nothing changes, the project doesn't change. We need to take advantage of this and hopefully have a positive bond vote so that we can get our $425,000 or $50,000 worth of aid and a better interest rate. So the project still needs to happen. So if you have any questions about the bond vote or the project, I'm happy to answer them. Yes, Mary. The bond vote, the bond vote itself. Do you have a question about the bond vote itself or about the lack of notification? No, no, not the lack of notification. Okay. Yes, yep, so what happens is you're right. It's a weird amount, right? So it's $2.5 million is the max of the bond vote. That is currently the project amount is $2.5 million. So it says right here it's subject to reduction by state and federal grants and aid. So we know if you look at a page in the town report, you can see the water bond flyer and you received one at home that was like this really cool orange color. There's $425,000 that we're eligible for lead abatement, which is removing galvanized lines. That's dollar for dollar. So if we're taking it out or putting it back in, we get full reimbursement for that. We also get a subsidy of $48,950 for planning loan and we get a reduced interest rate of 1.5% over 40 years, which with interest rates, climbing is still a good deal. And these are probably... Right, exactly. Even though our plan is that the majority of the bond will go on to the water users, there is a portion of it that would be put on the taxpayers, which is just the road portion itself because normally you'd pay for those road improvements anyways. So, but we all have to vote on it because it's the good faith and credit of the entire town. So hence why we legally all vote. Yep, and Rick asked me to mention to you that if you're familiar with the water system or you are a resident here who lives on Crystal Drive, you are gonna know that Crystal Drive has terrible water pressure. And currently the state of Vermont is not allowing us to add any users to the system. So, because of that. So, and we also took, I believe, maybe the fire chief, two fire hydrants offline, I think because of that as well off North Road. So, we have to do this project. Even as the planning commission is working to change our zoning bylaws so that we can increase density, that's great, but we can't. Until we do this water upgrade and get people a booster station for Crystal Drive, the state is not going to remove that from our certification. So, we won't be able to add more users. So, that's one of the main reasons for the project, of the other part of the project besides the Crystal Drive pump station is Graham Street, Highland Ave, Sand Hill, Bicentennial Lane. So, there's also other places that have galvanized water lines that will get upgraded and everybody will get a shut off. And so, it'll be a wonderful thing. Okay, thank you, Therese. Thank you, Mary, for the question. Further questions on Article 2 of the Australian Ballot. Okay, thank you very much. Article 19, to transact any other non-binding business that may legally come before this meeting, pursuant to Statute 17, Section 2660D. Anything people have on your mind? Yes. Big shout out to our Volunteer Fire Department. I have always known that fighting fires is a really dangerous thing. And this year, I've become aware of how emotionally dangerous this is for y'all and what you have gone through this year. And I just want to give a really big thanks to all of our Volunteer Firefighters. Any further discussion? Business in general. There's only one more thing to do. That would be... Let's do it first. Thank you. We have a motion to adjourn the meeting. Second. Harold, thank you very much. Thank you all for coming and sticking in here for the duration.