 All right, we'll call the November 15th select board meeting order. We've got Dave Sawyer, Bradtown, myself, Justin Lawrence. Looks like Flo's here. Is John with us? John's not going to be able to join tonight. Any additions? Yes. So we have a budget discussion with Diane, a letter of support that needs, if the board elects to for VAST for their grant. And then to add to the municipal road grant, also the, at that time frame, tires for the loan purchase. And I would just recommend that we do the budget discussion after the 650 item on the agenda. We'll just go through the agenda, and then after the letters discussion, we do the budget and the VAST letter. I've got about everything. Yeah. OK. Any public comment? So the only question I had was the item that I'm on board, because it's going to be involving a couple of contracts. I didn't know if it was better an executive session or how that worked. I figured I'd just mention it. I'm OK to stay late. It's for the change orders on the Fisher Road Column. What do you guys think? Is that an executive session? I don't think it is, is that? That's fine. I just figured I'd ask. I appreciate that. Public comment, you said? Yeah. Can you introduce yourself with this? Yes, of course. My name is Karen, I'm a foreign dean. My husband's Scott Bean. OK. Go ahead. As brief as possible again, being that we are the public and we have the right to notify the public of what we feel is deception by one of your board members here. Justin, I want to move the point over here. This is a contract, a breach of contract they're in. And it's a personal matter. Business matter has nothing to do with town business. OK. It's public. Well, I understand. Let me ask a quick question. Is it to do with town business or public business? Public. What do you mean by public? We want the public to be aware of this issue that happened to us through this person. So is it a contract matter, is that what you're saying? Proposal slash contract. OK. So tell me how this ties in with the town. It does not. So this is the board meeting. I'm sorry? This is a board meeting. OK. For the municipality and decisions for the town. OK. So I understand why you're here for grievance of some sort. And I respect that. And I appreciate you coming in. What I would like to ask is that if it's not a municipal matter, is it a permitting issue? No. Is it a zoning issue? No. Is there a violation with any of our town ordinances or anything in this? So is it more of a personal issue or a contract? I mean, it's a contract issue. I understand what you're saying. It's a contract dispute. I've had disputes with contractors in the past, myself. And it was a civil matter, not a town matter. I understand that. So I understand that there might be some frustrations. Public meeting. And he's on the select board. That people should be aware. That is that. So how we were left. As an elected official, I don't believe that has anything to do with business practice, unfortunately, if that's how you're feeling. I may, Brad, I'm going to put it on the spot here. I hope with some of your expertise, have you ever had a situation like this in the past? No. But if it doesn't pertain to town business, it's fine. Understandable. All right. I would give you the floor if it fit within what it was supposed to for town business. But it's not really town. Go ahead. Scott, was it? Yeah, Scott. But doesn't he live in town? He's on the select board. Shouldn't it mean to the public that this person is than what he has done? What happened to us in our home? Well, yes and no. I mean, in all reality, if I go do something in another town, right, or you don't like me as an individual, we disagree with some of the actions I may choose in my life. That doesn't really have anything to do. That doesn't have any bearing on other areas necessarily. So I understand frustrations. I understand concerns. I understand wanting to voice an opinion or wanting to spread a message so that people are aware. What I would ask is that if you think it is something that we could probably in the future prevent by having an ordinance or anything like that, that you would go through the proper channels, which would potentially be like a planning commission thing if you think it was a contract or a permitting issue or something like that, or not necessarily a contract, but more like the permitting piece. But if it's not town related, we really can't get into it. I'd like your point, though. I want to protect other people from this kind of behavior and social professionalism, real fast. Can I ask you a question real quick? Hold on. No. Just let me. They're in a clear breach of contract. No, we're not. Let's not get into it. Stop. OK. We're not. You are. I don't want to get into any of this from any party. We're here because we feel Berlin public because he's on the select board. Well, it's not me about individuals. It's talking about our policy with contractors that's on the select board or something like that. Somebody that's on the select board, I feel that if he's doing this to the people, what's he doing for the community of Berlin? There's probably a lot of people that disagree with my positions or my views on several things. There's a process for removal from office, and that's not necessarily here. That's signatures, things like that. I would suggest reviewing that if that's something you want to pursue, but other than that, we can't get into that this meeting. No problem. Thank you. Appreciate it. Who are the people to talk to on that matter? About the policy or the procedure for that? Yeah. It's pretty simple. It's right on our website, or you can actually, Vince would be happy to follow that information. I can provide that information. Procedure is policy. And it's as simple as that. I apologize. That's fine. Now we've learned something. Just try it. Well, me too. It's the first time I've dealt with anything like that. We don't see restitution, but we're here to protect the public. It's a civil matter, so it would be any other public comment. Hearing none, Fire Department survey discussion. Jody, you want to come right up to the table? Do you get your laptop with you? We have Keith over here. Oh, yeah. Hey, Keith. How you doing, Justin? Excellent. How are you? Feeling better. Thank goodness. What do you got for us with the survey data? Do you, Flo, did you have a chance to review the data? I have not had a chance to review the data, so I'm looking forward to the discussion this evening. Thank you. OK. I didn't go through a bunch of it. Did anybody else on the board have an opportunity to go through the data? I know we've been asking for it for a while, and then I didn't have an opportunity. I apologize. Ben, did you? No. I suspected not. What do you want to, can you share with us a little bit about the data that you sign us, I guess? Well, there's a whole lot of data. It's the individual responses from all 100 or so people that responded from the town, plus there's a lot of broken down, call volume times, and run response times, which are then, all of that is combined into the survey results that we gave you. The raw data, to me, is a lot to parse through, and it's best, in my opinion, dealt with by looking at the results that was provided previously. So if you have questions about it, I'd be happy to answer. OK. My apologies for not being as prepared as we could have been. I didn't get a chance to review it. Let me move this to it later. Yeah. I think that's probably the best thing. I want a chance to review it. I would like Flo to review it. We made some changes recently there. I was hoping we could have a discussion on this. Well, I think we all want to have it much sooner. But we probably move it to Flo. Do you think you could review that before the next meeting, or do you think you need two meetings? My next meeting would suffice. Well, thank you. OK. Is there anything you want to add, Joe? I think I wouldn't mind. I'll sit down with Flo and go through it with her. So she at least would be able to then present it to you guys. Right. I know there's a lot of information there. I know that it's not in the format that you guys put together. So her perspective may be helpful for us to understand it and maybe ask some additional follow-up questions as a board. Anything else? No, we'd be happy to be here again in two weeks. Thank you. Sorry, Joe. Thank you, Keith. Thank you, Joe. Thank you. What are you thinking, Brad? Two weeks not, right? It's going to be more than two weeks anyway. It's lost a little bit. Yeah, I get it. Is that what you were saying again? OK, I didn't know if you wanted to hold it off another. OK. Next week. Yeah, discussion on deferred comp. Yep, we have Mr. Olin. And we talked about this briefly with Mr. Olin. Yeah, where is it? Yes. Can you guys hear me OK? Yeah. Yeah. So I'll try to make this brief, too, to kind of get you guys back on schedule as well. But basically, the deferred compensation plan is an additional benefit you guys can offer to your employees. Basically, it's offering them an optional type of retirement savings account for them to utilize. Now, something you can not just offer to full-time employees, but it can be something for part-time, per diem, temporary employees. So we've seen different states municipalities use it for basically anyone on payroll as an option. Something the employee can open up at any time. There's only a quick enrollment time frame on it. There's no match required by the town. So it sounds like the only cost of the town would be on the payroll side of things. I think we kind of touched on that a little bit this time. We kind of