 to the Middlesex Town Meeting. I'm Susan Clark. I am your moderator from last year and we'll see if that holds. I wanna introduce Sarah Merriman, our town clerk. She's running the election today so she's not gonna be up here at the podium. Among her many duties, she oversaw the beautiful Green Town Report that you have along with Mareka Gillis. Mareka is here. This is Mareka's last official town meeting as a town official. She is retiring on April 1st so thanks to Mareka for her great work. Thanks, Mareka. Sorry. Well, he hasn't been elected yet. But Dave, he's been appointed. Okay, Dave Smith has been appointed. He's on your ballot. Dave Smith is maybe gonna be our brand new or is appointed as our brand new assistant town clerk. Yay, Dave. Your select board. Chair is Peter Hood. Mary Skinner, Liz Scharf, Steve Martin, Phil Hayek. So these are the folks who oversee the town functions and employees and have been working on your budget. And thank you very much to Sorsha Anderson for taking the minutes today so Sarah can run the election. Sorsha's the one who's gonna thank you for when you speak, saying your full name so she can put it in the minutes. We have a few announcements. Liz, I think you wanted to talk about the census. Is that right? Yeah, do you wanna drive the microphone or two? Wow. Hi, so I'm Liz Scharf and I work for Capstone Community Action. And we are members of the governor's complete count committee for the 2020 census. And so I've been representing the community action, statewide community action agencies in the 2020 census outreach. And so I am just encouraging you to complete the census. Beginning March 12th, you're going to be receiving in the mail your census questionnaire, which this year it's a little different. You can do it by phone over the internet or you can also mail it back. If you have college kids, the kids will complete their census at their school. And if you know anyone who's sort of a transient person in terms of living with Uncle John, they should make sure that they're completing the census. We'll have computers at various locations like libraries, Capstone and Berry will have a computer for folks who may not be able to do it at their home. And we'll have people to support people to help them navigate filling out the census. So it's super important, it's once every 10 years. It equates to just around $3,000, a little under $3,000 per person in the state of Vermont for the next 10 years. So 3,000 each year for 10 years. So for all those people who don't get counted, that is a loss of federal funding for everything that you can imagine that comes out of the federal government roads, schools, healthcare, social services, Medicare, all kinds of things. So there's a lot of reasons to do the census. It's safe and it's easy and I hope you will all complete the census. Thank you. Thank you. Elliot Burd has a few comments about the bandstand. Hi, I'm Elliot Burd from the Middlesex Bandstand Committee and I know it's pretty hard to imagine sitting out in the meadow right now by the bandstand but I wanted to just flag for you that we have a full program of concerts, six concerts in a row that we have now booked. These are concerts that take place on Wednesday evenings, six in a row at 6.30. If you haven't been there, they're free. There's food so you don't have to feed your family before. Myra Flynn is coming back. She was a big hit last year. Miriam Bernardo, great vocalist, Green Mountain Playboys and a number of other groups. So we'd love to see you out there. Just we'll get information out on Frontport Forum on our website and on Facebook, so come on out. Thanks. All right, any other announcements before we start? We will have time under other business as well, so. Okay, a couple other things I need to say. Once again this year, the Town Meeting Solutions Committee did offer Middlesex residents who can't attend town meeting because they have mobility or health issues or are away for public service to attend town meeting using phone and internet. And this year we didn't have any takers but that service is available for future years. So thanks to Larry Sharf for all his work on this. I also wanna thank Liz Sharf and other helpers in the Remedy School kitchen for cooking or spaghetti. Dinner tonight and anybody who baked desserts for the dinner. This is a fundraiser for the Middlesex Fire Department so great cause, we hope you can stay. For those of you who have kids here in the room, they are more than welcome. Just make sure that they're quiet enough so everyone can hear. Childcare this year is free thanks to Remedy School for funding that through Community Connections. So if you do have kids in childcare, do pick them up after the meeting but pick them up before you have dinner. The kids are welcome here for dinner. Thanks again to Remedy School for hosting us and we will need help after the meeting moving the chairs back so after dinner, thanks for sticking around. I do wanna remind you about the blue forms on your chairs. They do have information about Robert's rules and how to run the meeting. After the meeting, please return them here and if you have comments feel free to write those on them. Otherwise also still return them because we'll use them again next year so don't throw them out. The most important thing on those forms is if you have a question please raise your hand and ask it's an evaluation form so make sure to go ahead and use that. I have eight points about Robert's rules. Brief reminder, Vermont moderators are asked to give you this overview. So eight items. Number one, Robert's rules of order are the basic parliamentary rules for this meeting except where Vermont state law takes precedence. We can't change state law here today but you can change Robert's rules by a two thirds vote if you so desire. Number two, please state your name and address the moderator when it comes time for you to speak. So if you wanna speak just raise your hand. When you're recognized by the moderator we've got these wonderful microphone runners who will bring you the microphone. Yay for our young people. And even if you did just state your name two minutes before please state your name again. We might even ask you to spell it. Don't take it personally. It really helps with the minutes. I do remind you that all the motions and remarks and discussion should be addressed to the moderator. So this is so that to help remind us to focus on the issues and the actual topics on the warning rather than personalities. So for example, if you have a question of the select board say, Madam moderator, I would like to know whether the select board da-da-da rather than having back and forth with various people in the room helps us really focus in on the issues. Number three, you do need to be a middle sex voter in order to speak or vote on an article at the middle sex town meeting. The exception is if the group wants to suspend the rules for example to allow a person representing an out of town organization or someone who lives out of town who works for them. At this time, could I have a show of hands of anyone who's not a registered voter in middle sex? Excellent. We are glad to have you. Welcome. I just want to remind you that you can't vote. And if you do want to speak, we'll get the permission of the group. Number four, please feel free to ask questions. Raise your hand if you don't understand what's happening or if you think that there's a mistake has been made. You don't have to be a parliamentary expert. You just raise your hand and say, well, here's what I want to do. So how should I turn that into emotion? The moderator's job is to make sure everyone gets to make their point and propose the action that they want to take. Number five, this is your meeting. The role of the moderator is to help you accomplish the business that you intend to do. So if you feel that the moderator has made an improper ruling, please just raise your hand. Robert's rules allows for the group to appeal the moderator's decision. It's super simple process and it just ensures that the moderator serves the interests of the group. Number six, we can only address warrant articles. It's against state law to consider articles that haven't been warned on the agenda. So this means we can't take binding action under other business. Number seven, second to last, you can end debate by calling the question. So if a voter feels that deliberation has gone on long enough, a voter can move to cut off debate. You just raise your hand, you're recognized, and you say, I call the question. And then there's a second. And if two thirds of the group votes yes on calling the question in order to cease debate, then it ceases. Otherwise, discussion continues. In most cases, calling the question isn't necessary. The moderator will call for a vote when he or she feels that all points of view have been heard when there's no more hands raised. So that would avoid you having to call the question and then having the two thirds vote. And finally, there are different ways that we can vote once the moderator feels that all points of view have been heard. He or she will call for a vote and it's usually a voice vote. So if you're in favor of the motion, you'll say aye. If you're opposed, you'll say no or nay. Other forms of voting that you might see, a show of hands or a standing vote, you can always request that, especially if you disagree with the moderator after the result of a voice vote is announced. And finally, a paper ballot or secret ballot. And this is a really important option to know about. If you feel that privacy of your vote is important, any voter can move that a vote be taken by paper ballot. If seven voters support the motion, then little pieces of paper will be distributed and you will write your vote and pass it in. And our election officials will count them immediately. So those are, it's a little quick overview of Robert's rules. And we're now gonna move on to our civil invocation. We've got our young people here. We'll open our meeting with the civil invocation. It's our tradition to have this read by a new voter or a soon to be voter. This year, our invocation will be read by Eric Sharf and Eva Jessup, who are both seniors at U32. Eva has lived in middle sex since she was in kindergarten. And in addition to her studies, she writes for the U32 newspaper, The Chronicle, and she plays tennis and field talking. Eric has lived in middle sex its whole life. This year, he's taking his senior classes at Norwich University through their early college program. You may also recognize his byline as a sports writer for the Barry Montpelier Times artist, and he also enjoys photography and piano. And Eva and Eric share another interest in their spare time. They are the co-directors of the middle sex food shelf. So the next time you feel like you're too busy, just think of Eva and Eric. Where are they? Where is, where are they? Okay, come on over guys. So welcome to the middle sex town meeting. We have come together in civil assembly as a community in a tradition that is older than our state itself. We come together to make decisions about our community. As we deliberate, let us advocate for our positions but not at the expense of others. Let us remember that there is an immense gap between saying I am right and saying I believe I am right. And that our neighbors with whom we disagree are good people with hopes and dreams as true and as high as ours. And let us always remember that in the end, caring for each other in this community is a far greater importance than any difference we may have. Welcome. Up here, as we're directors of the food shelf, we just wanted to send out a quick little reminder. We are looking for a few more volunteers. So if anybody has any Saturdays that they'd be willing to give up, we'd love to add you to our mailing list. This isn't like a big commitment. It's just Saturdays that you can sign up four times or from nine to 1030. So we will have a sheet at the back if anyone's willing to sign up. That would be great. Just come find us at the end. Thank you. Good rule of thumb. If you've got the microphone, use it, right? Okay. We are ready to start our agenda. Article one is to elect a moderator for the ensuing year. Is there a nomination? Jeff Koons. Thank you. Is there a second? Julie Moore. Great. And you can just say five point people. You can just run over, although these are kind of little ones. So yeah, thank you. Okay, are there other nominations? Hearing none, we will vote on electing Susan Clark as moderator for the ensuing year. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no? Chief. The ayes have it. And you have elected a moderator. Thank you. We will work to keep your trust. Article two, to elect a grandeur and town agent for the ensuing year. Is there a nomination? Thank you, yes. All right, great. The warning is on page 10 in your hymnal. So. Article two, is there a nomination for grandeur and town agent? Great. Get in your name again? Okay, great. And microphone runner, just like five, do we have two microphones? Runners are just you. Okay, great. Great, so if I'm like pointing, you're just like boom, run over there. Thank you. Okay. Todd Daylos, who is our current town agent, I believe, I'm sure. Is there a second for Todd Daylos? I second it. Thank you, Mary. All right, so Todd Daylos has been moved and seconded. Any other nominations for grandeur and town agent? Hearing none, all those in favor of Todd Daylos signify by saying aye. Opposed, no. The ayes have it. Congratulations, Todd Daylos. And thank you. Article three is to elect all necessary officers for the ensuing year. This is what's happening by Australian ballot over here, so unless there's any objection, we'll just move right on to the next article. Hearing none, we will move on to article four. To receive and act upon the reports of the town officers, is there a motion? Liz moves, and Jacqueline seconds. It's been moved and seconded to receive and act upon the reports of the town officers. The town officers put interesting reports in your town report, so this is a good time to ask questions if they aren't gonna come up under other articles. So for example, if you had money related questions, it would make sense to save those for a discussion under the budget, but if you have other topics you'd like to discuss. I believe that Sohya wanted to have a thing he wanted to say at this point. For one of the reports. Hi, pardon me, my name's Phil Hayek. Besides being selectman, I'm your representative on the Central Vermont Internet, Central Vermont Fiber Board. And I just wanted to give you a quick update. Jeremy Hansen, whose chair of that board did put a report in here, but it was written so long ago, there's a number of things that have happened since then, so we've added more town to the communications union district, which makes for a total of 18 towns who have now committed to it. And we've decided to close membership at this point. That's a rather large district to try and get internet to and all with some real challenges because of the rural nature of all of our communities. We have received just shy of $100,000 in various grants, a few donations, some in kind work, and all of that is really important because it allows us to qualify for other grants so that you might take the award from one grant and use that as an in kind match for another one. So it was a bit of a struggle at first, but we're at a pretty good level now. The most important grant was a state grant that was enacted last year in the legislature. It is a $60,000 grant, but it's split into two chunks. That's 30 and 30. The first phase is to do a feasibility study. And if the feasibility study actually proves that it is possible to do what we want to do or feasible to do what we want to do, then we submit that and the second half gets awarded to allow the district to do an official business plan. And that's really, really important with those two pieces as far as the lending community is concerned. So we have received that first phase of that along with some USDA and other funds, and we've hired a company named Interisle out of Massachusetts, which is an international consulting company on telecommunications issues, and they are in fact at work doing the feasibility study as we speak. We're confident that that feasibility study is gonna prove to be good, and then we will move on to the business plan with the second $30,000. Interisle will do that piece for us. And once we get past that phase, this gets us in position to apply for loans. Communications projects are considered to be fairly high risk, which is why the state has a fund that would allow us to qualify for funding. We're gonna be looking, assuming we get through the feasibility study and the business plan, we're gonna be looking for a $4 million loan as an initial piece that would allow us to build approximately 150 miles of fiber. And I would expect that construction would start within a year. The, let me just back up for a minute. We did a lot of surveying. A number of you in this room have probably answered those surveys. I had a number of things out on Frontparch Forum. For a long time, Middlesex had the highest response rate to those surveys. We dropped to second, because Plainfield made a concerted push toward the end and beat us out. So right now the way it stands is Plainfield had the highest response rate, Middlesex the second highest, and Callis the third. And this is important because in the feasibility study, it shows interest. And there's a lot of information about who would subscribe, what they would be willing to pay, how much speed they want, what kind of effects this might have on businesses and in the community. So ranking there in the top three as the feasibility study gets written is pretty important. So you all deserve kudos for continuing to fill out those studies to keep us up there in tops and the rankings. Middlesex is also geographically situated in a pretty nice way, because with Moretown as a partner, also links through to Waterbury and Montpelier, although Waterbury and Montpelier are not, I'm sorry, Montpelier is a member, although they also belong to