 I want to talk about the librarian and pay and how it works. And then you would also send the statutes from the state. And I think Cheryl and I both saw that. And I think we both agree with you that as trustees, you guys set the pay for the librarian and do the hiring. Oftentimes, it's nice to have them introduce. But where we come in is at the budget when we set the budget. So that's how that is. You are correct in your questioning. So I think that's good that you're putting together a manual for that office or that for the trustees. OK, great. You know, it's funny. I just set out to like write down the process because I didn't want to make a mistake. And but when I looked into it, I was like, this isn't what I thought. So I didn't expect it to be that way. But that's the way it turned out. And so my hope is to do that sort of thing with all of the library processes, like find the statute and write down the procedures and then pass it over to you guys. So everybody's on the same page. You know, could you mute? Sorry. I think if you, unless you're talking, everyone could please mute. Otherwise, we're going to get some feedback. Thank you. Go ahead, Michelle. So, yeah, I was hoping to just keep writing down the procedures so that we have kind of a guide or for the next treasurer when I'm not treasurer anymore. And I'll make sure as I write them down, I pass them over to you guys so that you know and that you can see them and agree with them. That's perfect. And I think anytime there's something like this going forward, it'll just help consistency, no matter who's in office or what's happening there. It'll just be consistency for that particular group. Great. Well, thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. So is there anyone else, Neil? You on for public comment? Yeah, hi, Tom. Hi, everybody. Yeah, well, I did. I've sent the petition from back in March to you folks. I think Sasha sent it to you guys last week. So just looking to speak about that. Sasha wasn't sure if you might want to address that in old business or... No, you're wrong. We might as well go ahead. Did everyone on the board get an opportunity to see Neil had sent in a petition? Neil, can you tell a little bit about your petition, what you're seeking? Yeah, so the petition is seeking a special meeting to be called on the question of whether we should withdraw from the Unified School District. And we did speak before. I call things that have happened. Since then, I think, one, everybody's gotten a little more comfortable with the Zoom meeting process. Then, of course, I gave you guys a petition, right? Pretty much right when COVID hit. And then we spoke again in July. But it seems like this is the new normal. So I thought, in that sense, it was a good timing for that. The other thing is that the Consolidated School Board did vote last week to recommence the discussion of the merger of the middle school, which would certainly involve the seventh and eighth graders. And could, it's not entirely clear, but might involve the Moortown 5-6 as well at this juncture. So in that sense, it's presented as something that's worth taking a look at. So there's that. And then the final thing was, I think when we talked back in the, well, both times, there was the first divorce has happened of a Consolidated School District. It's got some media attention. You guys might have heard about it. This is the one down south that I had mentioned that I was monitoring back when I initially talked to you guys, and it did successfully go through. It was a two-town district that dissolved. So it was a lot simpler than what would happen here. But it has happened the whole process, including the review with the State Board of Education. So I thought given those factors, it was time to represent it to you folks and to move forward on it. So that's why I'm asking the board to do it. Sure. Well, I've seen it. I'm not fully on board personally. First, I'm going to have to name one thing. I think you need to start over with the petition. That petition was in March pre-pandemic. And a lot has changed during this pandemic, where we're still in the midst of it. And yeah, I think we're getting a little bit better on Zoom. But there's still a lot of uncertainty with a lot of everything. And I think this is not a time that I'm personally interested in. Now, I don't speak for the whole board, but it's nothing that I can get behind. And certainly, I want to listen to Kristen and see what she has to say. Kristen Rogers is on tonight, I see as well. So engage a little bit, maybe more from her. John, what's your thoughts? You need to come off mute, John. I definitely want to hear from Kristen. All right, so Kristen, why don't you, if you have a moment, Kristen, why don't you share with us what your thoughts are and what's going on? So at the last school board meeting, can everybody hear me OK? Sometimes my internet is a little funky. But doing well. OK, so there's a discussion. You know, well, I should back up for a second. You know, the pre-K through 12 committee had met during the summer and there was supposed to be a timeline and a data package that was supposed to be put together by the admin team. But then with everything with COVID, that data packet kind of we agreed to kind of put that aside because of everything that the administration was kind of dealing with COVID and figuring that out. It's still, you know, so we took a straw poll. I was one of the ones that said, no, this is not something that we should be discussing right now. A lot of, in my opinion, a lot of things are up in the air. But it was, I think, like a like a 6-5 or something like that to continue discussions about merging 7th and 8th to CrossFit Brook to really dive into that to see if that's something that we're going to take on for next year. So it is my understanding is it's going to be a topic of discussion, at least at the next school board meeting, if not the next two, which the next school board meeting is the 14th, I believe. We're not meeting this week. So we're meeting the following week. So that is that it is going to be a very highly discussed item, especially with, you know, related to budgets and being able to afford everything. So that's kind of that's where it's at school board related. Is there a specific question I could answer? Because no, I think for me, you you just did as far as what's what's happening with these two meetings coming up. You know, I think that that