be the only cost there. There is an administrative fee for the plan, and that's actually charged to the participants and how the fees work to the participants of a percentage of the assets. And think about basically $0.35 for every $1,000. There's no fiduciary responsibilities for the town either, so all the investment options, constant monitoring of all the plan, oversight, staying compliant, all that's handled by the state and provincial. Based on that, it's a free resource as well for you guys to help the employees, help them understand the benefits, but also two different financial planning tools as well. This is the type of account that they have more flexibility with versus the VMware's pension. Type of account where there's old IRA accounts, old employer like 041Ks that could consolidate into this deferred account plan, something they can't do with the VMware's. But also too, this is that flexible type of account. So someone would think of in retirement, maybe they are benefit they own. Do they do have the pension? Maybe they're drawn from sole security. If something happens, they want to go on that trip. Their roof goes, they can't dig into their pension. They can't dig into their sole security. This is that flexible type of savings account that they can have. Looking at it, I mean, why not offer another benefit that's an optional type of retirement or savings account for the employees? I mean, really, no one ever saves too much from retirement. That being said, do you guys kind of have any questions regarding the plan or anything else I can answer if you're on my end? So you guys from Prudential, you're the administrative, you're the fiduciary for this. How long are you contracted with the state for this at this point? So it goes every five years. We Prudential took it over back in 2018 from Empower. And Empower actually held it for 15 years prior to that. The state made the switch in 2018 based for two main reasons. One was that administrative fee that Prudential cut in half. So it used to be 0.07%. Now it's at 0.035%. And then also two Empower was pushing what they called a managed account option where basically anyone who didn't want to pick their own investments would use that managed account option, which had another fee attached to it. And Prudential has a tool called GoalMaker. It's a free tool to help simplify that. So that's why the state made the switch in helping out for the participants on the fees in half, making another free resource for them. But then two just full disclosure, Empower also did just buy out Prudential's retirement arm. So going into next year, it will be back with Empower, but the fees and everything that are on the contract now with the plan still say the same. So there's still another two years prior of the state's contract that in any proposed changes, they can have like one year extensions as well. I would say probably the biggest prior going into next year when it does transition to Empower is probably that following year to see if they will make any adjustments or kind of keep the plans and the fees and things as is, which I'm sure will probably happen. Right. So I mean, it's completely voluntary. It's a 0.35 basis point. 0.035. Well, yeah, 0.35%. Right? My management pay? Yeah, 0.035% correct. Yeah, that's an annual amount. Prudential just takes it out quarterly. 0.035. Okay. What's the, how much more administration or I think we talked about it? Okay, well, it's probably the setup, which is not, you know, not any more than like what I just talked about. And as far as fees, I did check the pay data and there's no additional fees. I think that it might be a slight uptick in what we have each pay period. Right now we're like $70 per pay period. It might go up to $70 more or something else. So it's really minuscule. As far as workload free do, it's nothing. Not much. Just the initial is something, probably a half an hour to an hour. And because I've just set it up with pay data and then after that, it's done. I do have to write a check every month, I guess. Probably monthly checks from like I do for Aflac and for the others like that. Yep. Sorry, I'm looking for a motion to accept it. Accept it? Yes. All right. Got it. Do you accept it's agreement from the holder? Nope. So right now we only have the pension option. We don't have like a 401k, like deferred, yeah. Right. So you can't have some of the money in retirement with the beavers, right? And this adds to it for the next full place. Right, because beavers, the one that all of us are in right now, the beavers define benefits. So you can't put in extra money. Because your age, some of you can have one of that 401k that we don't have. Yep. I mean, I personally, I like the deferred comp. I think it's a good option. It's completely voluntary. So if it's not gonna be an administrative expense that's significant to us, I think it's a great benefit to have for people. You can also offer two for a part of time, pretty into it. I mean, obviously that's something up to you guys. But some people maybe that aren't benefited enough to have the beam suspension. It could be just another benefit as well. What's the portability? I mean, obviously there's no best thing. It's all their money. So upon termination of contract, it's typically 30 days, right? I mean, all that. So there's no timeframe. So once they stop working for the town, basically at that point, they have access to the funds, something where they could take it and roll it over to their new employers with time right now and keep it going with them that way if they wanted. They could just keep as is. They just wouldn't be able to contribute to it no longer being an employee of the town anymore. In the type of account, so you mentioned 401K, it's a 457B, kind of think of it like a 401K. But with this type of account, there's no penalty regardless of age. It won't be that a lot of 401Ks, if you take money out prior age 59 and a half, there's that 10% penalty. That doesn't apply to a 457B, which this account isn't for account planning. Right, technically this isn't a qualified plan. This is non-qualified, correct? Well, technically it's qualified. So it's still subject to the contribution limits and things that retirement accounts higher. But it's one where when you take the money out, if you put it in pre-tax, you're seeing this taxable income at that distribution. Right. Hard to understand the motion. I don't know what you have questions. Move to approve the municipal 457 deferred compensation plan. What's that, town employees? I'll second. Any discussion? Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. The motion carries. Thank you. Braun, thank you guys. Thank you, Mr. Owen. I'm not signing for you to authorize me to sign. Thank you, I'll be in touch soon. Continue to package, it's the last time. What, just for the chair? Doesn't specify. I didn't entertain another motion about our town administrator signing. Still moved. Any discussion? Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Got it. All right. Good point, Vince. All right, Otter Creek discussion on Fisherville Culver and change order. Sure. So quick update on the project. I don't know if anybody's been over there recently, but as of last Friday, they had all of the pieces set and it has been grouted in. So the footings are done, those structures there are set. And basically the schedule for the next couple of weeks is to tie rebar on the top. Those pieces come in two halves. They butt against each other like this. And in those halves, there's actually like an open top piece that has rebar in both arches that come together, both halves. And so they need to be lapped over and then a cat or is done over top. And once that's done, which is going to happen this week, it has to set for three days and we need to make sure it's up to strength. But provided it's up to strength, they'll be able to start backfilling and setting the wing walls and the head walls and everything else that kind of comes with that. So from this point forward, it should be moving fairly quickly. It's that time of year where nothing moves quickly because we're out of daylight and the weather doesn't cooperate and we have holidays all the time. But I think we've turned the corner and headed in the right direction. So that's the general update. That all went smooth. So I spoke with Dr. Chip Leue earlier and he was, we were talking, he's got a lot of film getting ready to go over there, whatever. But one of the things were, are we going to be able to get temporary pavement in this year, do you think? I don't think so. I think that it's going to be close. It's that time of year where, depending on how quick the backfill goes and what the process is, it could happen, especially if we have decent weather, but the way my luck has been this year and the way the weather has turned, I would expect that it's going to get cold and miserable over the next couple of weeks. So that's going to be at least with salt and all that over the winter, if there's one other thing Tim mentioned. I mean, if you don't pave it, it's just going to allow the cars to beat the pack to ground. I think that's where we left it earlier this summer. When we talked about schedule and trying to get it in this year, my understanding was, in the worst case, we'd get to a point where it'd be left gravel and that's the way the contract actually set up with Du Bois is to leave it gravel. And that would allow the traffic to go over. It's no different, it's a wide enough area where it's not like a patch that would be prone to potholes, like a trench patch or something like that. But