another consortium and have fairly good high speed, but they are a member. So I'm hoping that with the response for the surveys, our geographical location, the willingness, the desire to get high speed that we in fact will be one of the first communities in that 150 mile build out. So let's keep our fingers crossed and within a year we'll see what happens. I may be back here next year, hat in hand going, oh, I'm sorry, that didn't work, but we'll hope, okay, thank you. Other comments or questions under reports from committees? We have committees that would like to take this time to report. Nope, all right. So article four to receive and act upon the reports of the town officers, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. So always a big discussion at town officer, at town moderator training about what happens if the, to receive and act upon the reports of town officers, if the motion fails. Nothing basically, but anyway, it's a good moment. Article five, shall the town voters authorize payment of all property taxes to the town treasurer as provided by law and without discount in four installments as follows, I'm gonna read these ones. The first installment will be due on or before 430 p.m., August 20th, 2020. The second installment will be due on or before 430 p.m., November 20th, 2020. The third installment will be due on or before 430 p.m., February 20th, 2021. And the fourth installment will be due on or before 430 p.m., May 20th, 2021. Except if postmarked by the U.S. Postal Service on or before the aforementioned dates accordingly. Is there a motion on article five? So moved, in your name. Moves article five, is there a second? Name you might want seconds. Article five, regarding authorizing payment of all property taxes to the town treasurer under the dates forementioned has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion on article five? There isn't, okay. So we will be voting on article five. Shall the town authorize payment of all property taxes to the town treasurer as provided in this article? All those in favor of article five, say aye. Opposed, no. The ayes have it and article five passes. Article six, to see if the town will charge interest at the rate of 0.5% per month or fraction thereof on overdue tax installments from the applicable due dates. Is there a motion on article six? Okay, any. And a second? Yes, Clark. Article six has been moved and seconded to see if the town will charge interest at the rate of 0.5% per month. Any discussion on article six? No, okay. In that case, all those in favor of article six, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. The ayes have it. And we are on the budget. No, we'll wait, we'll wait on the budget. That we'll do that at 515 because that is warned for time's certain. We will move on to article eight and come back to article seven at 515. Article eight, shall the town voters appropriate the sum of $5,000 to the Middlesex Conservation Fund? Is there a motion on article eight? Julie Moore moves. Is there a second? Did you get that? Yes, I did. Yes, okay. Article eight has been moved and seconded to appropriate $5,000 to the Middlesex Conservation Fund. Any discussion from the Conservation Commission? No discussion, any questions? Yes, Michael from here. Gordon Grunner, can anyone tell us how much is in the fund or where it's going here? Okay, there's Lee in the back. Can you, Mike Brenner, can you run to the back and can you leave the microphone? Wave your hand, Lee. Lee Rosberg, I'm the chair of the Conservation Commission. We currently have about 9,000 in the Conservation Fund. Our last use of it was $10,000 that went to conserving land. The Hunger Mountain Headwaters Property, which encompassed the first mile or so of the hiking trail of Hunger Mountain. Prior to that, we used about $20,000 from the fund to purchase 40 acres to add to the town forest and provide better recreational access. So those are the types of projects that we look for, mainly land conservation projects in the town. Great, thanks, Lee. Any other questions, comments? Hearing none, we will vote on Article 8. Shall the town voters appropriate the sum of $5,000 to the Middlesex Conservation Fund? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. The ayes have it. We have passed Article 8. Article 9. Shall the town voters authorize expenditures of up to $8,000 to purchase two radar speed feedback signs to be installed on the north and south lanes of Vermont Route 12 in Putnamville? Is there a motion on Article 9? Karen Gannett moves. Dave Shepherd seconds. Article 9 has been moved and seconded to authorize expenditures of up to $8,000 to purchase two radar speed feedback signs to be installed on the north and south lanes of Vermont Route 12 in Putnamville. Is there discussion on Article 9? Jeff Koons. Hi, Jeff Koons. I'm wondering, we already pay the county to monitor our roads for speeding. If we're already paying that, why do we wanna have this and since they'd be permanent, once people get used to that they're being there, the impact is lost. So it seems to me a better use would be to have Washington County monitor there more. There are places, Norton Road where they could park for radar and also further down the road. It just seems like that $8,000 could be used better than to buying these radar signs for something that we already pay to have done. Responses, additional comments? Yes, microphone right here. Bob Lucas. So I guess to go ahead and piggyback on that, obviously we're seeing an expense that the Sheriff's Department only utilized half of their budget for last year. Knowing that area, obviously having worked in this area for some time, I understand that there is a speeding issue there, but it's, what dare I say, it's probably no different than many other sections of that road to include as well as center road. But yet, obviously we're not taking any necessary actions on that. I know the state police have a portable cart, a speed cart that they can actually go ahead and deploy there. I know the Sheriff's Department also has a cart set out, so obviously they can go ahead and deploy. I guess the final question that I would have is, obviously it does give feedback, but who's gonna be utilizing that feedback? Would it be the state police? Would it be the Sheriff's Department? Would it be the town? Who's gonna be monitoring that? Thank you. If there are people in the room who would like to respond to those questions and comments, feel free to raise your hand. This is right here in the back. He's coming at you. Hi there. A bunch of us are here for Pondville tonight, and I think we can all stand up. Sure, can you say your name? Alby Bourne, Pondville Middlesex. And I agree with that gentleman's comments that the Sheriff's Department uses half of the, you know, half of the budget. We're just, we don't wanna say that we're totally different over there at Pondville, but comparable to Routoo, it can't meet, Redhead Bakery, we just feel like the volume of traffic that has occurred with peoples on their cell phones from Route 12 to Monplayer every day is something that all 15 homes on top of everybody to Culver Hill, to Worcester and Middlesex deal with, and I understand Santa Road, you know, and Brook Road, there is speeding everywhere. I just, the volume of the speeding, the volume of the traffic is kind of what we're, you know, we're at what's end over Pondville. We've had Casella Guy, you know, just to give you a brief scenario of all this, the state did a survey, they were speeding in Putnamville. So as you can see, the signs got moved 0.51 miles north of Putnamville. So the state has made a decision that there is speeding because they had car counters across the road. The accident, the reported accidents is unbelievable in Pondville, since it was 2011, a bunch of us went to the AOT Board meeting to meet with Secretary Flynn because they had a meeting about Putnamville, and that's where the state has recommended to the town, I believe that was the wording, to install the solar radar feedback signs in Putnamville. I have an equal fold, boy, there's at least a dozen kids in Putnamville. There is a blind school bus stop at Norn Road in Putnamville with three kids, two feet off the road, the house is two feet off the road, and the bus has to turn around there. There's probably a change down the road where the bus will turn around some other place, but that bus stop is always gonna be there among the other few bus stops in Putnamville. And I guess really just to reiterate is that we just feel like the danger has been there forever. There's no curb cut in Putnamville. There's no curb cut at Culver Hill. The bicyclists, I don't want to bring up bad news, we had a couple of fadals near the Shady Road intersection within the last couple years. The unreported accidents is more than, I mean, some people here in Pondville can tell you they've had cars in their, Mary Kay can tell you that she's had cars in her apple tree. We've had cars on Bill's, you know, in his lawn. It's kind of, you know, we're just asking for the community to look at Waterbury Stowe all over the state where you see them popping up. It's because the community has come together and helped out a portion of the community. You know, there's no doubt that speeding is an issue, but we're just, we're totally different over there and the volume of traffic, the thousands of cars, hundreds of cars that go by a day, they're all on Facebook, they're all on their phone and we have kids at the bus. Everybody's just trying to live a life over there, but life has changed over the past 50 years. You know, I can't move the houses, I can't move the ledge cut. Again, we're just asking for the community support. Talking with some of the town people, we think the price could be a lot less than $8,000. The ones in Stowe and Waterbury are, you know, it's solar. So there's really no maintenance, you know, obviously after 20 years, you know, there would be some maintenance, but the one-time cost is what we're asking for. For everybody that travels on Route 12, these signs would be a reminder to go into the beach, taking the turn at Romney to Shadyrill, flying up Route 12, these signs would be a reminder back and forth North and South to slow down in metal sacks. And I'm not gonna throw stones in our house, but you know, we all need a reminder once in a while and that's why you're seeing these all over the state of Vermont. And appreciate everybody's support and for that question. Brian, friend or guest. So $8,000 divided by how many of us live in middle six, about three bucks, something like that. I don't know, do the math. Other comments, questions? Yes. Okay, hang on a second, right over here. Yeah, David Lawrence. Just grab the light, David. Hi, David Lawrence, just a quick question, because I just noticed the AOT application says that a speed study has to have been done. Was it done already? And if so, great, I'd like to hear the results. And if not, what would be the cost of the speed study in addition to the signs? Hi, Karen Maloney. Yes, a speed study was conducted and foolishly I didn't bring the results, this was done at the end of last summer, I believe. They set up solar speed signs and they measured the speed and they rejected our appeal to reduce the speed limit to 25 because it is a state highway and I don't know the exact language, but they denied our request based on the fact that they cannot on a state highway reduce. Some of you will know this better than me. You can't reduce from a 50 to a 25 or a 30. You can't make that big of a reduction within the space we had. So they did make some adjustments. They moved this 35 sign further south as you're coming north into the village. So they moved the 35 speed limit sign further out so that folks would have more of a note and they did the same on the north end of town and they put some little red flags up and I think those are helping. We noticed anecdotally a huge difference in the speed of people passing through town when the solar flashing sign of 35 went up for a couple of months last year. We have to get our mail right on route 12. The difference in Putnamville from many other roads in town is the sight line. There is virtually no sight line and you know how long it takes. This is pretty clear how long it takes to stop a car going 35 miles an hour. The average speed I think and folks correct me if I'm wrong that the state found 43 miles an hour for cars passing through Putnamville. We pulled out to come to town meeting. A car came, so we live right behind the bait shop behind Jim and Sherry Page. We turn left to go south. Car was coming north. They have no visibility of us pulling out and if you're going 35 it's a tight turn. I am nervous every time I pull out and I don't have children. Some of my neighbors have a worse situation in terms of visibility. We totally understand other people's need and we were very amenable to a mobile unit that can be moved to other parts of town and rotated around with either the select board or the road commissioners at their direction and rotating around on some kind of schedule around town because we've seen on front porch forum people expressing concerns in other parts of town. So we don't want to be the only ones that benefit from this. I think our needs are unique. I would invite any of you to come and try to pull out of our driveways anytime and urge your support for up to 8,000. It may not take that much but to authorize this life board to investigate and help us with this problem. Other comments and questions? Yeah, so I hand over here. Any white horn. So Albie was kind enough to take a guess a minute how much the cost would be per residence. Dorinda has done an amazing job of creating a table that is on page 36 of the town report that actually will show you based on three different levels of property value, how much each of these special articles will actually cost. Again, based on house value of 150, 150,000, 200,000 to $300,000. And at the lowest level, Albie, just to comment again. It would be $5.31 for a property of $150,000. So I wanted to point that out because where we spend our money, we should be aware of where we're spending it, how much we're spending, how much it costs for our household. And while I recognize the needs of the folks in Putnamville and the portable sign sounds great to me personally. The idea that you're special and unique, we are all special and unique. My wife is a school bus driver and I have to wave at the school bus to get it to slow down on our road. She doesn't drive it. But traffic goes way too fast through our town, period. And that's true everywhere and it's dangerous everywhere. So again, I would consider, we wanna think about spending money on something like this. Let's do it in a way that isn't fixed in its location. And the cost of the study, I was curious, do we know how much the speed study actually did cost and how it was paid for? There's a question. I don't know if this like board can answer this question. How much did this speed study cost? Got paid for. It was some kind of a statement of cost anything. The state went ahead and did the whole study. Great, there was a hand over here. Right in the back. Nope, nope, you're going too far. There you go. Hi, Kathy Shapiro. If you already addressed this, somebody else can give me the answer. But what is the evidence that these radar feedback signs actually reduce speed overall? I came in late, so. But anybody like to address the question of evidence about whether the speed signs work? Is that what you'd like to address? Yes. Okay, so microphone right back there. And this will be the last comment and then we can take a break. It's just a basic reminder, LED lights. I mean, at nighttime or daytime, it's just a wake up for all of us. Like again, stones on glass houses. Again, we're just 5,031 cents. We're just asking for some help if there is willingness to, for the town to look at a portable situation. There's no doubt that there's speeding everywhere. I guess our whole point was is doing, we have hundreds of cars driving in and out of Pottenville. Two-month player every day from Waterville, Hyde Park that went to Jay Peak. We're just asking for the community support for the future of the children and the families of Pottenville and just for everybody in that area. But again, we're willing to talk if we. Okay, we have two more minutes. So yeah, right up here. Actually, turn around and walk this way. John, maybe you can lean back. John Poglio. I don't have any hard evidence, but I know they work for me. I love to have that reminder. It's gonna cost me nine bucks based on the chart on page 36. And I would happily this year and then next year and then the next year after we can identify the most critical areas. We all know Pottenville, it's a critical little zone in there. It's tough, sidelines are impossible. But if we can identify two or three other places where we're worried about our people being injured and I can pay 10 bucks next year and then the year after, I am so happy to do that. We put out money to all these other social service and help organizations. I think we could put our money to keeping our people in Pottenville safe and then move on to the next critical area in town. I think you kind of need to wait for the microphone to get passed to you, yes? Well, so coach may Susan, but if I'd like to propose an amendment that would change the wording, so not so that the signs be installed on the North and South lanes of Vermont Route 12 in Pottenville, but that includes that installation but that they would be rotated so that we're voting on not a specific installation forever in one spot. Right, okay. So and remind us of your name. I'm Jane Dudley. Jane Dudley, okay. And select board. The question is, is this a necessary amendment or would you feel empowered if this word you passed to move the? Okay, okay. So you're suggesting an amendment to be it. Okay, I'm just looking at some good wording, including use on the North and South lanes of Vermont Route 12 instead of to be installed. Would that do it? Including but not limited to? You don't know what that cost would be for a temporary