will be a telltale. And so, yeah, thank you for that. I appreciate you chiming in there and being on the call from Ray or John or Don Callie. Any any thoughts from you folks? Well, I can I don't have time to just see the email from Laura Schaller. I did not. OK, well, it was just a couple hours ago. She emailed you and and me and, you know, her feeling was just, you know, don't get complacent. And, you know, we still should. She thinks we still should pursue it and that it sounds like faced in a war and they're talking about it as well, about withdrawing as well. So, you know, I don't necessarily think that we have to start acting on it right away, but just to keep it in the back of our minds that the more town five and six six is still not a dead issue for 2021 that still could come up. Don Gray, any thoughts, Kelly? I think I'm I think I'm hard pretty much doing the same way John is feeling that I don't feel like I'm being complacent, but I'd like to hear what the school board has to say at the next meeting. But I'm not I'm not this might ready to drop the subject. I just want to want to hear a little more about what's going on with the school board. Don, did you or Kelly have a comment, Kelly? See you coming off meal. Yeah, I think I mean, I don't think this is going to be a short and quick process. So I think I mean, if we're looking at maybe Neil having to get signatures again to look at this for a special meeting, I don't think it hurts to really to start discussing it and figuring out what it is because it's not going to be a quick process. So this is something that's going to take a little while and potentially depending on where we are, we can always, you know, see where things are going. But I think we do need to start maybe looking at a little bit more. Sorry about that. Don, if you had. I'm listening to everybody's comment and I'm not really sure how we should forward. I know that we only have a certain amount of time based on Neil's request to set up a meeting. And I know we need to work on some of the tools for that meeting in terms of, you know, with more people attending than that's a screen from what I've been doing some research on meeting with a meeting, then you have a larger screen so more people can come into a meeting than we have presently. And it's one of the ways I've heard towns have been doing that but let's not go there. Yeah, I think it's worth carrying on and looking into. I've got to get more educated myself about it because it really all comes down to, you know, money and, you know, how it's, how these, how we can finance our schools and what the best way to do that is. So I guess I'm trying to- I don't think- I'm educating myself about that. I don't think by accepting this petition by putting this binding us into a 60 day window, I don't think it's wise. We're not gonna, if it's something we do wanna exercise or we think we want to do, we are not gonna have the information needed to make the best decision within this next 60 days. So I think it's premature. We've talked about that before and I agree with Lara, John, Ray, I don't think we need to be complacent about it but I don't think we need to be, you know, scheduling meetings about pulling out yet either. I think we need to gather more information. Neil sent an outline and I think it's interesting but, you know, I don't think starting with the constitution and going through modern day, you know, and a number of people and such is the way about this and is it gonna be an effective way if it's something you want to do? So, you know, again, if it's something that the board wants to pursue, I would really hesitate to take these 60 names or these 90 names that he's got because it was pre-pandemic. So, I mean, I don't know what everyone's feel, you know, what your thoughts or how we should move forward on this. Can I speak? Yeah, go ahead, Neil. So I guess, so the last thing I wanna do is go toe-to-toe with my more town select board. You guys are great. I just super appreciate what you guys are doing. I would definitely, I would implore you to give me some clarity as to what precisely you're doing. So what kind of action you take today and so just how I might move forward after a day. So I gather petition signatures back in March and my understanding under, and I gotten to know a lot of sections of the Vermont Code that I never knew before, but my understanding is that if the board, select board is presented with a 5% plus petition, then you are compelled under the section in title 17, which I think I referenced in my email to schedule a special meeting within 60 days. Person, there's a seasonal law out there, including, so there's basically the big one, which came a couple of years ago is the skip decision, which has to do with South Burlington and the changing of the name from the rebels to the wolves. And that was referenced by Judge Sessions back in January in his decision, actually it came from Laura Schauer and Peter Langell's case that if the petition has to do with something that's sort of in the wheelhouse of the legislative body that it's being presented to, then that legislative body is not compelled under title 17 to schedule that meeting. My take on it would be that that's not the case here. Section 724, title 16, which is the disillusioned section for school districts, I think that it's pretty clear as far as my reading, and I'm not your counsel of course, that that is something that is not within the select board's power, discretionary power to decide based on the language of that statute. So if you wanna say that the signatures to the petition are stale, and so come back with those signatures that are fresh, and I'm not entirely sure that that's entirely accurate, but I think probably if you say that, I will then go and get a new set of signatures. I prefer it if you give me something from Ron that says that is in fact the case, and that they need to be renewed, but sure that I guess I'm still out of that. If you're gonna say, well, even when you come back with a fresh set of 5% plus signatures, we're gonna consider this in our discretion as to whether or not we wanna actually schedule this petition, I would really prefer you guys to talk to your counsel and just get them to write an opinion letter stating that. Does that on this? You know what, we can schedule this for this Saturday, you know, at nine o'clock. So why don't we put that on the agenda? Neil, it'll be all yours, and we'll go