it will require some maintenance and stuff in the spring probably and that's part of their contract to fill that in. I would think that Pike has a, they'll be closing the asphalt plant here pretty quick. Usually it's around the 15th of the month of November, so they probably already have a projected closing date. I haven't checked for them to be honest, but it's usually then, sometimes we get lucky and it extends to Thanksgiving, but I don't think we're going to be at a point where we'd be able to do that by that point. Just carries, yep. How are the other infrastructures, they laid in there now or are they still supported? So they're all temporarily in, so the waterline we actually relocated, that's looped in that area. So it crosses over here at Applebee's and goes down the road that way and it also crosses up by the hospital. And so right now it's actually dead ended both ways. So part of the project is to put that loop back, but from like a worried about utility perspective, it's good the way that it is. And we just need to basically put 100 feet in. The sewer's been temporarily relocated and that's covered up with frost blankets and hay. And we've made some operational changes for the sewer system to increase the amount of times that the pumps cycle over just to prevent it from freezing, but sewer also is warmer than water in general. Now you pulled your pumps out of the brook? Not yet. And it seems like every day it rains, it comes up to a point where it's getting ready to crest over. The schedule, the short-term schedule right now is once we get that cat pour done, we'll be able to backfill and that'll allow, if you've been down there, they actually put all of the stone and the riprap inside that underneath it. And they're gonna use a small machine, small mini excavator in there to push that around and re-grade it and backfill it along the inside. They just can't do that till that cat pour's done. So we're about a week away and then those pumps will come out. They ran into some challenges there. On one side of the site, it was really, really soft material. They blew clay. And on the other side, it was really, really hard till. They ended up driving sheet piles on the side that's closer to Northfield Savings Bank at their cost, basically, because it was just so difficult on that side. And the sheets over there, they gotta take those out. And so what they're gonna do is pull the sheets out before they take the temporary water bypass off. So worst case, it would be probably two more weeks of water bypass. So a couple of things that have come up with the project. I'm not sure what Vince has gotten you guys all up to speed on. We had a few different things. We had a contract with contact to supply the structure to the engineering for the structure and then supply it. And then we had a contract with Dubois to do the earthwork piece. And I have a couple of pieces of paperwork to resolve. One of them was just more of a clerical change. Midway through the project, we talked with Dubois and they wanted control over the schedule for the delivery of the trucks. They felt like they could better manage how those pieces were delivered. And having seen it, I think they did a good job with it. Is that the change order number one? That's change order number one. I just wanna make sure everybody can see it. Change order number one. That's essentially a net zero change. Basically what we did was we took that $50,400 out of the contract with contact and then we need to move it in to Dubois's contract. There's no increase to the town for that change order. They actually did a fantastic job scheduling that. They had trucks coming in and out and it worked really well. But yeah, they did a good job. So that's what that was for was to just change their schedule. That's perfect. Again, at the end, signature either by you or author or me to sign. Just wanna take that out. Thanks. So the second piece was an issue that came up and maybe it's better to give a little bit of history and I don't wanna take up too much of your time but if you guys recall when we had a meeting back in May about the project, we talked about schedule and at that time we were looking at somewhere between 16 and 20 weeks of lead time related to the structure and at that time we had the contract set up so that it would be bid as one primary contract meaning we would bid both the purchase of that precast and the earthwork as one big project. And we started looking at schedule back then and we couldn't make the timeline work to open up the road this year just following that process because they were gonna be somewhere between six and eight weeks after we signed a contract with whoever that was before they could start making and ordering components on the structure. And so I came to you guys and we actually solicited an updated quote from contact to do the engineering and essentially order the mesh which was the big lead time item in that arch back in June. And at that time we were also out to bid for the earthwork portion of this, the digging, utility relocation, all of that stuff. And so bidders like Du Bois were relying on the information that we had available at that time. I have with me a sketch that I didn't get to Vince and we're happy to make a copy and give it to everybody but basically I'll circulate it. The top is what was included in the bid and the bottom is what we ultimately ended up having to do. So basically in the bid, we had included a nine and a half foot wide footing with a foot of crushed stone underneath it. And that was based on conversations that we had with contact and conversations that we had with our Q and A point near SW Colt. But the way that that pre-casting process works and I have a copy of your contract with contact is they actually take our plans, they take our bearing capacity, basically how much weight in a soil form and they go through a formal submittal and shop drawing and engineering calculation process. And they will not do that with us. No pre-caster will do that with us in advance of signing a contract. And so back in June, we had had preliminary conversations with them. They had that information, we had gone through it but they had not issued final drawings if you will, related to their structure. So we went on that information, that's what DuVois bid. Contact in the middle of construction identified that they had used the higher of the two loading numbers, meaning they picked the wrong one for lack of a better term. If they had used the lower value, the footing either needed to be larger to accommodate that weight or we needed to dig down and put more stone in and do what's called a ground improvement to that. And so this came up actually right around Labor Day. Had a site meeting with Vince and others and just kind of went through what the options were. And they all had different implications, going with a 16 foot wide footing instead of a nine and a half foot wide footing would on the east side, the side closest to the hospital, you can imagine that road goes up very steep. The amount of excavation, the amount of reach that the crane would need, a significantly larger crane, it just wasn't feasible. So what we opted to recommend was doing the over dig which is essentially putting in an additional three feet of stone, putting that trapezoidal shape underneath it and you're creating essentially a bearing path. And that was on a recommendation of our geotechnical engineer. And that kept the footing at basically 10 feet wide instead of nine and a half feet, which essentially kept it close to the contract. It just resulted in additional digging. At the time in September, we didn't know what we were gonna get into on the other side. So when we do the design of these types of projects, we typically do two soil borings, one on the east footing and one on the west footing. And they had slightly different materials, but we did one boring on each side on a footing that's 135 feet long, right? We could have made Swiss cheese this site, spent 100 grand and poked 100 holes and not found some of the stuff that we found to be honest, but we didn't do that. We'd go on our judgment. And so whenever you do these types of projects, you carry a little bit of contingency to deal with changes in soil conditions because you don't know what you can't see. And so I made a recommendation to Vince in September to go with the time of material estimate from DuBois. I thought that their estimate was maybe a little bit conservative, meaning it might have been a little bit high. And rather than have them take the risk and do it for a lump sum, I suggested that we do it on a time of material basis. Change order two is that change order. Essentially, they finished about $10,000 under their estimate from the original piece, except like everything we do, we start digging and opening up that old road and we found old buried headwalls in the ground that needed to be hammered out and some other things that actually kept the cost about the same. Strictly looking at the footing piece, we saved about 10 grand. It cost about $35,000 instead of the 45 or 46 that they were looking at. But when we added in the hammer to remove the headwalls and the other stuff that was down there, it basically became a wash. From my perspective, there's a couple of things. The town has three contracts. You have one with DuVoise, you have one with me at Audit Creek Engineering and you have one with Contact. The first piece is whether or not everybody here agrees that this is a change in DuVoise's contract. And from my perspective, as I said all along, this is a change in what they've