thing to be moved. So how can we vote on that kind of switch out if we don't have data about what that would cost? So the question is whether, John Julio asks whether $8,000 is the right number to be asking for. Do we have any knowledge about whether a portable? Thank you. That was a motion to change the wording on article nine we do, we're gonna need a second. Shall the town voters authorize expenditures of up to $8,000 to purchase, to radar speed feedback signs, including but not limited to use on the North and South lanes, et cetera. Is there a second to that motion? Sarah Seidman seconds. All right, so we're discussing that amendment and John Julio just asked, do we know the cost of a portable sign? Is this the right number to be asking for? Anybody have that information? No, actually, black shirt with the stripe. Sorry, I meant the other one. I can tell you that the portable speed guards are more than, two speed guards would be more than that amount. You could probably get involved with probably one, but definitely not two. Okay. And right back here. I was gonna reiterate the same thing. Ray Hickory, what that gentleman just said, the portable ones are gonna be more expensive than the permanent ones. If you try to go to the portable ones, I can tell you right now it's gonna be a lot more expensive. And for what I know what they're doing, because I do some work in state highways, and let me tell you, it's not easy. And I've worked at Buttonville. So putting these signs up, I'm assuming it's gonna be a permanent deal that those signs would stay up there. I think trying to take them down and putting them someplace else is gonna, I don't think it's gonna work that well. And I don't even live in that, down in that area. But what that gentleman says, I think it's a good idea to do this, but do it as inexpensive as we can. Okay. We are working on the amendment to include, but not limited to. So this is a touchy little place that we are. And I'd like to get through this amendment before we move onto the budget. Is there any other discussion on this amendment? Yes. Lisa Carlson, I just wanna second everything that John said. If it's more expensive to have a mobile one, let's use our money well and protect the area that has been long identified as being an extreme need. And I'm open to hearing other neighborhoods. I know I don't have an issue with our neighborhood. So it's not the same type of issue everywhere in middle of the sex. And if we can identify another place next year, I'm open to supporting that. And I'd prefer to do it right the first time and have that one area that has been identified with the work that's been done taken care of. Thank you. Just to reiterate, this gentleman's comment about the fact that the budget's only half used. I mean, I think when we had met with the town, they had said that obviously some of that money, or I don't know how that all works, but it could get allocated possibly at the end of the year fund, and then it would just go back into, and again next year, if Camp Mead or Shady Rill, if the principal of the school came next year, we'd be right here again, and we'd, you know, five, six bucks or whatever it ends up being. We would definitely get on these subjects of the issues in town of where this meeting is, and we would vote, there's no doubt about it. Okay, so the issue right now is the amendment of adjusting the wording of article nine to say that the feedback signs would be including, but not limited to use on the north and south lanes. Don Puglio would like to call the question. Is there, he's proposing to end debate. Is there a second? Okay, say your name nice and loud. That's your favorite seconds. So we will now be voting on whether to end debate on the amendment. So if you would like to stop talking about this amendment, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. You guys have it. So we are now gonna vote on the amendment, and the amendment would change article nine to read, shall the town voters authorize expenditures of up to $8,000 to purchase two radar speed feedback signs, including, but not limited to use on the north and south lanes of Vermont Route 12 in Puttneville. If you're in favor of this amendment, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. No. The no's appear to have it. The no's do have it, and the amendment fails. So we're back to the article as written, and what I'd like to do now is pause, and move to the budget, and then we'll come back to article nine as written. This allows us to stick with our warning, which says that article seven, the budget, will be considered as a special order of business at 5.15. The reason we do that is so that people who only wanna come and talk about the big money issue know when to come, and they're already sitting here going, why haven't you done this since seven minutes ago? So article seven, to vote a fiscal year 2020, 2021, budget of $1,323,867 to meet the expenses and liabilities of the town, and authorize the select board to set a tax rate sufficient to provide the same. Is there a motion on article seven? That one's moves, is there a second? Nancy Riley seconds. So article seven, to vote a fiscal year 2020, 2021, budget of $1,323,867 has been moved and seconded. Is there a discussion on article seven? The budget is on page 39 of the town report, and the discussion begins on page 35. Hopefully you've had a chance to look at that. Discussion about the budget. Also page 23, the report from the budget. Lots of good information about the budget discussion. Yes. Deb Gerard, I just would like to ask about the increase, the big increase in the amount for the Lister's wages and what that's all about, just some history on that clarification. Thank you. Would the select board like to respond to that question about increase in the Lister's wages? Excuse me, I'll try, Peter Hood. So the Lister's have a lot of work to do every year and that work takes a lot of time and as much as it is a big percentage increase, the actual amount of money is not that large, but it's just to more accurately reflect the amount of time that they need to properly do their work. Other discussion, questions about the budget. Excuse me, right back there. Vic, stand up so she knows where to bring it. Vectwire, I see in there, I was wondering if the select board could tell us, if you wanted some money to hire another excavator and another truck, and you'd like to know specifically where this work would be done and exactly what you're talking about. Seems like a lot of money, extra $40,000 was it or? 40,000. Yes, Steve Martin. We have gone through a lot of storms and everything that has set us back in what we should be doing for our general maintenance and that includes some of the mud mitigation that we've done in the past. So anyway, we've got ourselves behind and with this storm, so this money would hire two trucks, rent an excavator and hire an operator to do just ditching so that we could catch up on our work and continue to go with our five year plan. He asked about where it would be and who would be doing it. Where? It would be all over town as far as the ditching. It would be one month's worth of ditching. Follow up question? I guess if I was gonna vote for that amount of money, I guess I'd want to know a little more specific where you're gonna be. Is this gonna be on our main arteries or are we gonna go on our secondary roads? I'd like to know, who are we hiring and who is gonna be in oversight of what they're doing? Well, as far as who we're hiring, we'd have to rent a couple of trucks. Can everybody hear Steve? Does he need to move it closer? Yes? Oh, move it closer. Is that better? We'd have to rent a couple of trucks for that time period. We'd actually rent an excavator and I believe we can hire an operator for that one month period. And as far as specifically where, like I said, we would do our, probably try to get our main arteries in town that haven't been ditched. Those would be some of the first ones but we would try to get as much of the roads done as we possibly could to catch up. Other comments and questions about the budget? Ray? Yes, Ray Hickory. The thing I am thinking about is it's a lot of money but I also think that our town road crew is taking on a lot more work than what they really should be doing because these projects that they're doing there has taken them so much time to do it that the rest of the town is suffering from the road maintenance. Now you're saying to try to catch up. Well, why do we need to spend this amount of money to catch up? So if it happens to be that hey, you don't take on so much, so big a job or you bid it out to a company that can come in and do this so that our road maintenance crew can do this ditching is the best that they can because the time that they're spending doing these mud mitigation things, they're not getting the roads done. We're spending money that we just don't have and there's people in town that are on fixed incomes. They can't afford all this extra stuff. Some of the work that's being done like grading the roads. We're on a four day work week from what I understand. So the guys are only doing four days a week. Well, during the course of the summer, the last two years, if you stopped and looked at it, there was, the Fridays, they're not even working. You might, if it rains on Tuesday or Wednesday, the greater doesn't go out to take care of our roads. So Friday is a good day. Well, that greater should be out there working. It isn't. Why don't we go back to a five day work week for the crew instead of this four day work week so that those days that are good, we can utilize our money a little bit better than what we are. Doing this extra money that you want to catch up so it takes us a little bit longer to do the job, take, do a smaller part of the job and let it go out further. I just can't see in spending that much money when we can just back up, slow down, don't do as much as what we're trying to get done in a hurry. Yeah, Peter Hood. Hey, just a couple of quick things and I understand and appreciate your concern. Thank you very much. It's important for everybody here to understand that the road crew is working the same number of hours as they work on a five day schedule. They're just doing it in four days. Now, I do understand your point that if the roads need to be graded because there's a storm on a Friday and they're not working on Friday, they're not gonna do it. Now, if it was a situation where the road was closed or impassable or something like that, they'd be called in and it'd be an overtime situation and it would be taken care of. In terms of the extra money, this was an idea that we came up with or a lot of careful thought. We had two incidents just in the past year which set us back to storms and we did in fact hire an outside contractor to come in and do the work on Macy Road because there was no way we could do it and the road was closed. So in situations like that, we do do that. We believe that doing it this way by hiring extra equipment and hiring some short-term people will allow us to get caught up on the work we haven't done and it will be a more cost-effective way of doing that. I will wholeheartedly admit, A, it's a lot of money and B, it's an experiment. Thank you. Matt. In the blue shirt, just. Hi, my name is Matt Dwyer and I was on the select board for three years and at that time, we ended up purchasing the first excavator in this town and the concept behind having that excavator was that we were gonna take on some mud mitigation and slowly work at it when we could but making sure that we prioritized how we did that and continued to ditch the roads and cut the brush and do our maintenance along the way. I don't really feel that the management has been done very well in that order and I've actually watched what's gone on the past three or four years. They seem to go out the secondary roads rather than apply their efforts to the main arteries where we have a lot of traffic on East Hill, Center Road, Brook Road, and I think that would be your priority to go after first. As far as the 10 hour workdays, I've been in business for quite a few years and I'm sorry, you do not get 10 hours out of a person. You're lucky to get seven real hours. So in the line of work that we're in trying to grade the roads, you need to utilize the weather to your benefit. So when we lose that Friday, that they're taken off for their three-day weekend or whatever they're choosing to do, that's a big deal. I think we really ought to rethink the whole four-day workweek. What is about the budget? Are there new folks who would like to speak? I'll land this, Maranella. I mostly raise my hands and my daughter would have to bring me the microphone. She's going to pour it over there. I just had a question about this increase, this year, how much of it is one time and how much is baked in? In other words, next year, will we see a decrease in the budget if we approve this one? The select board, want to address that question? That's a very good question. For years and years and years, as we say in our, and I would refer you to our select board budget report on page 23, we have been able to keep the increases in the budget at a pretty reasonable rate, two, three, four percent. As long as I can remember, we've been able to keep the increases to that amount. Between these two storms we had, which really hurt us, and some unanticipated other expenses, which you can read in that report, but most of it's the roads. We had a big deficit last year for the first time in our town's history. We can't continue to operate with the deficit, we don't have a fund balance to support that. So we have to deal with what the good Lord gives us in terms of the weather. If we could all predict the weather, we'd be better at telling you. I would like to hope that this isn't gonna continue, but boy, when you listen to the prognosticators, they tell us we're gonna have more storms, they're gonna be more severe, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't dare promise that the budget is gonna go down. We're trying to react to the conditions as they exist. Other comments, questions, Sarah? She's written it. Hi, my name's Sarah Merriman. I'm your town clerk, at least until 7 p.m. We'll see what happens. I feel really weird addressing town meeting, and I know what people mean when they say it's horrible, because you're gonna see each other again, and you're gonna take very unpopular positions. And now I'm about to take a pretty unpopular position, but please just hear me out. So I'm gonna start off with my price chopper story. I was in price chopper the other day. There was a woman in front of me and a woman behind me, and the woman behind me said to the woman in front of me, hey, Cheryl, are you going on vacation this summer? And she said, no, we gotta put on a new roof. And the woman behind me said, I've done those roofcations too. People, we need a roofcation in this town. I am sorry to tell you that. If I think of you as our family members, and this is our house, we are in bad shape. I'll start off with the road crew, the roads. Good example. Sorry, I see I'm getting nervous here. I've done a lot of public speaking. Let me get, you're seeing other people, but. So the highway department right now cannot be insulated because if the highway department is insulated, I'm talking about the shed, which is 40 years old, which should have been destroyed 20 years old, 20 years ago, because it's a temporary structure. If it is insulated, the snow will cave in on the roof. We have to replace that. We have a town hall with a vault that cannot accommodate this. Do you know what the radon level is in the vault on weekends? The normal level, the acceptable level is no more than four. The radon level is 44 in that vault. I work in that and we have two-tone clerks who have battled cancer in my lifetime. Probably sitting duck myself. We have a fire department right now that needs air packs that are gonna cost $50,000 and they need them. They're past their prime. We have a lift that is 20 years past its prime, at least 10 if you stretch it. I've been trapped in it. Pat Freeman's been trapped in it. A grandmother and a baby have you been trapped in it. Greg Richards has been trapped in it. Oh, it's a ball. Can you step to the front? I think it's there. Oh, sorry. We have duct tape over the windows in town hall. We are heating costs are crazy in town hall. We cannot meet here. We cannot meet in town hall because it's not only just crowded, but if you flush the toilet more than eight times a day, it will overflow. Just ask the people who threw a wedding shower, bridal shower two weekends ago. We've got big, big costs coming down the pike. And partly it's been because the select board has tried to keep these increases down. And partly it's because no one wants to deliver bad news. Everybody wants to come to the voters and say we have a 2.5% increase. We have a slew of deferred maintenance. And I am sorry, but this is something we're gonna have to consider with the $73,000 of special articles that are coming on top of this 11% budget increase. I know these are all in popular positions. I don't wanna take it. I love the library. I'm an author. I've written 17 books. I actually get paid by the library. My final point is this. State payments, which are breaks on your property taxes, only apply to people, it's homestead education bill. Everything you vote here today is applied across the board to everyone. There is no state payment on town taxes. A lot of people can't be here because they're working. And you're sticking them with a bill. So we've all got a pony up. I understand we got big bills coming up and we gotta do some budget tightening and I'm sorry about it. I say support this budget because the roads are a mess. But then when you get to the special articles, think long and hard about our pet projects, which we all love. Those are the hardest ones to cut. I'm back here. Hey, I'm gonna reiterate what I was saying before in one sense of the way. And some of it, like Matt said, it's management because there's certain roads on this. I'm not gonna say what roads they were, but I've