from there. Yeah, you're right. We'll schedule this meeting that you want. You can have your petition meeting, it'll be this Saturday morning at nine. Okay, is that, are you gonna, it's gonna be worn properly and everything? Well, give us three or four days, whatever it has to be, it'll be worn, I think you'll be the only one there, certainly I won't, but it'll be worn for you. Well, you know what, if I'm the only one there, I'm gonna vote for withdrawal and then it's gonna get certified to Secretary of State because all you have to have is 51% of the meeting to go to the, that's fine. We'll warn it for you then. Like I said, first, what I wanna say first and foremost is the last thing I wanna do is get anybody on the select board, that's not my objective here. I'm just, I'm looking for clarity as to how, I mean, I can tell you, and you can see from the outline, that my personal opinion, my conclusion based on what I know is that the Moortan should in fact withdraw from the consolidated school district. And I will at that, that's the other thing, I will at that meeting, I'd like to present that and I'd like to suggest that some Moortan voters should vote. The other thing to know is that, so right now we're talking about whether or not we're gonna have this meeting to discuss this question. And at that meeting, I would like to, as from the outline I said to you, have the opportunity to present the arguments and I won't go into all that constitutional stuff that I threw in there. I was just trying to do that yesterday and I was half fall asleep. But the question right now is, is whether to hold the meeting and then to discuss at that meeting, whether or not Moortan should withdraw. That's not happening tonight. Tonight's question is not whether Moortan should withdraw from the consolidated school district or not. It's simply not to schedule a meeting so that Moortaners can get together and talk about the issues. And I definitely do feel that given what happened at that school district, at the school board, that it's worth Moortaners getting together and find out about what's going on up there. I definitely feel that's the case. And I'd love to hear from Kristen again because my sense is anybody who really knows kind of what's going on would agree that it's worth Moortan getting together, talking about what the heck is going on. John, do you have anything to say here? Did you say Don? Did you say Don? John or John? John, J-O-H-N, John Hogleboom. Thank you, Ruth. Ruth helped me by increasing the volume. I turned this volume up. All right. Yeah, as I said before, I mean, if Kristen were to say, yes, let's go forward, I would feel better about it. But I think we should wait at least, for the very least until the next school board meeting and also to hear more from Kristen and Lisa. And if they feel that it's time to move forward, then I think then we should. But until that time, I don't think we should. But Neil, but the problem here, John, like Neil just said, he's compelling us to do, to have this meeting within 60 days. That's his point. And that's what he was going over the statutes of life to us. So he's compelling us to do this within 60 days. So that's unfortunate. But so Neil, we will take care of you. You have your meeting. Well, can we wait till, can we see if we're gonna do the meeting after with this next school board meeting? Can we do that? No, we can't. We can't because of, again, Neil's insistence with you with the petition tonight. And that's, again, we've talked about this before, but Neil gets on these things. It's his thing. It's his idea. Well, it's fine. Again, I think it's not the correct time. In fact, I know it's not the correct time. What is the next school meeting that everybody's referring to? When does that happen? I'm confused. I'm sorry. So the next school board meeting is October 14th. Okay. And so 60 days from when I present a petition at the end of September, the end of November. So the only thing that the slick words compelled is to get to warn a meeting that happens before the beginning of December. I really think that there's going to be more information to know as far as what's happening with merger or moving kids or whatever is by the end of October. Because I have a feeling the next two school board meetings, that's going to be the majority of what's being talked about. So I think that there'll be more feeling about what the plan will be concerning like next school year. So that's the feeling I'm having at the moment. All right, go ahead. Yeah, so I'm just trying to figure out the logistics part of this. I'm trying to have a meeting of this significance within 60 days. How are we going to do that? How is that possible to get the... Right. I'm sorry, but yes, it is impossible and to have the information that you would need to make these type of decisions. It's impossible. Neil thinks it's going to come out of the air or people are just going to... I don't know what he thinks, but we've tried to tell him before and a lot of people have. And unfortunately, as you can tell, it does not work. So again, it will be a lost cause and anytime if we did want to do this, we've already shot ourselves in the foot. So Tom, would you prefer me to withdraw the petition and then to present it if and when the select board feels like they would like to move forward within a 60 day timeframe? I think that would be what we would... The board, that's what I think I've heard from John, from Ray. And would you be looking for fresh signatures or can I present you the petition that... I think I would get the most accurate information coming out of the unified... Presenting that information to those people that you're looking to sign your petition. This is their plan. They're looking to move the seventh and eighth. They're looking to move the fifth and sixth or this is what they're doing. We need to get together as a town and discuss this. Right now, there's just not enough information. Neil, what's happening? It's been moving all over the board and I'm sorry I'm a little frustrated with it but we've talked about it several times and until we have an idea of what's going on, we don't want to be complacent but to start scheduling meetings is meaningless because we won't have the information and we can really hurt ourselves more than we can help ourselves in what we may want to accomplish. I agree with that. So do I. Yeah, me as well. Okay, well, I mean, I certainly don't want to step on