been. We have to pay them for the additional work that they're doing. I recommend that the town authorize that change order for that additional stone and process that. That's kind of the first piece and I think that, hopefully that sketch at least pictorially shows the differences between the two. So I think some of the questions we had as a town was, yeah, I understand DuVoise had changed some of their order. You guys are, what I would say, our trusted advisors. We look to you for the, to do this whole bid process, honestly, that's your job, that's why we're paying you. And I feel like this change was outside of what we anticipated. Typically there are costs that go over on a project obviously. But if you guys engineered it or designed it wrong, which doesn't sound like you did, how is that a liability for the town? But it sounds like contact might have sent some bad information or was that, where was the issue? So maybe, like we're breaking down and just playing old English. Yeah, yeah, so I think it's a timing thing. So we had preliminary information from them and in order to get it built this year. I mean, we had a conversation if you remember, probably in June, related to risk, right? So what are the town's risks with doing it this way? That's why we don't, that's why we don't. Because they're, Last time when we ordered the culvert? Yeah, yeah. So their price came in almost $100,000 higher than the quote that they had given me in December. And I recall coming here and talking with you all and I might have been Brad, who asked, what's the town's risk if we move forward? And I think the risk is that you're trying to handle certain aspects of the project that wouldn't necessarily be included that way at that time. So as I mentioned, the way that these typically work, if it was part of Du Bois' contract, the contract with contact, the engineering and that would have. So why wouldn't you guys have contact and made us aware of that in the process before we went and did this? So the difference was they didn't give us final engineering values. They wouldn't do that without this signed contract. We were already out to bid in order to meet the schedule with Du Bois. They hadn't, they were six weeks after this signed contract before they gave us calculations. How could we go out to bed if that was the case? I'm just, I'm trying to wrap my head around trying to figure it out. We split them up, we split them up. We basically said, we have enough information to try and go forward. But the other one impacts the other bid, obviously, right there. Correct. So why wouldn't you, why wouldn't we have been made aware of that? I think you were indirectly, I probably didn't do a good job of explaining to you what your exposure was. Again. I just want clarification. No, and I guess, so from my perspective, there's a couple of moving pieces here. Did they make an error in their preliminary calculations? Absolutely. There's no doubt about that. Contact. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. They used the wrong number, which is the basis for that nine and a half foot wide. I think the other piece with that is whether or not it resulted in any adverse impact to the town. From my perspective, if they had used the right number to begin with, we would have just modified the drawings to show that detail. And that's what everybody would have bid. You know, having put in that extra stone wasn't a result of that error. It was the result of the math being the math. You know, and them showing that that's what they need to make it work. Does that make sense? Somewhat, yeah, I'm just, my frustration is that this is, you know, obviously this is a big project. I just, I feel, I think that when we put things, I don't know. Yeah, I was trying to think of the right words. Brad, you can help me out, maybe. Maybe you can. I just would anticipate that we wouldn't run into issues like this, of this significance on a project like this, using your advisors. We just didn't see it coming. I hear what you're saying by the six funds. I hear what you're saying. From my perspective, we recommend here in 10% of the project costs for contingency. In this case, it would have been $150,000 when you look at the total project cost. That is always carried because you don't know. On the earthwork side of things, you don't know what you're gonna get into till you start digging. Those buried head walls. I could have poked 100 holes. I could have had my geotechnical consultant spend 100 grand. We would have never found that. That wasn't a design issue. No, it was. But this conversation with contact, if you read, and I'd be happy to give you guys a copy of the contract that you had, but this contract with them at the beginning, you know, they're gonna rely on the drawings prepared by Outer Creek Engineering and the geotechnical investigations prepared by Sevilla Cole. So they didn't, they had not finished their design, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Maybe I didn't properly explain that risk to you when we opted to go two different directions, but they asked for, and you guys paid them $70,000 to finish the design after I had already opened bids with DuPois. And we had to do something to meet that schedule. The other option, which you guys voted not to do, was to just stop, because we would have lost the whole year. We could have stopped. We could have regrouped. We could have said, hey, let's have a conversation. Let's open it up to other precastors, because we felt like their price might have been a little bit high with that extra, you know, 100,000 between December and May. We opted not to do that. We opted to separate them out, and then in order to meet this schedule, and here it is right now, second week in November, it's just set. We haven't even begun backfill. We're probably the second week in December by the time the roads opened up. So if you asked me, if you guys made the right call to get the road opened up this year, which was the big push for the hospital, I think you still made the right call. I go back to what I said before. I don't think it certainly is more than you wanted to pay for it. I don't think it cost you anything from the perspective of if they had used the right number in the preliminary analysis, our plans would have showed that detail. You would have paid to put that stone in. It's not like there's any direct damage as a result of them forgetting it. Does that make sense? I understand what you're saying. Okay. I just, I don't understand why we didn't know that it was a liability. Pretty plain and clear as with you guys as everybody. Again, I probably didn't do a good job of explaining that piece. Yeah, so contractually, we obligated to pay that. If we sent that off to an attorney or anything if we reviewed it, I don't really know anything about the process. How about reviewed it with a attorney? I would hate to, I know just from a business standpoint, if contractually we're obligated as a town to pay it then we should pay it. But if we're not, then I feel like we need to explore options or what are our options? I mean, we're 50,000 over here saying we just need to pay it, right? Well, so I think there's a couple of things, right? You have three different contracts. The first piece is this is a change to the voices contract. They did that work to add that stone. I think you have to pay them. If you don't pay them and I were them, I'd yank my equipment off tomorrow. Right, you know, I understand. So I think there's that part of it. The second piece is whether or not you feel, you know, we did something wrong or contacted something wrong. I can tell you that the amount of money that you're talking about there is more than my contract, right? So it's relative contact. I don't know what you've paid them. I know you paid them 70,000 to do the engineering. That's what this contract says here. But the pieces have been delivered and installed. Typically their payments net 30 days after delivery. So we haven't paid them anything other than 70. So from my perspective. There's one in there. There's one in there now. Check in there again. So if you don't want to pay them, or if you want to have a further conversation with me and them about what, who should be responsible? Do you have any conversations with them? I have not. So we just barely finished this with Dubois within the last couple of weeks. I understand what you're saying about Dubois. That was totally outside of their control. I wanted to have an idea of what the cost was. And I wanted to understand the town's perspective. Again, I think, you know, you said it earlier, you guys rely on me to be your advisor. Take it for what it's worth. When you get into these situations, you know, if you think that they're responsible and they did something, typically it results in some type of damage. And in this case, the damage is, the town paid more than they wanted to. But I don't think there was any actual damage there. If they had used the right number in that preliminary analysis, you would have had to do that or you would have had to put a 16 foot wide footing in. Or we would have said, let's look at a different structure or something. So then we look at it from a contract perspective and say, okay, well, who was at fault for not giving us the proper information in the contract and where does the liability fall at that point in time, right? Absolutely. So I mean, from a damaged thing, yeah, a damaged perspective, I understand what you're saying, but now we're looking at a contract perspective. No, I get it. And it's your choice, but I think it, you know, those are conversations