driven over them and there was places that where the ditch line was filled up, water was running out into the road. And all that would have taken for an operator, one of the road crew to run a backhoe, down that road, stop five minutes, pull some dirt into the edge of the road to get the water to run back into the ditch where it should have been in the first place. And that would have been taken care of, but it wasn't done, wasn't done. Several weeks went by it wasn't done and we had a heavy rain, guess what? The road washed out. Well, that cost us more money because we had to put more gravel back into the edge of the road because we lost the road. Those are some of the things that need to be taken care of, but if our road crew is working on these mud mitigations and come on people, I've been in this town, born and raised here, almost 70 years. I grew up in mud season. You're gonna have mud season. So you deal with it for a month or so. The rest of the year is not bad at all. So you wanna take care of some of these mud problems, but don't try to do it on one hitch. Back off on spending this money and do it smaller amounts instead. And do the road maintenance. Our town is suffering because of these jobs that you're trying to get done and our roads are not being taken care of. And I'll come right back to the grading problem. And yes, I had a road crew person tell me that, well, it's nice to have that four day work week because we put in so many hours in the winter time that this is one of the perks for us, putting in so many hours. You didn't get compensated for time and a half while you were out there doing that glowing and sanding that you need to have this extra time, these three day work vacations. So you're only working four days a week. And like I said before, if it rains on one day, you can't grade, but how many Fridays out of the summer that that Friday was a good day, that grader should have been out there working. And when these road crews are all doing these other jobs, that grader should be out every single day that it is not raining and grading our roads. And our roads are suffering from it because of it now. And some of these side roads that are, two or three houses on it, they're going in and grading a road. A road that I was working on and not saying what road it was either, perfectly fine. If it isn't bro, don't fix it. Well, that road got regraded. And I was told, well, there's taxpayers on that road. They deserve some of that tax money back. So that's why we graded the road. When we had other main roads, it should have been graded because we got potholes that are foot and a half deep. People are losing their tires in them. Come on, folks. Put the money where it really needs to be done into. Thank you. We are discussing article seven, just a reminder, this is the 2020, 2021 budget. Other comments, discussion from folks who haven't spoken yet? Right here. My name's Gordon Grunder. We made a big change in the way that the road crew worked on the town roads, whatever that was five years ago. When I go up East Hill Road in Mud Hill's mud season now, I don't have to tow other people out. I don't have to worry I'm gonna lose my Subaru and never see it again in a mud hole. Portal Road, they did a lot of work there. It was really expensive and they did a great job. I understand there's other parts of town and there's more maintenance that needs to be done. The ditching work needs to be done, but I really wanna hand it to the road crew. I really like the big projects they've done and we've had big storms and taking cheap shots at the 10 hours a day. They work for four days a week. That just doesn't seem right. That's my comment. Thank you. Other comments, discussion on the budget. Uh-oh. I'll just shout. So the issues that Sarah Merriman raised are concerning. The issues that Sarah Merriman raised are concerning. We shouldn't have town employees working in an unsafe environment. We shouldn't have an elevator that people get stuck in. We should have a town hall that is secure and the fire department as well. And so I just wanted to pose a question because honestly I don't know the details of the budget and I don't know what long range planning might look like. So I wanted to pose a question to the select board if I could and that is do you have any thoughts about how we deal with these longer term issues? Are you thinking that next year there will be capital items added to the budget? Is there a plan to do them in chunks? Any light you can shed on this would be helpful. So we have spent quite a better time this year and Sarah's comments are as a result of that work trying to figure out how to work on some of these, on some of these issues. The other issue which Sarah didn't mention which is scaring us in the face is five years ago Steve, we did the work on the greater. Five years ago we made the decision not to purchase a new greater to essentially rebuild the greater we have and make it last another five years. That worked, we saved some real money but now we have a greater that really needs to be replaced. That's in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars. That's like 25% of our budget and we're not gonna pay for it one year, we'd pay for it over 10 years or maybe more. But it's true, we've got a lot of big things staring us in the face and we're trying to figure out how to A, prioritize them and B, do them in the most cost-effective way. Should we build a new little town clerk's office maybe in the center here, maybe where the old town garage is, who knows? But build a small building with a proper vault, a small vault, we don't need a meeting room anymore because we're having our meetings at the school and sell the old town hall. Maybe we should do that. We had an engineering study done on the town garage thinking that it would make sense the heating cost at the town garage is horrendous. It's a temporary building, it's poorly insulated, et cetera, et cetera. Well, the engineering report came back and said exactly what Sarah said. The structure of that garage won't support snow so you have to have limited insulation so the heat melts the snow, otherwise the building collapses. Well, that's a fine, how do you do? How do we deal with that? Well, probably what we need is a new town garage. Who knows what that might cost? Believe me, we're trying to parse things out and work on them but we've got some major challenges ahead in all these areas and we just deferred because of the items that we're talking about tonight. We made the decision to do some additional repairs on the grader and make that grader last one more year so that we wouldn't be asking for potentially 20% increase because we were gonna have a long payment on a grader. So we're doing the best we can, folks. We welcome, believe me, we welcome your input. Any thoughts or ideas, any of you have on any of these subjects, we'd love to have you come to a town meeting, excuse me, a select board meeting and talk to us because we're struggling because we can see a lot of challenges on the horizon. Other comments, August, right in the corner. What comes to mind and I wonder if you- August parents. August parents. If you consider it as a capital campaign to, for infrastructure, you know, every time we're in town meeting, we acknowledge and recognize that many people in town are on limited incomes and many people are not and, you know, we're a community and, you know, if we can't raise taxes so that because it hurts some people, is there another way to do it? And, you know, I would love to contribute to a town clerk's office where the town clerk lives as long life. I think there's other people who might, I don't know, it's just my thought that it's like, oh, we should do this. Other comments about the budget, yes. Oh no, sorry, I saw Sarah first. Sarah. Hi, Sarah and Seedman. I'd just like to propose to the select board that they come back to us next year with some kind of a long-term plan just like we would do if we have all these expenses. Maybe we can't do mud mitigation every year. Maybe we have to start a five-year plan for our town as a whole to address these problems. You can't come back to us every year and say, well, this year is a big year, but this year we'll do two, you know, we need to have some kind of long-range planning that will allow us to address significant. We have such a wonderful town. We don't want to let it fall into disrepair. Sarah, we couldn't agree with you more. We're trying to get the information we need to do that kind of long-term plan. That's what's brought up this whole discussion and we've been working on it all year. We've got more work to do. But yes, the idea is to prioritize so we can't do all these things at once. We've got to figure out the most important ones and knock them off one at a time. Maybe. You guys are going to have to duke it out. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Yeah, right there. Hi, so I'm going to echo Sarah's sentiments, Sarah, our town clerk. I'm Amy Whitehorn. I'm also one of your Lister's. Hopefully some of you voted for me to do the job again. And there was a question raised earlier, I think by someone over here about the Lister budget. What you all may not know is that you've been working with basically two out of three Lister's for the last couple of years. One of our Lister's lives out of state for about half the year, so he isn't around. And he's great, dick, and I'll commend everybody who's probably familiar with him. And certainly we respect and are glad to have him as part of our Lister's. But that elifting is falling back to Eric Young and to me, who are responsible for the grand list. And frankly, that means your house value. Nobody likes it when we come around. But the grand list is basically how the select board figures out how much they have to spread the needs across our town. Nobody likes to see us come around and people come in and they always say, oh, my house is not nearly worth as much as you think it is. And yet people are making all sorts of improvements and changes and things that may or may not even require a permit that are improving your efficiency at home and making all sorts of adjustments in ways so you can live within your own means. We can't do that here in town. That's what you just were hearing from Sarah and from Peter, from talking about the buildings that we have. We are not in a situation in our town where we can make efficiency improvements because our buildings are in such poor condition it would be literally flushing money down the toilet. And I say that because it is eight times. The ninth time you're in trouble at the town hall, that is. So two things, one, if you're making improvements to your home, raise your hand and let us know so that you can pay your fair share right alongside your neighbors because nobody wants their taxes to go up and yet we all are not living in the same house that we lived in probably 10 years ago. You've at least maybe, I don't know, done something a roof. The other thing is there are very few of us in town in this room. We have a lot more neighbors who aren't able to come to this meeting every year to vote on this budget and to that end, it has been asked of the select board in years past that our budget be moved to the ballot so that every person in town who's affected by that budget has an equal chance. And I mean that equal underscore because there are people who literally cannot be here for certain reasons, unlike those of us who are able to be here, to decide whether or not we spend our tax money in this town in the way in which we're spending it. So sorry, I'm getting a little nervous. So to that end, I wish that you would think about that because at some point it really needs to come before us the reality that our town, although we're all community and neighbors, is big enough at this point and has a diverse enough population that we cannot decide our budget with just, I don't know, a couple hundred of us in the room and not all of us are voters. Well, I'm a voter, but not everybody here is a voter. So I guess that's it for now. The Lister budget went up because there's a lot more work to do than there used to be. And Eric and Dick and I have not been billing the town for much of the time for the last few years. And we were asked to give real numbers, so we did. And that's still very conservative and we rarely actually spend what we say we're gonna. Thanks, right over here. Hi, Heidi Lucas here. I agree with everything you just said. And I think it's time for a reality check from everybody in this room that there's a lot of stuff going on in middle sex that needs help. And while everyone wants to help everybody outside of our community, it's about time we say no to everybody else and say yes to middle sex because there soon isn't going to be a town for everybody to live in. So the special articles shouldn't be in there. We should be focusing on our own budget. And yes, I'm gonna use the word, it's time to get selfish. Other discussion or questions or comments about the budget? Larry Sharpe. In terms of the kind of long-term planning, so when Romney was talking about doing a big improvement, it was kind of a multi-year process and people were invited to all kinds of meetings throughout several years. So I think I would recommend the same kind of a thing here if we're really looking at a number of big budget items. Don't just wait till next town meeting to present the plan and have people react to that. Do something throughout the next year so that people can actually participate. And then people can actually, people who can't come to town meeting can actually be participating in that planning process. Other questions or comments about article seven? It comes from the microphone, yes. Thank you. Vic Dwyer again. I don't really want to hold your feet to the fire here, but I don't understand why if we're talking about plans, we're talking about money, but we don't know where we're gonna spend it. We don't know who we're gonna hire. And the reason I say that is because we have a town, we have a plan for doing roads, but we don't stick to that. Some of our problems that you ran into is because we did Notch Road instead of staying with our plan. Can you explain to me why we did Notch Road instead of sticking with our plan? Was there any particular big deal over there? No, I can't answer that question like that. I mean, I can tell you what the rumors are in town, but I don't want to do that. And now somebody said that you shouldn't be saying anything about working 10 hours. Last year we were working Sundays and we were taking Fridays off. It doesn't seem, I'm not trying to beat you guys up. I really am not, but I think we gotta think more on what we're doing. A couple of years ago we took the class four section over on McCulloch Hill Road and big deal, we're gonna make a class three. We didn't do anything to it. So now we're over there fixing it. We should be fixing our main arteries like East Hill and Center Road. I don't even think you can get an ambulance up some of those roads, some of those portions of East Hill in the springtime. If you want to put some money into that mud mitigation, let's forget about McCulloch Hill Road this summer and focus on our main arteries. I mean I own everything that was on the right side of that and I'd gladly say, forget it. We can get along on McCulloch Hill Road and you fix up the main arteries. Thank you. Comments from the select board on that before you go? Other comments or questions about article seven, the budget. Hi, I'm Becca Mandel and I'm a lifelong federal sex resident. And I just have a question about procedure I guess. It seems like a lot of the comments that we've been getting during the course of this conversation are really about management of the folks who work for us as a community. So I'm wondering, they seem separate from the money. And so I'm wondering if folks have concerns or questions about how our town's money is being managed, how can they address those in a forum that where those decisions are being made? Because I don't actually think we're making any decisions about how the roads get maintained here tonight. We're just deciding whether we're gonna give the extra 40 grand for those, for the excavator and the person who's gonna operate it. So we're sort of saying we're making that decision and then the decision about how that is gonna happen I think is gonna be later. So I'm curious about when that decision is gonna be made and how we would know so that folks who feel this is really important to weigh in on can have a chance to weigh in and then sort of move on from that. And yeah. Right, so Becca that's a great point and Becca is asking I think the select board when would be an appropriate time to have additional conversation about the sort of management questions as opposed to spending which is what we're confined to talking about right here. Got it. So we have select board meetings twice a month. We love people to come to our meetings. We welcome people to come to our meetings. We respect and are polite to people who come to our meetings. There are no bad questions or no bad suggestions. We truly welcome input. The warnings for those meetings are posted on the town website. They're posted at the school. They're posted at the town hall. So you can see what's on our schedule that we're gonna discuss. But if you have an item, anyone here has an item that they'd like to discuss whether it's the four day work week in the summer or the roads we're working on or the plan for the town hall or whatever it is. Contact Sarah and she will put you on the agenda and we welcome your input. Don't think you're limited to just what appears on the town morning. Might not be the next meeting, might be in three weeks depending on how busy we are. But we welcome input from everybody and anybody anytime and if you don't have time to come down and meet with us, send us an email, send us a letter. We'll respond to you. We welcome the input, we truly do. Thank you. Thank you, Wendy. Microphone right there. Hi, Wendy Fremlich. I am just wondering, you didn't mention Front Porch Forum as a way to announce the select