anybody. So I, you know, I can say, and again, I would love to hear, you know, Kristen speak again. The, you know, before Act 46, before consolidation, school board meetings with, it was Ron and Peter and Gabe then were, I'm sure. I mean, I never went to one or paid attention to one but I'm sure they were just the boring events and what you really have now is the, I mean, I do feel very strongly that Act 46, school consolidation, especially in this district is a huge mistake. I think it's not a money saver. I think that there are definitely, it came out of, it has good rationales which is what was the shrinking demographics that we have in the state and also education costs that are going out of control, but it is not a solution to the problem. It's what I like to say is like, those are problems like it's like having a nail that you need to pound into piece of wood and Act 46 school consolidation is like, is reaching for a fish instead of a hammer and reality is going to catch up to the thing. I mean, it's five years since the statue was enacted that the district has been in place for three and a half years now. And what we had was a $40 million budget in the last budget vote. So it's fine. I'm happy to kick back and wait. I don't think what that reality is going to catch up and the thing is just not going to work. Poor Kristen and Lisa are getting the crack kicked out of them up there because the school board is like nothing that, I mean, John is, I think the only one on this level has actually seen it. If you actually pay attention to these things, it's really, it's like the school board from hell basically. It is the complete antithesis of what was going on on the Moortown school board. And you know, you got Christine Sullivan sniping at our two reps just at the last meeting and that's just going to kind of keep going. But I certainly defer to you folks and I certainly defer to Kristen if she's really okay with continuing to get the crack kicked out of her by that school board. That's okay. And I'm happy to wait. I guess I would just want, so if I go and get signatures now, if I guess I'd be curious to know like what sort of the timeframe as to how long that would last as far as being effective to present to the school board for a meeting within 60 years. Right. I just, I don't know. I think it needs to be with pertinent information. There's new information that's coming out and Neil, we don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying. It's just, it's more of a timing issue and I can understand, you know, sometimes you really want to, you feel like people are being complacent. There's not a lot going on, but and there hasn't been much going on, but if we start pushing where when you don't need to aware there's not an obvious need to, then it can hurt us. And but once we get the information and yes, if Kristen comes back and says, look at this is a real bad thing going on here and we need to get out as quick as possible and then we won't need you petition, Neil. We'll, you know, schedule this meeting as soon as we can once we have that information. You know, we've talked about this for some time now. You know, we've been to court or so it's not like we're not willing to make the effort and do things and we haven't been sitting on our hands. We've been just trying to strategically do it and you know, at this point we feel that we need to hold back a bit to get more information, but it's, you know, not a dis on you. And I, again, I appreciate your enthusiasm for it. And sometimes we've got to rain, you know, things back a little bit, but don't take it as, you know, the board is pushing away. We're just saying slow down a little bit. Thank you for, you know, keeping it in our headlights here, but for the next few weeks, let's see what happens. And then, you know, at that point, let's regroup, decide all right. And then if we need to schedule a meeting, I mean, I'm not concerned with your names. If we, if this board really feels that we need to schedule a meeting for something like that, we will schedule a meeting. I'm not gonna need to be pushed by anyone. I just need to have the information that tells me that, all right, we're going in the wrong direction here. And then we will certainly do that. And timing is some of that. I mean, you know, with a pandemic, you got to be real careful when you're doing some of these things, just strategically again, and with things starting to take such a little bit of a downturn in the nation. Again, with the outbreaks, you know, we need to be cognizant of just, just our, what's going on around, or going along around this, pardon me. So again, I appreciate your patience with us tonight, but we'll look for your, you know, your help in the future. But let's, again, wait to see what Kristen has to say. And then we can move forward. And yeah, Kristen, I'll get to you. Yep. You know, hopefully we can spend, maybe a few people get to these meetings as well. Go ahead, Kristen. When is your next select board meeting? Is it the 19th? It would be the third Monday. So yeah, I think that is the check right here. Yeah, sure. Yeah, October 19th. So I can definitely zoom in if you want and just give you an update on kind of what was discussed and if there's some sort of projected something gonna be happening at the next school board meeting, if you'd like, I could definitely do that. And I can touch base with Lisa and see if she could also zoom in if that's something that you guys, excuse me, would like to kind of just keep updated. Sure, why don't we put you on the schedule for is 6.15 or 6.30 work better for you? Either time, my husband takes our son to Karate. So they're gone from six to 6.45 up in Stowe. So either time is, what time would be best for you guys? Why don't we say 6.15? All right, so we'll plan on having you back on the 19th at 6.15 and we can hear from you then. How's that sound? Yeah, and I'll let Lisa know too so that she can see if she can, I think she was gonna try to attend today tonight as well, but maybe with a little bit more warning. She's got two very young kids. She might do that. So I'll send her a text and let her know for 6.15 on the 19th. Perfect, thank you, Kristen. Neil, how's that sound with you? That sounds great, Tom, I appreciate it. And so I will withdraw the position. I don't know if you want me to do anything official. That's fine, why don't you verbally, and we'll just work on it from here, but I appreciate all the work you've put into that stuff. Yeah, and you know, if and when the time comes and I'll make a point of just zooming in as well in two weeks just to... Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, and then if and when the time comes and it can actually help out, then just reach out and we'll do that. No, we'll certainly have you in your presentation. It looks good. So there was a lot of interesting things I'd like to hear some time, but not in a couple of hour meeting. I think you had about a 10 hour meeting set up. But anyways, that's good. So we're gonna move on as a board. Thank you everyone for your discussion. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you, Neil. Have a good evening. John. Yeah, thanks. All right, Don Wexler, you're up next. You're gonna talk about the meeting committee and how things are progressing there. Well, I don't really know if we've made any progress as of yet. We're coming right out of the box. I mean, we identified as I sent in the meeting and the notes that were sent out, different avenues of things that we need to explore. I did some follow up that I had mentioned in the meeting that I would do, which was I did speak to Karen Horn and try to get a sense about what other towns are doing and also to help try to navigate the League of Cities towns and also this ACCD guidelines. I mean, it's like just going down a rabbit hole. There is so much information and such that I'm not even sure. I don't have a handle on it myself right now. So, and I know the library's been following a certain protocol as far as how they're using the town hall. And obviously the town office, this protocol set up for that. In terms of what space we use, there's a lot of different issues in either one of those two places. And then just rolling along with some other information I found, which I'm sure Cheryl Lynn probably knows about and maybe Sasha, but there are grants per se, which unfortunately the due dates are coming to a close like up to 15. But say we had filters to the town office, if we were gonna be able to measure that space and have three or four people meet there or however, because we were also talking about committees and whether, you know, how would we handle that? And then the cleaning and the air system. And like I said, there are some grants from the state, but whether they're gonna stand those out. Cheryl Lynn's good about doing grants on short notice. That's what that's what she works for. I understand. And I know she mentioned, I think I heard her mention that with the state's been reimbursing for cleaning supplies and such. So, you know, I'm sure maybe she's filed, you know, put some paperwork in for that. And the last thing is just, you know, going through this is I don't really know, because obviously I could be able to get on last meeting. So I'm not the techiest guy in town, but I did get start to get some information about how we could set up a town. There could be a town zoom account and not each committee having their own zoom accounts. You know, so I don't have a lot of the particulars of that, but I have learned that that's what some other towns are doing. And that sometimes I've set up a thing like in the town office where they have a big monitor and it allows more people to join a meeting because they're on one person is at the off town office and everybody else is remotely, but they're able to control that, you know, that large screen and one person come to that space and, you know, be at the meeting, you know. So there you go. I mean, we've got a lot more work to do in terms of seeing where we can meet. All right, well, no, good. You had good meeting notes. And I just wanted to acknowledge that and make sure that we're keeping it moving along because it's something that I think it's going to be with us for a long time. So, you know, we need to figure it out. Right. I mean, we even have to talk about town meeting. You know, we're gonna, that's going to be coming out. We'll do a town meeting. No, I agree. So, I would throw that right up on your agenda. I guess I'd like to see if I can get, if the group will get back together again, if we can try to figure out how we can have another meeting and or, you know, what different pieces of this people can work on, you know. And so you may be able to do your next meeting, do a Zoom. And... What's that? Maybe you should do a Zoom meeting for your next meeting with your group. Right, yeah. That would be a good idea. We could do that. And then assign our tasks and get it done. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, that's what we'll do. We'll set one up. Great. Thank you. Okay. Moving forward. Does anyone, or does anyone else have anything they want to add to that discussion? Let's see nothing. All right. Next item up on the agenda is the dump truck. Trying to see is Stefan, are you on? Does not look like it. All right. So I spoke to Stefan earlier this evening or this afternoon, or later this afternoon. And they're still waiting for the Mack truck that's getting the brakes and the inspection sticker. And that is supposed to be done tomorrow. Stefan is going to call the dealership in New Hampshire to try to schedule later this week for them to come up. They're going to bring up their proposed new vehicle. And they want to take a ride in the Mack that we're trading in. So hopefully we can get those final numbers in by the end of the week. And then we'll have that, and then we'll go back to the international and see if they can do anything better because we will have put probably $3,000 to $4,000 more into that truck and inspection sticker. So it should be worth more to them at that point. And then we may have a special meeting to make that decision because we need to get off the pod, if you will, so that we don't end up without a truck or with one with a broken body. So look forward to the next few days and give something a quick Zoom meeting to over that information. Probably the beginning of next week. Sasha, if you're on, do you have any reports, force? Mute yourself. I think it's Ray. Yeah, Ray. Okay, Sasha, go ahead. All right. Hi. Sorry. Access Mobility, they sent out that contract and just need approval for that. And wanted to make sure everybody got the response from Mike Woods on the Lister errors and emissions from last year. And then we have the Charles O'Davis that needs to be talked about in the executive session. All right. Ray, thank you for speaking with Mike on