that you would have with me or for them. And I think that's kind of where this is at because you guys need to decide. That's why I'm glad you're back. Yeah. I think that what we need to look at, and I can't speak for the entire board, just my personal opinion is that I would think that I would like to have Daughter of Creek talk to contact and figure out. I don't know. I feel like it's not clear to me. Maybe it's just me and I can't wrap my head around it, but is there, and near our contract with contact, is there any recourse or is there any, I mean, I feel like they should have the proper information on the front end. I mean, I'm not an engineer. I can't. No, I get it. The way these are, these are proprietary type structures. So they don't really, you know, it's not just that. None of these companies will release that information until you do deposit payment. That's why you guys signed this. Now, if we had kept the contract the way that it was, Du Bois would have signed this, right? Du Bois would have been the one with the contract with them, and all we bought by splitting them out was eight to 10 weeks of schedule time to get it done this year. And I think I explained that. Maybe I didn't go through the risk piece. I don't remember much about the risk piece, but I do remember we were looking to get it done this year. Well, and that's why we split them out, and that's why you have a separate contract with them. You know, originally the way that this was set up all the way into June was it was bid as one project. There was always the numbers that I had given you guys. And, you know, we came here and you guys looked at me and said, well, why are we looking at buying this for an extra 100 grand more? And the response from the pre-caster was, well, it's COVID delays, you know, it's other things. And we sat around the table and said, what do we do? Do we do this now or do we wait? And hopefully it's less money. And you guys opted to go forward. I don't think I explained where we were at relative to the final drawings as good as I could have. But again, I go back to what I said. If they had included it, we would have still had to put that four foot of stone in that trapezoidal shape underneath. You could make the case, Justin, that, you know, when you're in a change order situation, that you're paying a premium for that, it, you know, above and beyond what you would through a competitive process, just because there's no risk there, right? So when you're doing a competitive bid process, contractors taking on risk, they decide where they're going to put the risk and where they're not going to put the risk. And in a competitive process, you might have got a slightly better number than the 35,000 that we were talking about in this change order. But as far as the materials, the time, the equipment, that's, that would have had to have been included in the bid if we had kept it as part of that contract. Yeah, but even, maybe I'm looking at this wrong, but even by splitting this thing up, ultimately it probably saved a little bit of money because it wouldn't generally do voice and then they would mark up that material. Yeah. From them anyways, at least 15%. Typically on the cost of the project, which was, that was the other piece we talked about and I think that's where we talked about the risk was, you know, we saved, and even in an aggressive market, nobody's taking less than 5%. So if you just look at the 400,000 that you spent, you know, 5% of that would have been do voices markup for these types of, not this situation, but they would have carried the risk with it. Simply for managing that part of the contract. Yeah. I remember some, when we talked about that back in June or was it before June or somewhere around that time that that was one of the reasons to remove that from the do voice contract was time initially. It was time. It was time. Yeah. And we had a conversation about the markup piece. So why wouldn't you guys have caught that before we, and by one of my questions, I'm just curious. No, that's completely valid. So why didn't I catch it? Why? Because they did not give me their calculations, right? So I gave them the geotechnical report. We went out, we did two soil borings. I paid a geotechnical engineer to tell me how much weight can that soil hold. He told me. They wrote a report, they stamped it, I slid it across the table to those guys. I said, I need a structure that fits these dimensions. I got to pass this much water. Here's the site limitations, yada, yada, yada. They came back with design information. Said, here's your concept. This is what you need for footings. This is what you got going on. Here's that information. They did not give me detailed calculations related to that until we were into construction. This was a timing of it. And frankly speaking, it could have been a lot worse. I got those detailed calculations while they were digging for the footings. If we had set and poured those footings, this would have been a disaster. It would, just being honest with you, it would have been extremely more expensive because we would have had to take them out. We would have never gotten to that point because we were waiting on those stamped drawings. But you can see, you know, you can see how aggressive the schedule was. We're waiting on, they said they were six to eight weeks to get us shop drawings and calculations. And meanwhile, we have Du Bois out there relocating utilities and starting mass excavation for the structure just so that we can meet the end of the road here. And when push came to shove, it was the Friday before Labor Day, you know, looking at the numbers, so like, well, they used the wrong value because on one side of the site, and the best theory that we have is that's where the old stream bed used to be over there. A lot of clay, nasty kind of material there, soft. And that's on the east side of this new structure. And the one closer to the bank is extremely firm, very hard till. And for whatever reason, in their preliminary design, they used the till number. What we did was we worked with SW Cole in contact and we came up with that ground improvement there to add that four feet of stone so that that east side footing would act the same way as the west side footing. And that's what we had to do was put in that extra compacted crushed stone. Does that make sense? So why didn't I catch it? They didn't give me the calculations. I gave them the information. They gave me preliminary data. We were headed down a path where we go out to public bid, and then they submit submittals and shop drawings. We review that information. That's where it happened. It just happened to be that we separated these two projects out and the town took some of that risk. But again, I go back to, we would have had to do that anyway, or put 16 foot widening, which was really tricky on that east side because it goes up so steep to the hospital. And at the end of the day, how much did this change add to the whole, the overall cost of the project? $35,000, roughly. That's right, right? There's a, it's a, 47.4, but the number related to the footing piece. Right. The number related to the footing piece was 36, 560, 875. It's that number right there. There was a separate cost related to those buried head walls and the boulder that was the size of a bus down there. But that, so that 30, I mean, I get where you're coming from with it and typically we carry that contingency for these types of things. This was bid as a lump sum. Sometimes you see state projects or other engineer projects where there's a bid itemized bid sheet. It's got 50 different items on it to deal with some of the unknowns that come up related to earthwork. This was not set up that way. It's a lump sum contract. It was a change condition for them. And at least from my perspective, the total project costs, you know, construction costs about 1.2 million, $35,000, fairly small sum of money on a percentage basis. That's why we carry contingency going to construction. And, you know, the hardest part about my job is you can't know what you don't see and we don't see in the ground. So some of this stuff, you know, the rock and other things, those come up. That's why we carry contingency. This is a little different, obviously, but you get the idea. So, still large sum of money, even though small contingency amount. No, it's a significant amount of money. I don't want to de-minimize that at all. But I think, you know, we always recommend and the state and federal agencies that we work with, like the drinking water program and clean water program, they require that you carry at least 5% of the project costs in contingency going to construction for these types of projects for that reason. So I think previously, when we had discussions about it, the board felt as though it was, this should have been handled and we wanted to see their audit rate or contact pick up this piece of it. I think there was a misunderstanding between Vince and I on what that meant. And that's probably in my fault because I wasn't here at that meeting. And I certainly, if I thought that that was the type of conversation that we were gonna have as a group, I would have came back in September. When that didn't happen, I told Vince, there was no reason for me to come in October until we knew what the final number was because we had already agreed with Du Bois to do it on a time of material basis. And as I said, I worked on the towns we have to make sure that that was less than the agreed upon amount that, you know, they had estimated around 45,000, we finished up the 36th number. But now that I have