board meetings and the agenda and for somebody who doesn't look at the town website or necessarily go down to the clerk's office, it would be great if you announced it on Front Porch Forum with a little agenda in a couple of days or weeks notice or something. I don't know the answer to the question of whether Front Porch Forum will accept that as opposed. We can look into it. I don't know why not. I mean, all I'm saying is between you know, you can call a town clerk's office, you can email it to you, whatever. For somebody like me who's got 10,000 organizational things going on, I would not think about doing anything like that unless it came right up to my nose. So Front Porch Forum I do look at every day. Well, we can agree to look into that. I have no problem doing that. Our concern with Front Porch Forum is that a lot of folks don't get Front Porch Forum. So that isn't the answer either, but we want to communicate with people. Excuse me, we want to communicate with people the best way we can. So I'll promise you we'll look into that and see if we can do it. I would imagine we could put a notice of the meeting on Front Porch Forum saying, remember there's a select board meeting next Tuesday night at five o'clock. Whether we can put the agenda on there would be my question. You can link to the website. The time meeting was throughout two, I've seen them, yep, yep, yep, okay. Other folks who haven't spoken yet, yes. Microphone right there. So my name's Randy Drury. Randy, I'm looking for the microphone. Thank you. So I just have some questions about Randy Drury. I'm looking at a couple line items here on the budget. Road gravel, roadside moaning, kind of ties into a lot of the conversation that's been happening so far. Looking at 182 or 181% increase in road gravel, almost a 90% increase in roadside moaning. Wondering if you can talk on that. And then I also have a follow up wondering whether or not we have anybody looking into whether there are pools and money to assist with any of the ditching or seating or any of that kind of stuff through whether it's the state or some sort of organization. Who would like to take that question from the select board? Well, while Steve's looking for that, I'll just make one comment. We keep our eyes open all the time for opportunities to get grants to help us with some of these issues. And we've been very successful in getting grants. So we work on that all the time. If there's money out there, we go ahead. So on that increase that you're talking about, it's like one of the things that Peter had mentioned earlier. It is a large increase on the percentage, but as far as dollar value, it's not that much. Microphone? So we talk about, I don't know, it's just a little bit of money. Well, it's a little bit of money here. It's a little bit of money there. You start adding that up. And the folks that are on fixed incomes and just barely scraping by, it makes a huge difference. Right here? Coming around the back. Hi, my name is Ronald Brown, and I usually live down the Route 2. It's not very muddy down here, right on Route 2. So coming up here, I noticed it. Anyways. I just wondered, I haven't been here because usually during the winters where it's a lot warmer than this, but now we're up here because they've built a new house. But anyway, who come up with the idea of the five, the 10 hour days? Is that, the workers wanted that? Or did the bosses want that? I know that I used to work central garage, traffic shop, doing signs all over the state. And it worked great for a while in the summer because we would leave here and go to Brattleboro or Bennington or, so if you work 10 days, you get a lot more done. You know, that way. But right here, I don't know, that 10 days, 10 hours, seems like what would be accomplished. I think you'd have a lot more time to come back to the shop and clean your truck as far as I'm concerned. That's good. Thank you. If you want to respond to that, you can, or you can refer it to us likely. Yeah, I believe that we do get our value out of those 10 hour days. And I've been in construction for a long time myself. But the workers did come to us originally to go over the four day week. And there's a lot of towns out there that do the four day weeks. And on the question of the grading, that comment about the grading on a Friday, that's absolutely true. There's some times when we should be out there grading because the road crew isn't working. However, Paul and I have discussed that very item. And at the last part of this past summer, we were grading on weekends even because of the weather. So we were trying to adapt our hours to do that. That wire. So on those weekends, Steve, are those guys, are we getting charged time and a half for those hours or is that straight time? No, what we were trying to do is to work that out so we could just do straight time. I did authorize Paul to do time and a half if we had to to get the roads graded, but we are trying to do it so that it's just straight time. Okay, so just real quick, this lady over here, I think it kind of something about, we're having all this discussion about 10 hour work days and how things are done in this town or whatnot. And we should really allocate a special time to talk about that somewhere. Well, this is town meeting and I understand there's a lot to do and to talk about but the reason we're bringing this up and to talk about it is if things were managed in a different manner, I think is where we're coming from, perhaps we wouldn't have to spend the $40,000 or $50,000 extra this year to get caught up on something that maybe we wouldn't have had to get caught up on. That's merely the reason we're having this discussion. And as I hand back here, yes. Hey everybody, I'm Eric Silvers. I haven't been to any town meetings. I've always been away and I'm happy to be here and I don't want to miss anymore. I love the road crew. You guys rock, man. You rock. And I would work 10 hour days, four days a week if I had a choice. I would appreciate you picking up the stuff on Macy Road, all that drainage stuff on the side that you pulled out and picked up. I would appreciate that. But you guys did a great job on Macy Road, man. It's a little bit narrow. But hell, the whole road, man, was like gone and you put it back pretty fast. So I appreciate that. They didn't do it. They subbed that out to DuBois. That wasn't ours. All right, well, you made the choice to sub it out. All right, thank you for the clarification. Whatever, man, that Macy Road got put back together pretty quick. Thank you, DuBois. And I appreciate that. Appreciate that a lot. And if we're complaining about how much money the road crew is spending and we're complaining about the potholes, that doesn't make much sense to me. So either we have good roads and we pay for them or we have potholes and we drive slower. Drive slower. On Macy Road, for sure. Drive slower on Macy Road. And if you don't live on Macy Road, don't drive on Macy Road, man. Go on West Hill, please. Because there's a lot of people who are driving fast on Macy Road and we walk on Macy Road, man, and I almost got hit. Okay. Select board, thank you for your work. Thank you for your work. Appreciate that. I have some ideas, but I'll save them for later. Okay, great. And over here, oh, actually, I was calling on Susan Warren right behind your area. Sorry. Hi, I'm Susan Warren. And I appreciate all the work that the road crew is doing and I would ordinarily support a increase in, you know, to catch up. But what I'm hearing is that there's an awful lot of problems that may require 40, 50, $100,000, maybe a quarter of a million for the greater that are impending. And I'm wondering if we could have a special meeting of some kind to get more input on from us because it's hard for us to come to the town meeting and hear about one thing that needs money and then knowing there's a lot of other things and not knowing how it's gonna get balanced out in the future and how we're gonna plan ahead for some of these big expenses. So I don't know if it's possible to kind of table the increase in the road budget for the time being until we can sort of, as a group, hear more about the impending decisions instead of having them kind of come at us, you know, year by year in the budget, which is, you know, it's kind of, it's stressful for everyone to think about and I appreciate Sarah's information that she provided about a lot of problems that most of us didn't know were impending. So which dollar amount are you proposing for 40,000? I guess I don't really know I need help with, what to propose, okay? Sue, I would just make one comment to you and that is I understand it's difficult for people to keep track of what's going on at select board meetings and it's also difficult to come out in the evening at 10 select board meetings, but in the fall every year we have budget hearings where we go department by department, we have budgets presented, we discuss the items that we need to spend our money on and that would be the perfect time to come to a select board meeting or write us a letter or participate in some way. We will get it on front-port form so that'll help people remember, but that's how the process works. We spend a lot of time putting these numbers together and we welcome your input. And I'll just add that there's also what's called the budget committee, so it's aside from the select board who comes to these meetings as well, so these are, are they elected? Budget? Two of them, okay. Two of them, yes, so it's an elected position, yeah. So two of them are, yeah, we often appoint them because nobody votes or there's not enough people on the ballot. So you could be on the budget committee which would be helpful because I know we have a couple of vacancies, but the budget committee, and again, we, as Sarah mentioned all of these things, we've talked about, I mean, we struggle over these at every meeting and our, you know, this $40,000, we had a lot of conversation about it and our budget committee said that they fully supported that increase and that if we, as a select board, had said that, well, we don't really feel comfortable doing this, they would have disagreed with us. So just know that it's not just us up here making these decisions, but there's a full committee that supports us along the way. And Susan, it wasn't clear to me, if you'd like to make a motion, I think that the proper motion would be to amend the budget to take it down by some dollar amount. You would have to pick the dollar amount. We'd have to vote on that amendment and then the select board would need to re-warn a special meeting about that dollar amount and whether they would, and I'm not sure if you want to take it to that extent or if you're happy with the response from the select board about how the budget process works. Clarifying question. Is the 40, is the 40, is the 40, is the 40, is the 40, is the 40, is the 40, is the 40. Yeah, point of information from John Julio. Yeah, grab a microphone. Just a point of, just a point, just a little point. Just a point of clarification though. Can the select board answer is the, do we equate the 40,000 to ditch ditching and the mud mitigation? Because I think that, that is a particular. The 40,000 is just for ditching. Just for ditching. Okay, so I think if there is going to be an amendment, I think we need to know that if you're looking at that 40,000, whether that is answering the question about management on the roads, you know, is that 40,000 that we would amend to take out addressing the issue that people have about roads? There is no proposed amendment on the floor at this time. We're just kind of scooting around again. Yeah, yeah, microphone coming at you. Thick Dwyer. I really think you should let this gentleman talk. He's been trying to talk. Oh, I'm sorry. But turn on the mic if you can. Thick Dwyer. I think that we should. The mic is off. How's that? Would we, would it be fair to say we take, to amend the budget to 3% over last year's budget? Would that take care of the, instead of 11% and have it 3%? It's an allowable. I mean, you've got some, you have some increases that you don't have much control over. So I wouldn't say you'd want to do it flat. Usually you run around 3%, don't you? So Vic, the answer is yes, you can. Yeah. Okay. We would much prefer that if you want to reduce the budget, you say, I want to adjust this particular line item in the budget, like for instance, take out that $40,000 special thing, rather than say, you know, we'll leave it up to you guys. You spend the money, but we're only gonna give you. Well, ultimately you do anyway. So no matter what the budget is, you can spend it anywhere you want. You know you can. Not really. Yeah. We try very hard to stick to that. But no, isn't 11%, isn't that like 100,000? I'm sorry? Isn't the 11% increase $100,000? Roughly, yes. Okay, so we'll cut the budget by $100,000. Get ready. Yeah. So, can I make that a minute? Yes, you can make it a motion, yes. The motion on the floor is an amendment by Victoria to cut the budget, article seven, by $100,000, right. Is there a second? Second. Second. It's been moved and seconded to cut the budget by $100,000. Is there a discussion on the amendment? The question was asked, is it fair? And Paul Zabrowski, I'd posit it is not fair. To the select board, to give them a blanket cut and ask them to make all the nasty decisions as opposed to functioning as a town meeting and us taking responsibility for where are we spending and where are we cutting? We have a budget presented to us. If we wanna take $100,000 out, I think it's incumbent on us to decide where those $100,000 come from. Who loses in this? Other comments on the amendment. Sorry, Vic, the person next to you, did you say he has had it? Not so much, okay. Back here. Hi, I'm Jim Covino, I just have an idea. When there's a state, Hold the microphone right up. When there's a state problem, the governor will call a national disaster and a federal government will bail out the state. We all pay state taxes. So why can't when we have a disaster in the town, why can't the state government have, you can call it a disaster area and the state can bail us out? I mean, because it's gonna get worse. Global warming, we're gonna get more of this weather and we can't afford it. Yeah, so do you wanna, I know there's mention of getting state funding in the town report. The answer is they do. There are grants available. We did, what was the amount that I bring? We did get a $72,000 grant for some of this repair work that we had to do after these storms. So yes, there is money. We go after any of that money that's available. We don't always get it, but we go after it. The question on the floor is to amend the budget by reducing it by $100,000. During the, yes, microphone right here. Hi, during the corolla. I just wanna say that I think we've been talking about taking care of our middle sex people. And I think we're overlooking the fact that we have $73,000 in special articles, which the majority is not going to help our town and yet we're looking to cut $40,000 or $100,000 from our budget. I work very closely on the budget. Is some items you just can't cut? They're mandated hours or something that has to be done. But I think we need to be looking further down where we can make other cuts without hurting that town. Who is the treasurer? Other comments on the amendment proposal to cut the budget by $100,000? Are you ready for the question? Oh, okay, yes, Elliot. I'm just wondering if somebody from the select board can, if possible, can explain to us what the impact would be of taking that money out of the budget. If you can project where you would be making cuts and how our lives would be changed. 10% of the stuff that we pay for, we won't have that money. So we're gonna have to find it somehow. I mean, I don't have any, I don't have any, is it gonna come out of employee pay raises? Is it gonna come out of the $40,000 for the extra work on the roads that a lot of people were supporting and asking us to do? It's gonna have to come out of everywhere. That's a big chunk of money. That's 10%, more than, almost 10% of our budget. Other discussion. You ready for the question? Okay, all those in favor of the amendment to cut the budget by $100,000, say I. Opposed, no? No. The no's appear to have it. The no's do have it. And the amendment fails. We are back to article seven as proposed, the 2020-2021 budget. Your name? Did you get, sorry, your name again? Is there a second to call a question? Jeff Coons. It's been moved and seconded to call the question. That's not debatable. So this is a question of whether we wanna stop talking or not. If you would like to stop talking and just vote on the budget, then vote yes. So all those in favor of calling the question, signify by saying I. I. Opposed, no? Okay, so we have just called the question and we are ready for article seven. Article seven to vote a fiscal year 2020-2021 budget of $1,323,867 to meet the expenses and liabilities of the tab and authorize the select board to set a tax rate sufficient to provide the same. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no? No's were heard. The ayes have it. And article seven is passed. You have a budget. And we will move on to article nine. But before we do, I would like to take a 60-second stretch break. 