that. And so Cheryl and hopefully we'll maybe now hear something back on that. And the other thing Sasha, I'd wanna make sure, let's put Shane on the agenda for next time so we can get that, you know, a controlled contract that we need to sign as well. Okay. And there's one more thing. Sure. An update on the resolution for the planning commission. We just use the same picture page from the board. Okay. And that's it. Any other just announcements or anything like that? No. You're good? Yep. All right. Callie, are you on? Is there anything that you have for reports, communications, communications or announcements? I did talk with Stefan. I believe the end of last week he called me just to update me on a truck they had brought in to get some work on for the fire department. Hey, what was that? That was a pump. Was that, can you just share a little bit about that? I guess they had brought a truck in to get some work done and that work was gonna be more than what it was originally planned for. I wanna say he said it was probably gonna be about 5,000 to get it fixed. Okay. We have that in his budget. We'll probably have to move some stuff around. He may not be able to do some other things, but I did look at his budget this week and there's some money to pay for that. Yeah. Shall we? Nope, that was that. Thank you. All right, Ray. We had a complaint from Dean Molten about the property pens, that the road crew had taken out some of the property pens. I've spoken to Dean, I haven't looked at it, but I would guess at this point that we'll probably have to hire a company to put them back in. I haven't spoken to the road crew. At this point, I don't know how we're gonna get them back in without a survey or to locate where there should be. I don't know why we took them out. We're doing some ditch work and I don't know. He said they were not, just gonna be one of those things. Probably gonna be a $1,500 expense, I think. So relocate the pens. If we can get it done this year, I don't know, but I have spoken to Dean and I told him that I would tell the site board and I assume he want me to go ahead and go with it. Yeah, absolutely. Can you work with Sasha or to line up whoever we use? I know we used American before. I can't remember his name, but like you said, it shouldn't be much, but yeah, it's gotta be done by, we just can't be out there tapping pens into the people's boundary lines. We need to make sure it's correct. And that's one thing I'll put a note, just chat with the road crew on to, I'm sure that's good. I've never heard of this before, but I wanna make sure that that's, there needs to be a protocol if they see something like that or hit it. Yeah, we shouldn't have to hear from the property owner. Yeah. They're from the road crew, they should know when they do it. Is this something we can check in? Because I know our property pens are big, tall, long stakes. So just to double check and make sure. Yeah, I mean, what do you mean by double check? I mean, if they're not there, they're usually at long stakes, they're usually around two feet long, I put the two foot long. If they're not there, you know, Dean says they were there when they started and I have no reason to think they weren't there. Okay, that's fine. I was just asking. No, I mean, we'll check with the road crew, but you know, I can't believe that someone's pens are, I mean, that's just something that's there. If your boundary line is there, it's there. So anyways, we'll check with the crew to make sure that maybe they didn't know they hit them, I don't know. Anything else, Ray? No, I didn't have one question going back to the last meeting when we were talking about selling the truck to Shane. I didn't know if we'd gone into any an agreement with him or anything like that. They would say, all right, like that. Seems like there should be, either way he does it, it should be clear how it's done and we should know how it's handled. Yeah, you know what I have not, I'm gonna say nothing's happened because, you know, since that conversation with the truck, I can't believe that it's moved out of the yard and but yeah, I agree with you. There needs to be, you know, I think really what needs to be done, it needs to be sold, it should be sold and then cash price pay for it. I think once we start trading stuff, one, it needs to be almost put out for a bit, you know, that we're gonna trade this truck for mid-work, you know, for hauling sand, it's gonna be equal for everyone. So it's a weird, I mean, as I looked into it, it's like it's almost goes into our procurement policy and how we do things. So it's really made things gray. So I think to make it not great, we just sell the truck, get what we can out of the cash and leave it be. So I think when I talk to the road crew down there, that's what we'll talk about with them. Cause I think otherwise, you know, I figured it out if, you know, we'd need, I don't know, 1300, 1400 yards of gravel or rock and where are we gonna put that? We don't have the room to put what the truck is worth. So it's just not probably something we wanna pursue. It's definitely be over more than one year period. Yeah. I guess you would have to, you know, cause we'd have no way to put all that rock. John, what about you? You got anything for us? Yeah, the only thing I have is Chris Stevenson in terms of the rec committee has been in touch with me regarding Green Mountain Power and to talk with somebody over there to prevent them from spraying herbicides along the power line. Because I mean, it's preserve property and you know, our town forest and it's just not a good thing to do. I think with the school kids going up there and everything else. And I guess he got some flak from a representative from Green Mountain Power and they did ask for Tom both yours and my contact information. I haven't heard from them. I didn't know if you had or not. No, I haven't heard anything. Okay. Well, I will give that person a call because I actually spoke with him directly and he said he wasn't the person to talk to but when Chris spoke to him, so I'm sure what's going on there but I will give him a call. All right. And if there's something they wanna come in and chat to us about but yeah, there's probably not a good thing if kids are gonna be up there playing in that but maybe they have something they wanna share but yeah, definitely check into it. Okay. That'd be great. Anything else, John? That's it. Don, sitting up in the top chair on my screen