firm numbers, I felt it was appropriate to come have this conversation with you all. It seems like it's about time. Yeah. So this increase in the footing would have happened if they had used the other numbers anyway. Yeah, so in simpler terms, they assumed that the soil could carry 5,000 pounds per square foot and it could only carry 3,000 pounds per square foot because out of the two borings that we did, one could carry five, the other could carry three. They used the wrong number. I don't know if those are the actual numbers. I'm just using that for you. Did you guys give, how did they use the wrong numbers? Why would they use the wrong numbers? I don't know why they used the wrong numbers. I gave them both numbers. That's how those reports are prepared. We drilled two holes. You got to give them all the information. You can't just give them the information that's appropriate, right? You got to give any subsurface information, you know, you got to give them everything. So they had both and they happened to use the wrong ones. And you haven't had a conversation with them about why they used the heavier soil. I had a couple of conversations with them about why they used it. I wasn't all that impressed by it when the issue came up for lack of a better term, but I have not had a conversation with them about them being financially responsible for it. I didn't know what the number was. I hadn't had this conversation with the board to understand your perspective. Again, you haven't paid them. So to just maybe take a giant leap backwards. Du Bois did the work. I think they should be paid. You haven't paid contact. If you feel this warrants some other additional conversation, I'd be happy to bring the gentleman who provided the contract here to your next board meeting. And you can talk to him about it. But you haven't actually paid them and that whole thing is sitting out there installed right now. So from a contract or a leverage perspective, you guys are kind of holding the cards on that side of things. Does that make sense? No. I think you should have that conversation with them on our behalf or bring them to a board meeting for us and be here with us. I'll have it, I'd be happy to have it with them. I think they should come here and talk with you guys if you feel that they need to pay for it. I think they're gonna say, it's kind of the engineer's explanation, right? But they're gonna say, if they had used that right number, this is what it would have been. So they're not gonna wanna just pay for it. So if you'd like to have that conversation, I'd be happy to invite them here and participate with you all at that same time. I think it wouldn't hurt to have that conversation. That's... Wait, help them in the future. Yeah. I mean... Just one question, Justin, on this. I mean, there's a check in there now that would have to be... We can hold it. We would have to hold that's set to go to contact as their next payment. I'd rather hold it just so that way, because I know I'm gonna be paying them out. Can I make a suggestion? You have a... They supplied the rest of the structure. It met the requirements, it's in the ground. I don't know... Before you withhold payment, I would either get a legal opinion on it, or I would pay them the amount, do less the amount that's in question here, because I really... You're not talking about a small amount of money, you're talking about $400,000. Absolutely. So what is the payment? Well, I don't know what the payment amount is, but it's for the entire project, for the entire... Yeah, I wanted to make that... Yeah, we would... Should be the balance, less $75,000, whatever you paid them up for. That's a significant amount. Yeah, but I would suggest, I mean, they've delivered it. They've... Span them up, so... Do we have the wing walls? Have they here yet? They've been delivered, but they haven't been installed yet, so DuBois has them all sitting on a trailer, they've got a bunch of trucks with elevates that deal with it. $203,930, excuse me, $203,930. So that might not even be the full amount I'd have to check for this cost. Yeah, I don't think that's the full amount that you want me to sell. I don't know if it's... I'm sure you'll be okay. We still have enough to damage, even if that gets paid. Can we verify that before we approve those? Yeah, I can double-check the numbers. You can approve it without this one then? I can pull this out. So we'll have to, when we make the motion, we'll have to add that check number as an exception. Exception. And the other thing will be... What you want to do, you run by a legal department, or... Yes, I think we should run the contracts through. So can I ask, is it okay to sign the change order with DuBois to add that work in? I mentioned it for two reasons. One, their application for payment, what's due to them here. It doesn't even include the setting of that arch and all the work that they've done. Typically, a week and a half to two weeks behind. So all the work that they did last week and setting it and doing all that is not included in what they're asking for payment. They are asking for payment for that crushed stone. And again, I think they're owed that. I wouldn't look at it as you overpaying them at this point because, again, they just set $400,000 worth of concrete that wasn't included in what needs to be paid to them. There's still quite a bit to finish for them as well. But... DuBois said the work, it's an engineering... Well, I mean, hopefully that everything's in the ground. The culvert should take and stand the test of time because of that work. And I think it's well worth the money spent. Mm-hmm. I would have no troubles paying DuBois. Right. I concur. So similar to those other things, would it be possible to authorize Vince to sign those just so that we can get them in the queue to be processed? Sign what? The option one and option change order one. The two change orders. The two change orders. It's not my call, it's the board's call, I guess. It'll just come down to a question of what we end up paying, how we decide to pay the concrete work and the precast. So these two change orders, it's only for DuBois, right? And there's a substantial... There's still substantial with the precast company? Retain it? Yeah, we'll validate that on the contract, what's been paid and what the balance has been paid for. So we'll know exactly what that amount is. Is there a corresponding change order with contact that takes out the transportation? I mean, so you're using the right number? Yes. Yeah, we had already done that separately. At least it's been documented, I guess, in their contract that went to the town. That's why they submitted that payment for that $200,000 number. I need to double check those, but I'm confident that that's less than $50,000 that we took out for transportation. Confident. 99%, sure. So we got a quick change order. Is that what we wanted? Information? Well, this one change order is a net zero, right? Yeah, change order one is a net zero. So that one doesn't really matter. It's the one there that is for the work in stone that they put in. Is that correct? Yeah. And I mean, because of the work in stone, hopefully that coal will last, what, 50, 60 years or so? It's not longer. I would hope, yeah. I mean, the other piece with this, they did that based on a conversation with Vince and myself, and they moved forward. They could have stopped and demanded that we get it resolved and have everything signed. I think they worked in good faith on the town's behalf to just make sure that we didn't lose time. Schedule-wise, it costs us about a week and a half to deal with this because we had to buy a little more rebar and some other stuff that came with that footing and obviously more stone that needed to be trucked in. So it's about a week and a half worth of time. But they kept moving because if they had stopped, it would have, you know, two weeks for a select board, meaning we would have been out a month schedule-wise and it wouldn't be opened up. If I think that's one of the things that remembers, have that road opened for the winter? I guess I'd be comfortable making a motion to go ahead and move forward with the sign and the change orders and making sure that we have the retainage with the concrete precast company until we have further to find out where we're at with that increase in cost. You want to have the change that so we have Vince sign it? And so that Vince would sign these. Seconds? Any discussion? Those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. So then it'll be up to contact to... I'll have a conversation with them tomorrow and what's your next regularly scheduled meeting? First Monday in December. I assume there's no holidays there? First and third? No, I think they've done a... December 6th. Yeah, I won't be here for that one. Municipal road grant made program for hydro-seed purchase. I was asked at the last meeting to confirm if we had that in the budget. I had talked to Diane, we do have that. It's about $1,500. Thank you. Thanks, Rob. Thank you, Rob. That was the only question I believe we had on that? That was. No. And then... You authorized me to sign it? Authorized Vince to sign that. I would entertain a motion to approve the municipal road grant aid program. What? Purchase. So moved. Second? Any discussion? Those in favor? Say aye. Aye. Aye. What's that? The addition of the tires for the loader. We wanted to talk about this section. Oh, okay. While we're on the highway stuff. Yeah, so while we're on the highway stuff, we got the municipal road grant for our tires for the loader potential. Yeah, so the issue