60 seconds, I mean it, touch your toes. Actually it's not really a comment but I thought this might be a nice time to recognize one of our town members. For the second time was her beautiful artwork and her name is Ruth Pope and she's walking in. Ruth on record. John Puglia, would you like to say something about this? Thank you dad, what the fuck? Hello, hi. I really liked the words that the kids say in the beginning about us being civil and remembering that we're all neighbors and I thought that that was a good conversation that we just had. And I would invite all of you to stay after town meeting and share a meal together. The proceeds will benefit the middle sex fire department and it's spaghetti with meat sauce and pesto and I believe it's eight dollars and Susan Warren made some white rolls that are quite delicious. So I hope you will all join us and sit with your neighbors and have a nice conversation. Okay, great, John Puglia. Thanks, just as an afterthought to the last discussion. I heard a lot of things from the audience about looking ahead and planning but I didn't get a sense with all due respect and as civilly as I can bring this up with all the hard work that the select board does. I think there's a little tone deafness here. I heard from many quarters here that people are looking for a process. They're looking for a commitment to a plan for the future. I think people were quite shocked about some of the things that Sarah mentioned and about the things we know that exist in town but I'm not hearing from the select board that you heard that and I don't know what that would take. Some commitment, it's all well and good to say we have these meetings, come on down and I respect that and people should participate but I think we've reached a critical point in this community where we need leadership and I think it should come from others in town but as well and most importantly from the select board to say we heard you loudly and clearly tonight and we would like to engage in some kind of process, a five year plan, whatever it is that would engage the public in ways. I think we have talented people in town that would help mediate that, organize it. We did a wonderful process over the past few years to see what does this town want and need. Can we come back to the drawing board and look at a long-term process where we can address, uncover the needs, prioritize and then over the next five or eight years prioritize how we add things to our budget to address what I think are some critical issues in town. Okay, thanks, John. So is the select board willing on some level to commit to looking into that or to a process like that? Yes, we are, whether it's creating a building committee or whatever the process would be, we want community involvement, yes. We'd be wanting to set up a capital budget for quite a long time and the fact of the matter is that we just haven't had really the ability or the fortitude to go out and get some estimates on these things because if we're talking about a new town hall, we're talking about what we paid for for the fire department. If you remember that, that was almost a million dollars and it's more now and it was funded over a fairly long period of time. If you look at under the debt service, we're still paying that off. And then you start adding the other things we need. I mean, each of these is a major, major capital expense. So I think for myself, I've wanted to do a capital budget just like we do the five year plan for the roads because you guys deserve to know what it is we have in our mind, especially when it's so expensive. But I think for myself, it's been a little frightening to think about the major expenses because if you look under the debt service, we have to have the trucks, we have to have the excavators, we have to have all of that. And they are major, major expenses. Sarah has been the person who's pushed the most for a new town office, but she is the one along with our assistant clerk who's in there the most and the rate rate on exposure is phenomenal. But we really have to put our, from hearing what Sarah's kind of plead to the community, it gives us a new sense. We ought to be getting those bids and we ought to be doing more serious work. I of course wanted to use part of the fire station, but then you can't really be around the equipment and the ability of the fire department to respond to the need for the vehicles. But we hear you and you know, maybe we should put together a buildings committee and we would welcome anybody to start coming to some public meetings and help us get some bids, get some ideas on how we can do it in the most economical way. So I support what Peter has said. Don't know if any of the other people on the committee want to understand. I support that. I support that and I would totally welcome us and I'm sure that will be the topic of our first meeting is figuring out how we're gonna present that to you guys. Okay. I also agree. Second, third. Okay, in that case we will move on to article nine, who without objection, pick that back up. This was the question of whether the town should authorize expenditures of up to $8,000 to purchase two radar speed feedback signs to be installed on the North and South lanes of Vermont Route 12 in Putnamville and the amendment failed so it is as written. Is there discussion, further discussion on article nine? Yes, we already did. We picked it back up again. So I just want to, Amy Whitehorn, just want to remind everyone what Derrinda was just saying on page 43, you can see the list. We have under special articles, including the one that we're talking about at the moment, $73,319 that's outside our regular town operating budget. Every single one of these is for something that somebody considers to be crucial, important, maybe even essential. I don't know, pick your adjective. The bottom line is, do people support? People having safer driveways and being able to get out of your driveway or having people drive more slowly on our roads, which by the way, if you slowed the heck down, you wouldn't have quite the washboards that we do. People tailgating to get to Rummy School in the morning, which happens to me, I get tailgated almost every time I'm headed into the town office by somebody who's Zooming Back and Forth and Shady Rill and Molly Suple. That's not helpful to our roads and it doesn't make them safe. And a blinking sign, and I'll be all respect to, might get somebody's attention, but we also have in our budget funding for the Sheriff's Department to do more traffic control. Let's have them sit at Norton Road in a really conspicuous place. Slow the hell down, people. And maybe on the other side, and by the way, Culver Hill, Liz mentioned at a select board meeting last year and I've had this experience myself of nearly being creamed, trying to pull off Culver Hill onto Route 12, going toward Montpelier, turning right onto Culver Hill. People speeding up Route 12. There's need all over town for this. So maybe either we go back to the idea of some sort of portable board so that the amendment maybe would be to use the monies in a different way. Or we just, because we're talking about our own, this is middle sex, right, middle sex issue, middle sex special issue. Or we use monies that are already in the budget we just passed to do some more traffic control all around town. Just to address the traffic control, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that it's not that there's money to do it, there is money to do it. I believe there's not enough staff for the Sheriff and they're not able to meet the, they just don't have enough people to traffic. So they have a hard time doing the budget. It's not because they don't want to do it or there's not enough money to do it. We could double the budget for speeding, but I don't believe there's, maybe you know, because you're a state policeman, but there is a shortage of people to be doing this work. Speaking from a selfish chair. Can you just take a name? Yep, sorry, Bob Lucas. Yes, there are other resources out there. I mean, obviously the Sheriff's Department is not the only, you know, crew in town that can go ahead and do speed enforcement. It's really what you're looking for. The state police do do it. You can contract with local towns. You know, other towns can go ahead and supplement our area if you want. It's all in what the sweat board wants to go ahead and approve, and obviously how they want to go ahead and spend that money. Sorry, did you bring this? Thank you. Many of you have been coming to these meetings over the years, this over and over and over again. We have in the past contracted with the state police. We've contracted with the Sheriff. It's been the same story everywhere we go. They sign a contract. They commit to give us the hours, and then somehow they're just aren't the people in the resources to fulfill the terms of the contract. So, you know, certainly we could start our own police force, have it for a bit. And I'm not volunteering. It's a real, this speeding thing has been an ongoing, annoying challenge, dangerous challenge for all of us in town. We'll get back here in a sec. Brenda asked, we're here talking about money and taxes and all that, and I feel for some of the comments that people said, let's, you know, really bring our focus onto what middle sex needs and stop thinking about outside of middle sex. This is partly about this issue about the radar, but it's also about where we're heading in this part of the meeting with all these special asks of $250 and less. If you look at that list, almost every one of them, I probably every one of them serves middle sex. So, even if it says Waterbury under the title and they're asking for $250, they're serving people in middle sex. You know, I'm a mentor with Girls Boys First, and so I wanna especially, you know, just perk up for that because that's serving kids right here in middle sex. When it comes down to the dollars and cents, which is what we're voting here today, the average cost of all these amendments again are $65 each. Now, I actually borrowed money to pay my tax this time, but you know, $65, what do I have to do to cut back on my expenses so that I can support, help support every one of these special initiatives, including the radar, including Girls Boys First, including Meals for Wheels. I mean, go down the list and just think about, okay, you take those stuff out of the budget. We're really hurting people on a daily, every day, personal one-to-one basis. And for 65 bucks, that's a pretty good deal, I think, for me. So, the article is $8,000 to purchase two radar and speed feedback signs. Other discussion? So, right here on the red sweater. Hi, everyone, I'm Karen Gannett. I live in Putnamville, on Route 12, just off Route 12 behind the bait shop. And after hearing the discussion on the budget, I'm guessing our sign may be going down. But I did wanna say something about it because it's more of an education piece. So, last summer, the three things that happened within two weeks, four things happened within two weeks. One, and we don't see. I do wanna say, we don't see the state police and sheriffs on Route 12, very rarely. And we've talked with them. We've asked them to come. We've asked them to sit at Norton Road and see people flying through our community. And sometimes they come when we first call them and they'll come for a couple of times and then they disappear again and we don't see them for a while. I work out of my home, so I know what happens on Route 12. And so, last summer, and this is, I think, what really brought the issue home to us. One day, driving home from a meeting, there was a car flipped over in the middle of Route 12. Flipped over. Now, some of you may have had this on your road, I don't know, but I know that happened to us. And it was within feet of a woman whose house lives inches from Route 12 who has three children. And a week later, much to our surprise and horror, someone coming through Putnamville was eating their sandwich and flew into the guardrail, busted open his gas tank, and it was flowing all over Route 12. It took a really long time for those accidents, for police and for fire to show up. We were out on the road directing traffic because there was nobody there to help. And cars were flying through, and as we were standing in the middle of the road, asking them to slow down. And the Kasella truck, and he came to one of the meetings we were at when we were talking about this issue, the guy driving the Kasella truck had stopped to take a turn on Norton Road or to turn around, and someone coming south on Route 12 came down the road, saw the Kasella truck in the middle of the road, and went flying into the other lane to get around him on a blind curve. If someone had been coming the other way on that curve, they would have been creamed in a head-on collision. And there were skid marks all up the road from where this happened. So it's not just that they're going fast, it's that really bad things are really close to happening and some bad things have happened. I think it was just a miracle that a couple of those guys didn't die. Or the children on the road or where the bus turns around, actually the car flipped right where the bus turns around right at Norton Road. So just to educate you on some of the things we're seeing happening there, it's not that it's just people are going fast, it's that we've had some really horrible things happen on that road and we're afraid someone's gonna get really, really hurt. So at least you now know some of the things that are going on and whether it's an up or down vote, we hope that eventually we can do something to make people slow down and we'll keep calling the Sheriff's Department and have them come and sit on Norton Road if they'll be willing to do it and we'll try and take care of people on Route 12. Thank you. Emily, did you have your hand up the top? Yep. Emily Smith, I'd like to call her question. Emily Smith is calling the question, is there a second? Seconds. So we are gonna be now voting on whether we wanna stop talking about Article 9. So if you wanna stop talking about Article 9, vote aye. All those in favor of calling the question on Article 9 signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? No. No. The ayes have it, no's were heard. So we're now gonna vote on Article 9. Shall the town voters authorize expenditures of up to $8,000 to purchase two radar speed feedback signs to be installed on the north and south lanes of Vermont Route 12 in Putnamville? All those in favor of Article 9 say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. No. I'm gonna go with a hand vote. So I'm gonna ask, so we're gonna do this by hand, a hand count. All those in favor of Article 9, please raise your hand and keep them up and do it by standing. All those in favor stand. Sorry about that. It's called a division and it's good exercise. Squat down, squat down if you don't wanna vote, no. I mean if you, so if you're in favor of Article 9, you should be standing right now. All those opposed to Article 9, please stand. I think this is pretty clear. The ayes have it and Article 9 is passed. We have moved on to Article 10. Article 10, shall the town voters authorize expenditures of $600 for the Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation? Is there a motion on Article 10? Jeff Koons moves, is there a second? Welcome. Sorry? Eric Benedict. Eric Benedict seconds. Article 10 has been moved and seconded $600 for the Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation. Any comments, discussion? Putting on my Central Vermont Economic Development hat, not my chairman of the Select Board hat. I've served on the board of Central Vermont Economic Development for years and years and years. Mary Skinner also served on that board. Central Vermont, the reports on page 67, you can read it. That gives a pretty good summary of what we do. It is a non-profit regional organization that promotes business. So it's about jobs, it's about supporting small businesses. We do have a state grant which funds most of our budget. This is a small amount and we would appreciate your support. Thank you. I'd be glad to try and answer any questions. Victoria. Victoria. Peter, you know what the total budget is for that? It is in the range of 800,000, I believe, thick. Really? Yeah. Okay. They have two full-time employees. 100, 400,000 each. What? That's great. And just as a reminder, the articles that we're heading into are actually in order in your warning. So article 10 is on page 67 and it goes from there. And also, while I'm interrupting myself, I will tell you that the polls close at seven o'clock. So if you wanted to vote in the presidential primary, you can for a few more minutes. John Krasinski, can you just tell us if there's any examples of this organization benefiting anybody in the town, town business, town organization? We did the Red Hen Bakery through them. That's a pretty good one. There have definitely been businesses in town that have been supported over the years. The Red Hen is the one that comes to mind immediately. But it is businesses. You know, Curric Coffee was supported by Central Vermont Economic Development. Bombardier was supported by Central Vermont Economic Development. Quite a few Cava Cheese was supported by Central Vermont Economic Development. And although those businesses are not in middle sex, I'm sure we have people in low sex who work for those organizations. So it's about creating those jobs. Additional comments or questions about our content for the question? Shall the town voters authorize expenditures of $600 for the Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Ayes appear to have it. The ayes do have it, most were heard. We'll move on to Article 11. Shall the voters authorize expenditures of $4,050 to support Central Vermont Home, Health, and Hospice? Do we have a motion on Article 11? The shepherd moves. Is there a second? Yes, and say your name, nice and loud. Lisa Carlson, second. You can put whoever you want, social. Article 11 has been moved and seconded $4,050 to support Central Vermont Home, Health, and Hospice. Is there a discussion? No discussion. Oh, one hand. One, two. Yes, okay, so microphone back here. I am a windy friend. I have a background in gerontology, although it's not the work that I'm doing at the moment. And I have aging parents. I used to work up at Heaton Woods and I know firsthand how valuable it is to be able to die at home with support, whether it be at an assisted living or in your personal home. I can think of nothing more valuable than supporting an organization that lets us have that choice with support and Home, Health, and Hospice does that. Thank you. Other discussion on Article 11? You ready for the question? Shall the voters authorize expenditures of $4,050 to support Central Vermont Home, Health, and Hospice? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. The ayes have it. Article 12, shall the town voters authorize expenditures of $3,000 to support community connections? Is there a motion? If Coons moves, is there a second? Moved and seconded? Article 12, $3,000 to support community connections. Is there a discussion? I think Chris Malone asked to speak on this, yes. Do you want to? Chris Malone is the Rummy Community Connection site coordinator. He does not live in Middlesex. Are there any objections to a non-voter addressing this question? No. Go for it. Okay. Thank you very much. Community connections at Rummy is a before and aftercare program. More than half of the student body will attend at least once throughout the year. A lot of students use it very regularly. We provide programming in the afternoons with crafts. Right now we've got snowshoeing, cooking, winter treats and things like that. And another thing that I really like about this program is that it brings Doty and Rummy students together in the afternoon because Doty shares the program with us. So we're asking for $3,000. We do that every year and we're always grateful for the town's support. I'm happy to answer any questions about the program. Any questions for Chris Malone? Ready for the question? Shall the town voters authorize expenditures of $3,000 to support community connections? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. The ayes have it. Article 12 passes. Article 13, shall the town voters authorize expenditures of $1,500 to support Girls and Boys First Mentoring? Is there a motion on Article 13? Say your name. Nice to meet you. Brian, you're a friend of the guest. Brian, you're a friend of the guest. And is there a second on Article 13? Floral Isle seconds. So Article 13, $1,500 to support Girls and Boys First Mentoring has been moved in second. It is their discussion. Microphone right over here. It was a race. We've been giving $1,500 to this every year. Last year the number of children involved over 10, I believe, and one was just not pure. That equates to basically $150 per child. Community connections doing over $100 for $3,000. The library when that comes up to usually about 50 a person. I would make an amendment that we reduce this to $500 this year. All right, so the motion is to amend Article 13 to make it $500. Is there a second to that amendment? Can I see your name? Great, Matt Huyer. Okay, so it's been moved and seconded to change the $1,500 to $500. And I imagine Wendy's gonna have something to say about that. Girls and Boys First Mentoring has been in the community for 21 years. We serve approximately 38 to 40 children a year. At present, there's nine from Metal Sex Tour on the wait list. We sent 11 of our kids to a week of sleep away camp. Out of that 11, eight of them were from Metal Sex. I don't know if there's any parents of kids in our program in the room, but I know there's mentors and past mentors. Kids in our community in Metal Sex and across the board are seriously suffering from a variety of issues. And mentors provide an amazing amount of support. I've got kids from families in our community with no running water. I've got kids in our program that don't have stable housing. Although our program's not academic, kids who have mentors do better academically. They get along better with their families and their siblings. And I've got a lot of kids who are first in their generation going on to college or having help with their mentors with support after college into vocational or other programs. It's a lot of bang for the money that's invested. I don't know if there's anybody else in the room. We have minimum of two hours a week for one year, but the majority, well, I'd say about 65 to 75% of our mentor matches go from age eight and the mentors and the kids stay together all the way through high school and beyond. So it's a lot of bang for your buck. The motion on the floor is to reduce article 13 from 1500 to 500. Additional comments, Brian. I did mention before that I serve as a mentor with this organization. I've mentored a 12 year old for two years now and I can tell you it's making a huge impact on my life and in this child's life. If you vote not to do this, if you vote not to spend the average of $2.50 this year, great, go buy some coffee. The motion is to amend the article 13 from 1500 to $500. Is there further discussion? Are you ready for the question? No, Lisa, okay. Lisa Carlson, seems to me that if we can end up with students, with children who are likely, more likely to grow up and pay taxes and contribute to our economy rather than ending up in a situation where they have difficulty finding a job or end up in prison or any number of other things that can happen to children who don't have the services that they need, if this small amount of money can make it more likely that we'll have tax-paying citizens in the future, it seems like money very well spent. The motion on the floor is to amend this to article to $500. Is there any further discussion or are you ready for the question on the amendment? It's like you're ready for the question. Okay, so if you are in favor of amending article 13 from $1500 to $500, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, no. No. No's have it, and the amendment fails. We are back to article 13 as written. $1500 to support girls and boys first mentoring. You ready for the question? Shall the town voters authorize expenditures of $1500 to support girls and boys first mentoring? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. No. The ayes have it, no's were heard. Article 13 passes. We are on to article 14. Shall the town voters authorize expenditures of $29,801 to support the Kellogg-Covered Library? Is there a motion? Is there a second on article 14? John Julio second. Article 14 has been moved and seconded. Shall the town voters authorize expenditures of $29,801 to support the Kellogg-Covered Library? Is there discussion? Sarah Seedman. Hi, Sarah Seedman. I'm the new representative to the Kellogg-Covered Library. I'd like to start just please with a little round of applause for John Playo, who was the representative before me for six years. Is that right, John? Thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you for your service. On page 71 in your report is the report on the Kellogg-Covered Library. It's the second busiest library in the state. I want to give a little bit of news, which is that James O. Hanlon, who's the owner of the Savoy Theater, is our new volunteer doing a story time at the Remdy School. So we are looking forward to having him up here telling stories to the kids. I'm happy to answer any questions. Questions about the library for Sarah or just comments on article 14? So last year, Amy Whitehorn, last year I recommended that we reduce this amount. If you'll look at your books again and how much it costs per household, it actually, we're paying per household for people who don't even have library cards. And we just had what felt a bit like a battle royale, again, over our own base budget. This is nearly $30,000. That's going to a private library in Montpelier that is not in Middlesex. And while there are lots of folks in Middlesex who probably use the services at Kellogg Hubbard Library, which is a great institution, it is a private institution with an endowment that has had a successful capital campaign recently to improve the library and put in a new elevator, kind of like what we need in town hall. And this is nearly $30,000 that could go toward our road problem, or our grader, or the mud, whatever. Town hall. So bottom line, I know I'm the least favorite person in town tonight, anyway, because I'm a listener, so you all hate me, anyway. Just want some common sense in this room, because we just heard about mentoring, which is free. Mentoring doesn't cost money. I've been a mentor for 15 years. I've never gotten reimbursement from the organization that I work with, and the kid that I work with, the kids that I've worked with are amazing. So I'm not sure what the money's for, but that's OK. I didn't vote against it, because they're kids in our community. But we're talking about kids in our community who get mentoring services and community connection services and who don't have running water, whose parents are probably paying taxes in this town, who are probably not in this room tonight, because they cannot likely afford to be. And we're voting on a budget, again, a very small percentage of us who live in this town. We're voting on a budget that affects our neighbors who aren't here, because many of them can't be. So use some common sense, folks. If you want to support CaliCover, then let's have an amount that equals a library card for each of our residents. We're trying to propose an amendment. A CaliCovered library card for someone under $65, $16 to $65, $4 is $40. A CaliCovered library card for someone $65 or over, $35. Let's do the math on our population. You want to make it so everybody can have one? Do it. Otherwise, be sensible. We're throwing money away. When we don't have the money to take care of our own infrastructure. Are you proposing an amendment? Sure. What dollar amount? So $100. I would like to actually almost send that. I can't remember our total population people-wise. Does Sarah or Marika or Darinda or someone on the select board happen to know? So we can actually do the math. $85,000. $85,000. For $16 to $65. Talking about entrance. Anyway, come on, be reasonable. That's my point. So bad idea. How about this. Let's put the money toward our own infrastructure. We need an elevator. Our town hall is not disability accessible and it's making a lot of people sick. So let's fix our own house first. Okay, so rather than propose an amendment, you're suggesting people vote no. That's right. I would also, Susan, while I have the microphone, when we vote on this, I would like paper ballots on the vote. So that's a proposal for a paper ballot on Article 14. There needs to be, and the way that works is that everybody would get a little square of paper. This is gonna totally thrill Sarah now, I mean. A little square of paper and you vote yes or no. And you go up and have your name checked off on the voter checklist and then vote on that. And in order to have paper ballot, there needs to be seven people who would like a paper ballot. So before we call on you, I would like a show of hands of anyone who would like a paper ballot on Article 14. So we've got seven, all right? So we're gonna have a paper ballot on Article 14. A further discussion on Article 14, yes. So I know I brought this up last year. What's your name? And let's get away from this. My children stay there after school, especially those who have graduated from Omni and are now going to do 32 or Montpelier. So it also serves as an after school program for those who do not wanna actually participate in a regular after school program. It doesn't cost the parents any extra. It's a good place for children to stay after school. And it's a good place for children to meet up after school and it's a safe place for them to meet up. All of this is provided out of the tax money at no extra cost and it's a good place. It serves our community. Anyone can go there. Anyone can access the internet. Anyone can do any of the things that the library provides as long as they're middle six member. So you just have to tell the librarian up front, hey, I'd like to use the computer. They'll give you a pass to one of the computers and you can use a computer. Or if you want to use the internet, you just have to log in. That's it, that's it. All you have to do. And the children, they're there. You can see them every afternoon after school. They're there for a few hours at the very least. It's why the library is open from a certain period of time to another period of time. Yes, some parents may not utilize the library as much as they do and some adults may not utilize the library as much as they should. But the library exists so that you can utilize it. And it may be a private entity. It may have a very large entailment. But the thing is, is that money can go very quickly. Remember that it is in a flood zone. That flood zone marker is even on the first floor. So if there is another flood, even if we do have flood mitigation abilities, it can receive a lot of damage. And that costs a lot of money when you have an historic building to take care of. So even if you think you have a lot of money, it can disappear very quickly if the circumstances arise. So do not discount the fact that it may seem like a lot of money we're contributing, but as they point out, it's only 3.2%. And we use it. We do use it. It may not be counted by their numbers in this book, but we do use it. And they just may not be able to tell who uses it because they just leave the library books on the table. So the question on the floor is $29,801 to support Kellogg Hubbard Library for their discussion. Microphone right in the back there. Hi, Jess Clark. I'm a school bus driver. And I happened to get this number from my fellow driver who stops at the Kellogg Hubbard Library with students who would otherwise be coming to MetalSex. And I know that there are up to five, five MetalSex children who get off at the Kellogg Hubbard Library some days. Now, if we don't give the Kellogg Hubbard Library $30,000 this year, those five students will still be able to get off and use the library services. In fact, I did the math and for the number of people in town that have library cards, we are paying more than $50 per library card for MetalSex people to use the library. This is more than a out-of-town library card cost for someone who is not in the six-town area of towns that support the library. So I would propose an amendment that we provide $15,000 to support the Kellogg Hubbard Library. Thank you. Okay, and your name again, sorry. Jessica Clark. Jessica. I should be able to remember the Clark Park. Jessica is a proposing that we amend Article 14 from 29,801 to 15,000. Is there a second? No, the paper ballot is for the LG asked for that on the ultimate question at the very end. Yeah, once we're done amending it, if we amend it. So is there a second on, is it, is that a second? Yeah, John Krasinski seconds, okay. So it's been moved and seconded to amend Article 14 from 29,801 dollars to 15,000 dollars. Is there a discussion on amending Article 14, yes. Yeah, sorry, is somebody trying to get me? Oh, sorry, okay, right here and then August will be next. I'm Hugo Leetman, I live on Garand Hill Road. I'm in and out of the library multiple times a week. One reason is I get books that are designated for a preschool. I read them and then I go to the preschool daycare center and I read books once a week to the kids, three year olds. It's great fun, it's great, they, I'd love to see their excitement, but when I'm in the library, I see a lot of people, all ages, using computers, staying warm, attending programs. I think it's a tremendous cultural resource, a safe place to go, and I think it preserves our support. It's a real investment in emotional health, education, and I think we ought to support it wholeheartedly, thank you. I'm looking forward to the back corner, and it's a race. I'd like to just address August Burns. Every year there's a discussion on the library, and for as long as I've been coming to town meeting about 30 years, it's the question. I just wanted to know, I really, you know, I honor the argument that there's people who are on fixed incomes, can't afford taxes that are there, if taxes go up, it's a real burden. Can you talk at all about tax relief in this town and how we can make it happen so that it's not a burden? So we don't starve our town in order to make sure that it isn't a burden on anyone, and yet we create resources that everyone can have, including a town clerk's office, including an elevator so people can get where they're going, including a library, because the Kella-Covered Library is all the libraries, I believe, in Vermont are private libraries, but it is our library, it's the library of our town, and people have a right to use it, that doesn't mean they must, but I just, there has to be a way that, you know, every time we need something in this town, we can't do it because we don't want a burden, people who can't afford it, we need to have some kind of a mechanism, and I think there is one, is that right or not, for people who need tax relief to get it? So August asks, I think her question is directed maybe to the select board, if it's less than a month. It's directed to the select board, is there a way? You know, what is the property tax relief mechanism? So that this isn't a burden, and yet everyone can have the services of a full and rich community. So the answer is for the town taxes, which is what we're talking about, the town budget. There's no mechanism that I know of where we can provide tax relief. Could we form some kind of a non-profit, middle sex foundation to fundraise potentially and fund some of these things? I suppose we could, nobody has ever, nobody has ever tried it that I know of. We have, the fire department has done fundraising over the years and raised a little money, but you know, relatively small. That's the school tax, it's not right. It's the town tax. Wendy, Wendy Franlick, I just wanna make the connection that we're struggling as a town and we're struggling as a state, a lot of because of what our federal priorities are doing with our tax dollars. I know that Girls and Boys First Mentoring had, I've been doing this job for almost 21 years. The first 12 years we had government, federal government grants that helped support kids to have mentors. And I think it's just a connection that I think we all need to be aware of. Where are our federal dollars going? Why don't they trickle down to the state? Why don't they trickle back down to our communities? I'm not gonna give answers, but I just think it's a really important question to ask ourselves. The motion on the floor is to amend article 14 from $29,801 down to $15,000. Is there further discussion on the amendment? All you have a question on the amendment? Is there a second? Jeff Kuhn's second. So it's been moved and seconded to call the question. If you're done talking about this amendment, then you'll