in the middle, what'd you got for us, anything? Don Wexler, take some off. Sorry, I didn't realize I was on mute. So when we get to old business, we will, is the time we'll bring up some stuff, old business. This is just for if I had anything new. That's right. Or some college you had something to bring up to share with the board that, you know, something different, you know? No, no, no, all's good. You know, yeah. Sounds good, all right. No, I don't have anything new. All right, nor do I. Cheryl and I see you sitting there with a smile on. Is there anything you wanna share with us tonight? No, I'm just here. Why, just to observe. That was nice. All right, so now why don't we move into old business and Don, you have any old business that you'd like to share with us? Well, I was just curious from maybe a little update that was, I thought we had a final, there was gonna be a walkthrough on with Pike's final paving and the sidewalks, how that's turned out. And then if anybody had any other information about the bridge than what we just read in the paper and such. Other, you know, so that was one old business item. I think right. And then I was curious. Wait a sec, Don, why don't Ray address that for us, your first task? Yeah. Ray, Ray. Okay, so here's what I know. I don't have any update on the bridge part, but as far as Pike, you know, they are aware, they have, you know, some significant cleanup to do, especially on the granite curbing, the emotion on the curbing. I, we haven't been able to nail them down as far as when they're gonna do it, they keep on saying it and they want colder weather to do it. But we've talked with the state, Senator Chris and the state engineer, and they're both aware of it. So I would hope, and I'm gonna follow it up with them tomorrow because, you know, we just gotta get this cleaned up, so we can finish our contract. And hopefully, Pike will be out here within a week. I would hope. There are some other cleanup items, the grass. You know, I really do anticipate that Du Bois will be coming back in the spring to put some touch up on some of the grass it's not gonna take, but that's normal. Other than that, I think pretty much that's it for contract work, clean up on our part. John, what do you think? Yeah, and in terms of Pike, they did say they would be out there, and I was racing up with the cold weather. And Chris Hunt had suggested that we do the walkthrough anyway. But you know, if, but I haven't, between EPI and myself, we haven't really talked much more about it. So as Ray said, you know, if it's a week or so, I think we can wait, but I mean, sooner or later, so we can just put this whole thing to bed. I just feel, I do feel uncomfortable doing a final walkthrough, you know, until Pike is actually cleaned up the mess. You know, that's what the paddock is doing today. And those are, that's the way GPI feels. And rightly so, that, you know, we've got to get Pike done. So everything's clean. All right. Thanks, Ray, for working on that. Don, what else did you have a question about? Well, just some things that maybe we can still, that can be on our radar a little bit, or maybe you might be able to, whatever became, there was a, one of the things we talked about last week were the oxygen tanks that I think the fire department needed to get some more oxygen. Yeah, so I just stepped on about that. And they were originally going to come. In fact, they still have a grant that they haven't heard back from yet. Sherilyn and Stefan, both have checked on it for themselves and me in the last two weeks. And I think probably more often than that. But so, but I did talk to Stefan about that. If this grant does not materialize what we're going to do, do we still need those 10 and how many do we need? And so he's come up with a strategy of maybe looking to get budget two over the next four or five years. So rather than, or yeah, I think it was just two per year to minimize that cost, which would still be five to $8,000 rather than that, I think they were going to go for five of them. So $30,000 or $40,000, pardon me. So I told them that was probably the way to go. They could still, again, if they don't get the grant this year, apply for it next year, but we could probably budget two within the budget so that they can start replenishing those or adding to those that they do need. Right. Okay. So believe me, team, I'm not, I don't mean to like bring stuff up to like make the meeting go longer or anything like that, but I just have two other items. Don, you know, you won't, you bring up anything and if there's other things, you know, things sometimes get forgotten or whatever, you know, we're not a professional board here. So anytime you want to bring something up just to make sure we're doing it or wondering, feel free. Yeah. Okay. So I was just wondering how we can maybe circle back or check in with the finance committee because they were going to be maybe looking into some possibilities of like how going forward down to how people might deserve if we, you know, if we might change the format for paying taxes and such. And I want to, maybe John will be able to answer this because I was talking to someone in town the other day who told me that, oh, I gotta put my battery, charge my battery. You told me that, can you still hear me? Yep. Go ahead. That there was a time and I actually kind of don't remember it, but that you actually could pay your taxes, you know, and get a discount that back 15, 20 years ago that you, if you paid him right away when you got the bill, you got 3%. Is that something you remember, John or something? I remember perhaps 1%, but that was, oh, that was 30 plus years ago. I believe that was before I even got on the board. Oh, okay. Well, maybe there's people's memories in how that goes, right? But Don, I think you bring up a good point into something, you know, four or five months ago, we, you know, we chatted about it, but this is the time to do that. So Sasha, why don't we send a note to the finance committee if they could look into this with the idea, if it's something that they thought it's feasible, bring it back to us, but we'd like to have it on the ballot, yeah, I guess we would have an article with it for this March. So that being said, it would have to come to us by the beginning of January for us to vet it, but why don't we go ahead and do that? And then that way we can see, all right, is there, you know, they can look into it and John, you know, you