with the loader tires is that every day there's at least one that goes flat. It's always a different one, but there's always one going flat every day. They need new tires. Tim's recommendation was to get a set of winter tires. He's found a dealer that'll sell them to us at the government price. It's $82.50. Then he doesn't have to mess around with chains or anything like that. And they'll last probably the rest of the life of the loader for us as well. I think the loader is approaching seven years right now. He's absolutely sure it's the tires, not the rims? Yep. He's sure it's the tires. They're pretty well used up. Okay. And that's in the budget? Yep. Yeah, we checked the budget. We do have enough. We talked to Diane in the equipment. As long as we don't have tremendous repairs, hopefully. And we certainly have. There's enough in the equipment budget. After, if you were to approve that amount, how much is left? Do we have any idea? I don't. Off the top of my head. I don't have it right here. So in the winter equipment repairs, we have 40,000. And we have only spent a couple thousand. Winter? Yeah, it is. However, what we could do, and I suggested it to Vince, is that maybe because that loader's used all year round, that I could split it between summer and winter. So I've got 40,000 for winter. For summer, I've got 32,000. How much of our summer did you use? Excuse me? Yeah. Summer, I don't have that number right here, but I know it's under 1,000 for the summer, really. But of course, we have the summer months coming up, too. But still, we've got 30,000 in one and 40 in another. So that should certainly take care of those tires. Make this together, son. Doesn't do any good with flat tires. A lot of labor then pumping up everything. I make the motion to move forward until the tire purchase is presented. That's second. Any discussion? Those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. All right, the other two items we're bringing up, that we added. All right, multi-use path, exercise, any discussion? Yeah, I sent you all an email that has a link in it. So I'm not going to show the short video that this came with, but it's basically an outdoor exercise area that we go on the multi-use path over at the town center. I know that Tom and Carla have been working on this and asked me to bring this to the board tonight to talk about it. The public works group has 18K that they would be willing to contribute toward this. There's also a $65,000 grant that we are eligible for for this from the MGP Healthcare that they have on that. The hospital has been approached and they are very interested in contributing some dollars to this as well. We don't have a dollar figure from them yet. And Carla has another corporation that is also interested in making a large donation to this. I don't have the dollar amount for that yet. But based on that, on not knowing those numbers, just with what we have right now, it requires a balance of $135,000 to be paid. Between Carla and Tom, they believe that we can probably get that between those two donors to raise that. What is this supposed to do for us? It would be part of the multi-use path around the new town center zone. Then it would attract potentially, if you look at the video, people who like to walk, hike, do exercises and do them outside, yoga stretching. Again, the video has a big wall that's there as well. It's a lot of concrete. The only thing that throws me here is when they say exercise center. I envision a gym. It's not a gym. These obstacles, I guess, are the best way to put it. It's like a course, but it's in it. I don't have the dimensions of it. But I'd recommend, again, this is just for discussion tonight to make you aware of where we're at. There is a video of it, what it looks like, how it's used. It's about two minutes long that I sent everyone on the board a link to. That's actually what they want to put in. That's actually what it shows in this video. Yep. The hospital was pretty excited and so was the MVP Healthcare for providing a grant to have that. Sounds like a good update. It sounds like they'll probably come to us with the other potential donors and the figures. Possibly, yeah. To raise the awareness tonight, I think we'll look at it and see if the other donors come through or if the town wants to contribute towards it at some point. Excellent. Thank you, Vince. I have a fund usage discussion. It's always on there. Well, we added one thing, right? We were supposed to add one. Someone was supposed to add one thing, yes. I'm pretty sure I didn't revise the list and send it back out. Good thing we have a reminder. I'll revise the list and send it out. All right. Matt Romy, I letter of interest for EMD and resume for discussion. Yep, it's in your package. He submitted, I think there's about three pages in there of information with regards to that. In addition to that, as requested, I did speak to the chief of police on this as well. He is also interested in taking on that role for the town. We do have a couple of people of interest for this EMD position. We have two people. We have two positions. We have a coordinator and a director, right? And we also have Bruce that's still interested in the coordinator role as well. Is there a thing in this position that if you had two individuals, a primary and a secondary, given that they're out of town, is there a structure in that board for that? The way that I read it, and I can look at it again, the short answer is no, because you have one EMD and you have one coordinator. Are there any trainings or education they're supposed to have? There are some requirements, and again, I'd have to take a look at what they are for that. I believe both the chief and Mr. Relay have the qualifications. So I know that a lot of these positions are statutes, according to what needs, who gets the default, whatever. Can you find out if we can have two people? Yep, I'll take a look. Dual roles? Yep. Either I want many of them. What exactly do we need to fill? I don't know much about that. I'll make some calls to get those details. It's not in the way that I string it up. Just for clarification, if you can. I'll make some calls. Do you have any training for the coordinator position? No, I don't know the answer to it. I have to check. I think so. Don't you have some training in that area? I do. I have some training with FEMA, and most likely there is requirements. So if you can look into that, Vince, that would be wonderful. And then we're... Has the deadline passed for people to express interest, or is there still time? It's still open, if there's anyone interested. Okay. Okay. We need to make a decision according to... Yeah. I mean, when Bruce brought it to the board at the last meeting, it was already due. The deadline before appointing someone is upon us. Right. Absolutely. It should be at the next meeting. I only mentioned that just in case there's other people within the town that are interested in whether we had put a deadline out for people to express interest. Now, in the interim, do we have an emergency management director in place? I think by the book, that's probably you. Yes. Coordinator. Yep. Coordinator, I think Bruce is still in that role, but the EMD... Right. Okay. Perfect. I'll step right up when I need to. Justin, can I add a few things? This is Keith. Go ahead. So I think we're talking about two different things here in this same conversation, which was a little confusing. Matt Ruomi and Joe Staub and I discussed this in the fire department a few weeks ago. What Matt is interested in is the emergency management director position in the town, which is the position that you, Justin, currently fill. Yep. That position will also basically, by default, be the position that gets appointed to the new REMC, the Regional Emergency Management Committee. The REMC, which is discussion point number two, is what you're talking about for those appointments, has two people per town. One is the emergency management director, and the other is a member of either the fire department or the police department, somebody in the emergency services. If Chief Pompryan has interest in doing that, I would be happy for him to do it, because Matt Ruomi, I also, is on the fire department. And we would still have representation, essentially, from the fire department as well. But he's asking for emergency management director position, which is technically different than those other two appointments, but it really does overlap. You understand that? Clear. So I don't think that clarified anything for me, quite honestly, because of that, the REM Regional Emergency Management Committee is going to be taking vote. There's two positions there. Explain it, say that one more time, real quick, simple. There's two positions that the town select board has to appoint to the REMC. Right. Coordinator? The... Don't worry about the coordinator. Don't worry about coordinator. There's two positions. One is the emergency management director, basically, or their designee. The other is a member of the town who is on the fire department or the police department. And it sounds like Chief Pompryan is expressing interest in filling that. So basically what we've heard about this show, what will happen is there's two positions other than the coordinator. The... Matt wants to take him to be the director, which is a town appointed position, and then the police chief wants to be... What was it again? He wants to be the town appointed position, too. He wants to be the town appointed position. He wants to be the appointed designee. He doesn't want to be the EMD. He wants to be the second