be voting yes on this one. All those in favor of calling the question on the amendment to article 14, say aye. Aye. Opposed, no? No. The ayes have it. And we have called the question. So we're now voting on whether to amend article 14 from $29,801 down to $15,000. All those in favor of the amendment, say aye. Aye. Opposed, no? No. The noes appear to have it. The noes do have it. And the amendment is defeated. We are back to article 14. As written, $29,801. Is there further discussion on article 14? John Julio. I just want to echo August's sentiment about tax relief and finding some way to address that issue in town. I think it's a necessary thing. I wanted to clear up a couple of things about the Calder-Covered Library. One, it is not a private organization. It is a private public organization. So there's a difference there. I don't want the mythology to be that it's some corporate entity, some private place on the hill that we have no business serving. The other thing is that the number of people served in town, 591 people have cards. If those people paid the $40, break it down between the $35, over $65 and $40. But let's just go with the $40 number. If they were to pay $40, that would decrease what this town would support the library by about $6,000 or $7,000. So where does that affect the Calder-Covered? It may affect how many hours are open during the day. It may affect some of the after-school program that exists there. There's one thing there. The people in town are not paying $50 for their card. They're paying, based on the tax rate, those 591 people are paying based on the tax rate. So it's not $50 per card. Another thing I'd like to correct is that, or to mitigate the notion that some days there's only five people that are getting dropped off from Rumney, does not account for all the students. And I think this gentleman spoke eloquently last year, as well, brought up this idea about how many students from U32, middle school and high school, that are using that library on a daily basis from U32. So from the school bus company, that's fine. But there are so many students that are coming and going. I think this gentleman attested to that last year about his community of friends that come into that building, whether they're coming down the hill on the school bus or they're getting a ride down or if they're walking down. So I just wanted to point that out. A couple of interesting things. We have some statistics here. The money that we pay to support that library only pays about 3.2% of the total operating budget. So for us to go to Montpelier to get books for this preschool program, or for our students to use the computers, or for the thousands of programs that are run every year that we can all participate in, that's a pretty good deal. For that price, we're getting the full use of that library. I know budgets are tight. Looking at this full budget, my taxes are going way up, too. And we make choices about that. The value of the CaliCubber in our community is something that people have talked about over the years. I echo that. Especially in this era of fake news, et cetera, et cetera, people go to the library to get real news. They go to the library to get educated. They go to the library to enliven this culture and this community and to upgrade the civil discourse because they know more. And I think we should value that. I wanted to make one more point, which has eluded me for some reason. I get a kick out of it, and it disappears from my mind, too. I do. I really do. The use we get out of this library is tremendous. We've supported it over the years. I know what my last point was that if all the surrounding towns kick in to support the library, Montpelier plays quite a bit more to make the library roll. So by virtue of that, they're supporting our use of the library as well. And the five surrounding towns, plus Montpelier, keeps that place alive. If we were to cut down this support, and if every other town were to do that, it would be very likely that the library would shut down one, two days a week, maybe. So we're all in this together. I think Middle Six has to pay its share of this community expense to keep a vibrant cultural gem going. Are you ready for the question? Looks like we have some more people who want to talk. Vic? I feel the passion for this library and spending $30,000. And it's only 3%. I still hear Sarah Merriman, and what's it worth? This money could be well better spent to help her and the rest of the people down at the town hall and the radon mitigation. And maybe stop someone else from getting cancer, which would be far more in my mind than helping a library. Any further? Hi, Fred McCullum. I've been listening to this Kellogg Hubbard Library debate for a lot of years. And the thing, I see a lot of passion for the library. There's no doubt about it. But I don't know that it's in the town's purview to deal with the library as much as it should be a personal choice to give to the library. And I see a lot of people that are really strong, feel strongly about the library. And I think they ought to give themselves. There's nothing to stop them from donating themselves. And we do have, this is about, I think a lot of this argument is really about priorities and where we're headed with the tax rate in the town and where everybody's struggling to pay their taxes. And yeah, the library is something that always comes up. It seems to be the one that really gets people fired up. But I think it's more about priorities and what should we be spending our money on. And sometimes you have to make our choices. So that's just my opinion on this. Is there anybody who hasn't spoken yet on this article who would like to speak? Lisa. Lisa Carlson. We're not right now being given a choice between fixing the rate on situation or the elevator at Town Hall versus the library. I've been struggling with whether to say anything because of the issue that August brought up. I know there are neighbors who are struggling to pay taxes. I'm hoping that the select board can maybe look into the idea of tax relief. For the moment, we as a town are not being given the option of discussing or figuring that one out. But I hope that that one can get figured out because I know I want to support the library. And I know we certainly have limited funds. But if we as a town can coalesce and do these things, then we can have a beautiful town. And if we can do it in a way that people who cannot do this can apply for tax relief, then that seems like that could solve both issues. But right now, we're not being given a choice between Kellogg-Harvard Library versus fixing the elevator. We don't have that choice. We haven't been given that choice yet. But in terms of lower income people having access to information and all of us being equal in that respect, having access to computers, having access to books, having access to information, libraries are the great equalizer in that respect. And if we were being given a choice between making the town clerk's office safe versus the library, I probably might have to go that way. But we're not being given that choice right now. Kathy Shapiro, I agree with what a lot of people have said. Notably, Wendy said something about we have to think about the fact that a lot of programs that used to be funded from the federal level of the taxes we pay there are no longer being funded. But I think we also really have to think of the library like public education or schools. It's a place. The library is a place that is a repository of information, of history, of culture. It's a place where all of us can go. We can have a meeting room for free. We can put on events with audio-visual equipment that is there. We can utilize all the services people have talked about. It's a public good. And I'm sad that the tax question aside, which I also feel is a real issue. But I feel bad that only 500 people in our town have library cards. We should all use the library. It has tremendous services for everyone. And if you never go, why don't you walk in and think about getting a card? Think about, look at all the services that are offered to our children, whether yours are grown now or not, that the library offers to the children of middle sex and all the towns. And I think as citizens of this community, not only middle sex, it's extremely important to keep that as a community resource for ourselves and our fellow community members. I think we are ready for the question. Are we? Seeing a lot of nodding heads. Any objections to moving on to the vote? Article 14 is, shall the town voters authorize expenditures of $29,801 to support the Kellogg Hubbard Library? It's in your warning. And it is as it is right now. It's not been amended. And we are going to vote on that by paper ballots. Is Sarah? Yes. OK, so can you speak to that for us? I can speak to that for you. How about grab a microphone from one of our trusty runners? So the way this works is we have slips of paper there. Some of them say yes, no, left over from another vote. And then some are just blank. We have pens. So you go over there, you write yes or no on the slip of paper, then you line up. Here, and we will check you off the checklist. And then you deposit your vote into the ballot box. It's kind of the same thing. Pretty simple. Wait, so why are there some that are written already? Yeah, the school votes we had to do. So you can use those if you want to. And then afterwards, we will count those ballots. We will announce the results. And we will move on to Article 15. That's how this works. 80 people voted yes, and 31 people voted no. So 80 people voted yes, 31 people voted no. So Article 14, the ayes have it. 80 to 31. Do we have microphone runners? Yes, we do still. That's great. Awesome, thank you. OK, folks, grab some dinner if you like some. And we will get back to business. Thanks, Mary. Article 15, shall the town vote raise, appropriate, and expend the sum of $7,000 for the support of the Montpelier Senior Activity Center to provide services to residents of the town? Is there a motion on Article 15? Sorry, Susan Sussman moves in truly more seconds. Article 15 has been moved and seconded $7,000 for the Montpelier Senior Activity Center. Is there a discussion? Microphone right back here, the Susan Sussman. Not up to the front if you want. No. OK, so it's OK. Linda Phantom, my husband, I do go to the middle Montpelier Senior Center for dinner twice a week. And either late December or early January, they've asked the paper to get on the petition for town meeting here. And my husband, I signed it, that the request was for $5,000. So I'm wondering why it's now jumped up to $7,000. Can the folks over by the door? Hey, Kimberly? Kimberly. Other comments on Article 15, Montpelier Senior Center? Oh, that was a question? Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I missed. How did it go from $5,000 to $7,000? Is there anybody here who can speak to the Montpelier Senior Activity Center article? Microphone right here. Hugo Liebman, Garen Hill Road. Sarah? All I can, I notice on page 72, which is the report of the Senior Activity Center, they acknowledge that they are increasing their funding request. It appears from the reading of the report that they had an increase in number of participants from middle sex. That's how I read their report. But like I'm in and out of the library every week, I'm in and out of the Senior Activity Center many times a week for Pilates, yoga, ukulele group, writing groups. And actually, this is a great facility for people who have limited income because their fees are very nominal and the quality of their programs is excellent. There's also some free meals or low-cost meals. It's a very well-run facility, and I think it's a great bargain and a great asset. Middle sex folks can have use of their craft programs, reading programs, writing programs, exercise programs. They have a very well-buried list of opportunities for folks. Peter, do you have a comment? So to the person who had the question about the five versus the $7,000, the petition that the town received was for $7,000, so I don't know. I think Hugo just pointed out that their report says that their usage has gone up, and therefore the number went up this year. So last year was $5,000. This year was $7,000. Other discussion on Article 15, looks like you're ready for the question. Shall the town vote to raise appropriate and expend the sum of $7,000 for the support of Montpelier and Senior Activity Center? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. The ayes have it, and Article 15 is passed. Super fun watching you guys vote with your mouth full. I'm really enjoying this. Susan, the second did it. Very good. Julie Moore. Good remembering. Article 16, shall the town voters authorize expenditures of $10,000 to support the Waterbury Senior Center's Meals on Wheels program? Is there a motion on Article 16? Nice and loud. You're very good. Thank you. Eric, then, Nick Gloves, is there a second? Lisa Carlson. Article 16, $10,000 to Waterbury Senior Center's Meals on Wheels program has been moved and seconded. Any discussion on Article 16? So I'm pretty done talking. You ready for the question? Shall the town voters authorize expenditures of $10,000 to support Waterbury Senior Center's Meals on Wheels? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. The ayes have it, and Article 16 passes. Article 17, to see if the town of Middlesex will appropriate a sum not to exceed $4,368, to support a list of 20 organizations listed in your warning. And unless there's an objection, I will not read all of them. Take a look. Is there a motion on Article 17? Lisa Carlson moves. Kyle, I understand your knowledge seconds. Article 17, to see if the town of Middlesex will appropriate a sum not to exceed $4,368 to support these 20 organizations. Any discussion? The move and seconded, where will we move? Seconded discussion. OK, is there a discussion? That's where we're at. So I just wanted to address the comment that someone made earlier regarding the small amounts that people are asking for. And I just wanted to shed a little bit of light as someone who works for a nonprofit. When someone asks for $250, it's actually sort of a token request that one helps them gain exposure. But also, more importantly, it shows support from towns. So when they ask for bigger monies through larger grants, they can show that they have support from a wide variety of people. So I think it's important that we, as a town, show that we care about these small amounts that are being asked, because it offers the opportunity for leveraging much greater dollars to keep these organizations going. Other discussion? Yes. I just have a question about Big Heavy World. Can you bring them up for us? Just to have a question about Big Heavy World, they are a blog and a website. As far as I know, I don't know that they do any nonprofit work. It's on page 76. Looks like it. Can you bring the microphone back there? They're right up. Big Heavy World is on page 76. So I can speak to Big Heavy World just because I'm familiar with the organization. They do support for the arts, specifically support for musicians. They've done everything from, they have a museum space that documents Vermont's contributions to the music world. It's in Burlington, it's almost South Burlington. But they do stuff like, they let bands use their vehicle to do shows up and down the East Coast when bands need a vehicle to tour. They lend out instruments when bands have had things stolen or have things break, that kind of thing. So they do a lot of, they also are kind of heavily involved in trying to help bands with promotional work and to get their music out there. So that's what they do. Any other discussion on Article 17? Thank you. Are you ready for the question? See if the 10 of middle sex will appropriate a sum not to exceed $4,368 to support these 20 organizations. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no? The ayes have it, Article 17 is passed. Article 18 is to transact any other business that may legally come before the meeting. Does anybody have any other business they would like? If you brought dinner, there's lots of desserts out right here at this back table. So good, that's what other business I'm talking about. Yes, Mary. I'm Mary Nealon. I just had a quick announcement. I'm with the Middlesex Trails Committee. And we're a working group that came out of what's next Middlesex. I have a quick survey here. We'll post it on the front porch forum because I'm sure everyone's ready to go home and go to bed at this point. But I just wanted to let you know about us. We're actually a subcommittee of the Conservation Commission now. So we're looking for community input about getting some trails networks in Middlesex. So if you have a chance and can answer our survey, we'd be grateful. Thank you. Thank you. The what's next Middlesex committees, all four of them continue to meet. And I know that the events committee is doing a mud season event, a series of events. And there are flyers about that as well. Kimberly Joseph is here. She is our representative. And she's under the impression that you might not be that interested in having her hold forth. But she is prepared to do so if people have questions for her or you can catch her afterwards. Kimberly is here. She can wave. Thank you for coming, Kimberly. Is there any other business? Just as a reminder, thank you for supporting the Middlesex Food Shelf. And if you want to volunteer, the sign up sheet is back there. And I know my son and Eva Joseph would love to have more volunteers. And it's really easy. And you get to meet other people in the central Vermont community who are in need of food. Thanks. And thanks for bringing the canned foods that people brought today. If you have any comments about time meeting that you'd like to leave on the evaluation form, you can put them in here. Otherwise, we'd still like to get them back blank because we can use them next year. Thank you to our microphone runners, the ones who are left. Thanks very much. You guys are awesome. Today, we're full to have you at our meeting. So meeting adjourned, thank you so much. Woo-hoo!