know, all right, the bill goes out July 1st and we get it and we can get everyone to pay, you know, what, you know, as opposed to what we're borrowing it, and I think we've borrowed some this year. So there's some numbers there that people can work with and figure it out to see, you know what, hey, let's give everyone one, two, three, whatever percent if they pay by this, because it can save us a certain amount on the backend. So no, I think it's the appropriate time to start to address that. And then I was also curious because I know that some towns do, and I don't know, maybe it would be so much of a pain in the, a pain in the, a pain. To have maybe payments twice a year or something, or, you know, I've heard of some towns that do four times a year, which I mean, maybe that's a lot of, I have no idea what that means, but if that's maybe- Both John and Cheryl Lynn are on the committee. Cheryl Lynn, why don't you write that down and you may have a very strong opinion out of two or four times a year. And you may, you know, so you're a good one to have on that committee because you know what it might take. But then you may find it to be better because you get in money in all the time. So again, I think that's a good thing to look at within that committee. The big problem with that, John, is that so many people pay through their mortgage and the mortgage company just pays them once a year. Oh, there you go. And that's what I was gonna say. I brought this concern up before, but your escrow is not gonna pay your taxes early. So any new homeowners in town aren't gonna have that option to do that if their taxes are escrowed. And I know of at least two just on Jones Brook Road, myself as one of them, that I mean sometimes getting the bank to pay them on time is difficult, but they're not gonna have the option for that. Yeah. So that's something for this committee to think about and look at, and it might be an easy, is it legal? Can you do it because of those escrow situations? And I think a lot of people do have their taxes escrowed, but I think I see signs as I drive through Vermont, taxes do all different times of the year. So why don't we look into it and just see, but those are the type of questions. Thank you for whoever brought this up, Kelly or whoever. To vet this out to see if it will work. I might just mention that Eunice Ferris, God rest her soul when she was treasurer, she said, she always said, we'll take your money anytime. So if you wanna pay quarterly, pay quarterly and we'll take it. There you go. All right. It's a little hard for some of us to get off the stick and do that, but I don't know. Don, did you have one more thing? All right, Ray wanted to comment on something we were talking about, Ray. Yeah, no, I just wanted to, is it, there's a truth that we can only offer discount on the town portion of the taxes? That, again, I have no idea, but that's, Sherilyn's shaking her head yes or nodding her head yes. So I would say that is true. So it would be a smaller portion of our tax bill, but so again, the committee would have to look at that because it may not be enough money to make a difference. Okay. Good question, Ray. Very good question. Don? One last quickie. Well, no, my wife is gonna get it. Yeah. Oh, beautiful. You muted yourself there, buddy. Yeah, I just didn't want you to have to put up with the phone ringing. So, okay. One last quickie is that a while ago we got an email, I believe, from Green Mountain Transit saying that some day they would like to, they would love to, I mean, obviously we're in COVID-19 land, but they would want it to brainstorm. They're happy to meet with us and talk to the select board to see how they could maybe help serve the community and such. So I wonder if we could just still keep that out there on the radar to do some time. Maybe we could have a pickup state, pick up the area in front of the town hall or at the store or, you know, whatever. Yeah. I have talked to them. Yeah. She was going to be at one of the next meetings. Oh, great. Oh, yep. Perfect. Sorry, everyone. I'm getting low. Plug in. Sorry about that. I was losing power. So is there any other old business anyone would like to chat about? Yeah. I was wondering about logic trail. Yeah. I, you know what? We need to check with Cheryl on that. I asked her a little while ago when she was doing some stuff and actually when she was taking your place, John, to look into that because she has the best information on that. So let me circle back with her and Cheryl and can probably say something to her as well. But I'll call her tomorrow and see if she was able to look into that. Okay, great. Because we both had kind of the same recollection of what was supposed to happen. And we have, so I think she was on top of that. So we should probably continue to have her follow that up. Anything else, John? No. No, all right. Thank you. Ray or Callie, anything on the whole business you wanna chat with? See Ray shaking his head. No, and Callie, I can't see. No. All right. Anyone have any new business to discuss? So I have, let's see, anyone coming up with anything? I have a couple of things we have to go into executive session for. We have an employee situation we need to discuss. And then we also have to discuss the Charles of Day Fund. So just before we check, I wanna make sure that no one has anything else they wanna share here in public, new or old business. Because then otherwise I'm gonna be clicking off only the board so we can address these few issues. And there will be no action, I don't see any action being, no action tonight being taken out of these, out of this executive session. We, if there is, we'll report that in our minutes. So anyone, whether it's Hadley, how are you tonight? I wanna do that. You can check in the morning if there's any action that comes from them. Cheryl Lynn, I don't think I need you, but if I do, I'll give you a text if she had some HR information stuff that we were looking at. But anyways, so at this point, I've moved to go into executive session to discuss employee personnel. Ray, just second that as he come off mute, but I could read his lips. So all in favor, give me a thumbs up or say aye. Aye. Aye, John. All right, so everyone else, I'm going to say goodbye to you tonight as we go into executive session. So Hadley, Michelle, Sasha, I'm at River TV in Orca. If you guys could jump off, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Bye, everyone. Yep. Bye.