member on the... Hold on. Let's not speak for people. We'll find out more about these positions because we have our chief of police. You still have an interest in it, I'm assuming, Keith. We have... Or maybe not, but we have Matt, Romy I, as well that has an interest in it. Well, the two positions what Keith was saying is that if Matt is appointed, the fire department has... A rep, somewhere. Correct. And then the other position would be the police chief. We haven't even been told about those two positions, so I'd like to get some information in front of us that we can look at. I thought we went over some of this... You're saying there's other than the coordinator, there's two other positions. Yep. So this is all... I'll get some clarity. We'll get some clarification. Okay, yeah. The coordinator does not automatically have a position on that group. I understand. Okay. So there's only two positions on that group. Bruce sent you the information in the statute two weeks ago. Yep. That information was provided to the board? Shortly, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As well. I'll go through it again. You're not very good at my job, apparently. So we'll go through that. We'll have to do it at the next meeting. Yeah. Sounds like you still love there. There's still a little bit of interest in that position. Yeah. It's my understanding. Yeah. And I would like clarification. I mean, I understand it. Yeah. Anything else? For... Well, typically Matt's letter. Anything other discussion around that is an agenda item. So, all right. West letter discussion. So this is just information for the board. This is a concerned resident expressing his position. And he has written some letters to the select board, to the state's attorney, to the governor, and I believe either to the president. This isn't a borough in residence, though. State residence. I think it's just a state resident. And he is raising the issue regarding the marijuana... The reality of it? The reality of the marijuana shop that wants to come into ruin. So this is just information for the board. Sounds like he's a very resident at this post office box. I'm sure people in the room are familiar with this in the vehicle. I don't, actually. Yeah, it's some light reading for the board. I read through them again. It's one of the ones they did read. Okay. Well, that's all that's before is providing that information. Excellent. We have a budget discussion. Diane? Okay. So what I've done is I've given everybody a first draft. This is a very rough draft. And I've gone through with the department heads and events. So there's some numbers not finally yet. I'm still waiting for the insurance company to give us the updated numbers. You should have them. Okay. So there will be changes. I wanted to, the board, to at least start looking at it. And what I'm going to do during this week is I'm going to be sending you emails that just gives you some of the points that we're looking at changing. So in other words, I am calculating the life of the police department, what they're going to have for salaries. I'm going with a 3% increase because I don't know what the union contract is going to be yet. Okay. And so those are the types of points that I will be emailing to you. But I wanted you to have a look at it so that when we start discussing it in December, you'll have, if you have questions, let me know so that we can be looking it up. But it just gives us some ideas of what we're looking at. Like I said, I have gone through it with the department heads and events. One thing I'd just like to say that we just need to keep in the back of our mind and to be aware of as well is going through the negotiations. The way the contract is is once we ratify the contract and they become retroactive, there's nothing in the budget for that retroactive pay to bring them up to date once that contract is ratified at this point. When do we want to have our budget done by? We need to have it done by. Usually the end of December is ideal, but I think we have to vote on it. It's final in January. And everything has to be into the printer in January. Now, last year we had where we got, I would like to have it where we know what the school is going to do before we approve our budget. Is there any way to do that? We don't have anything to do with your budget. Well, we're under a certain time constraints. We have to have ours done by a certain point. We'll live. The school has to develop, right? I'd like to know because that was one of those things we could have made some changes that would have been good for long term with the town. I don't think it would be good for future planning if we ran the budget around half. Do we know what that kind of variable is that's outside of our control? I don't know. Anything else? The vast letter. The vast letter of support. Yeah, they're looking for the town to provide them a letter of support for the grant that they're applying for that would cover some of the cost of the bridges that they put in, the parking lot that we could actually, they've asked me for the price for the putting in that parking lot up on Darling Hill. They'll actually include that in the grant and we'll get reimbursed for that work that the town is going to do up there as well. So they're looking for a letter of support from the town for the workers to do it on the trail. Yeah, but David sent that letter. Wasn't there a draft of it? Yeah. You want the emails? I don't think so. If there was, that'd be great because I'm the one that's going to be drafting it for you guys to review, but I don't recall seeing a draft. I just want to check. Can I forward that? Maybe I didn't forward the attachment. May have. I just don't recall seeing it. If the board approves, I'll move forward and draft the letter. I'll reach out to David if he does have a sample and present it to you guys for approval. Think house? I guess it wasn't. It was just a win. Sorry. So, David from the Tunnel Chickens sent an email asking for us to support their application for the grant. I made signs by one, obviously. I make the motion to provide a letter of support and have been strapped that for our review. I second that. Any discussion? Those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Approval of license, permits, vouchers, and applications. Do you want me to read it just to guess I have all the information on this other checkout? I think that would be wonderful. Thank you. I can just read it so that way. Because I have to pull this other check. There's not much on it. Okay, so payroll warrant 22-09 for payroll from October 24th, 2021 to November 6th, 2021. Paydown November 8th, 2021 in the amount of $47,942.86. Payable warrant 22-G08 with checks 21-566 to 21-594 in the amount of $377,406.13. Holding check 21-575 in the amount of $203,930.65 for a total of $173,475.48. Thank you, Diane. I thought we were going to check to see what the retainage is. Why are we holding this check for $207,000 if we were checking to make sure there was a retainage to cover the amount of just my understanding? Any second? Any discussion? Am I missing something? Just a formality. No, I'm just saying I thought the whole purpose... By pulling that checkout contact is being held, their payment is held up until we remedy this overage or whatever you want to call it. So even if we were to have paid that check there's still some substantial amount that we still owe them. So either way, it works. That's why I'm wondering why we're holding this one out only because the amount of what it is I think that... So I think we're withholding it until we verify the amount that we have is enough to cover that overage until the board decides. I'm good with that. I know that the engineer said we should send payment, including that, but we don't know for sure if we had that much left. We're going to confirm that and get back to the board right away. Unfortunately due to that circumstance which is costing the town potentially additional money it's going to delay their payment as a result of that error which is really not our fault. So because of the way things played out the information was inaccurate and now we have this overage. No, I understand what it's for. It's going to delay their payment by a few weeks, obviously, until we get a resolution on it. To make you aware, this payment is due November 29th. So you've got enough time then. Well, our next meeting is December but still you're looking just... Two days. And we'll help them get here to have that discussion. A little bit of leverage. Any other discussion? Those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. We can. So we have meeting minutes for May 27th, 2021 and meeting minutes for November 1st, 2021. Take the motion that we approve the meeting minutes from May 27th, 2021 as presented. I'd second that one. Oh, wait a minute. That one I wasn't here, right? You were there. That's what we've been waiting for. Any discussion? Those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Now we have minutes for November 1st. I additionally make the motion to approve the minutes of November 1st as presented to us this evening. Second. Any discussion? Those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. That's why you're abstaining. All right. Round table then. Nothing. Well... Nothing, thank you. Oh, I do have... Is there any update to the Marvin Road concerns that were presented at the last board meeting after the walkthrough? Marvin Road. No, we have... Tim and I are going to go up this week to walk and talk with Mr. Noyce. Excellent. Thank you. Brad? No. No. Any discussion? No. Second. Second.