 approve the agenda. Is there anything that needs to be amended to this evening's agenda or are we good to? Yeah, I'd like to add an agenda. I want to do a severe reports and update on the emergency shelter container on research that we're doing. Do you want to do it on the other business or have it be done under the budget staff? Thank you. You want it before the town? Not before Theresa's? Before Theresa's report there? Yeah, that's fine. So we'll put it at the bottom of the agenda items before the town managers report. I'm going to put it just below where it says draft by 2022-23 by the discussion emergency shelter. So I'll just put it on the bottom of the agenda. Yeah, it sounds nice. Oh, nice. Anything else? I just need a motion to accept the agenda as amended. So move back. Move it on there. The motion was moved by Dave. Seconded by Jane. Jane. So first discussion we have on our agenda this evening is the discussion regards to the Draft Town meeting warning that we had talked about. A little bit last meeting and we're going to finalize it this time. Well, I think that you were going to need to decide is what we added to the budget and heard the budget. The warning is on number 12, shall the voters elect its town officers by Australian ballot. 14 shall the voters adopt all budget articles by Australian ballot. And then 14 shall the voters authorize cannabis retailers. So the slide forward, obviously you can decide what you want to do for say Australian ballot. You know, there's options with Australian ballot is not one and done. Australian ballot is you can put on the morning. So we will discuss it at the town meeting in March that we hold in person and people will vote in person, whether this moves on. It is an effect in the following town meeting. So when you move to vote Australian ballot, you could vote just officers, which means town clerk, treasurer, select board, Lister, you know, those sorts of things. The other thing you can do is you can also have your budget voted Australian ballot and other public questions can also be voted Australian ballot. The select board has had this conversation with a mix of people present and it seemed like the common thing was people, if they were getting a lot of maybe having representation because it's difficult to vote the budget Australian ballot because you can't have that discussion that you have at town meeting. If somebody wants to change an article, you can. You know, someone would have to vote the entire budget down because it's a budget discussion. But the ballot obviously is already printed. So the select board has can decide what they want to put on the morning. However, the select board has been listening to people who said they wanted to do have maybe vote the officers Australian ballot. So if the select board doesn't choose to put it on the morning, someone could pass a petition to do so. So the select board is trying to get a lot of public input to make an informed decision. So maybe that isn't necessary. The other question on here is about cannabis. Originally, when the first act would ever that came into play, it said the towns had to vote on cannabis retail operations by this town meeting March 2022, or we would automatically be opted in. Then they changed up act. I forget the number came in and said, we're not going to make you an automatic opt in town. You're going to leave it up to the towns to vote cannabis retailers in or out, and there's no deadline for that. So we don't actually have to vote that at this town meeting. What would have to happen, however, is if someone wanted to have a cannabis retail operation in Bethel, they would have to come to the select board. The select board would have to do a town vote. You would have to vote it. Whether they were close to town meeting and we could wait, or it was early, the select board wanted to do a special election, whatever. But either way, it's still, that's a yes or no that has to come from the voters. So those are the unusual things that are on town meeting, are on them possibly to go on the morning. But no decision had been made. We tried to publicize it more to get a little more input. I know select board members have been talking to people. Chris and I went and had a breakfast one morning with a group of people at Sam's shop. It means they're on the right good basis trying to get, you know, to repeat. But that's where we're at. Not Sam in favor of or against it, but when I was looking at this a little more thoroughly, trying to figure out how that would coincide with the meeting itself. So let's say we did the option of, let's say we went to vote the option of officers as the Austrian and the Australian ballot. But we were going to hold the budget in person. How would that meeting look like? And to vote. So like, I think that you still have to have the town moderator, town clerk and treasurer we've done from the floor. Because you can't have the town moderator be voted on because you've got to have a meeting that day. He would still be, he's in office until the vote. So basically what happens is when he's voted in, it's for, it's until the next vote. So even if you, like if say, just for example, Rick Benson gets re-elected this town meeting in person. He stays, he's the moderator of the next meeting. He'd just be running the back end of the meeting, the front end of the meeting. Right, he's still the moderator. Because I was just wondering like, it might be some of those pieces that, I mean, it's not to say anything. It only takes a couple of seconds to, you know, usually there's no real solution. Exactly. I mean, that would be something that you could just do. I don't know if you can. I have to do the statute. I don't think so. I think that the vote is exactly the way it put it. I think it has to be shall we have, shall the voters elect as town officers by Australian ballot pursuant to that statute? I don't think you have an option. So what happens is your person is still the moderator and until it calls right to lose voted out. So, but how you're writing it looks fine because I think you would have your budget discussion. Basically, haven't you done that in the past? I guess that's my question. What do you, you're voting the budget, if to say you were voting, you're doing your same town meeting during the day. You just have an election going on at the same time for doing for your officers. So your current select board is still your select board until they're not. So it's going to include lesbians and the state government? Yes. Yep. And you don't do library trustees. So yeah, and I think we've, now there's no more. I mean, there's no more grandeur or. I mean, the information that I have collected right now. Yeah, there's no more. People that I've talked to, like Austrian ballot with the budget and the cannabis thing has not been popular. Yes. Australian ballot. Yeah. And the cannabis case hasn't been favorable. People I've talked to. And I would say, you know, somewhere maybe close to 50% kind of on, you know, we did the officers in person or not. Seems to be the information that I've collected. I don't know if you all have, you know, talked to anybody else and what you're. I mean, I've been talking to more folks in my age group and they would like to see from the floor for everything. And cannabis, the cannabis thing, they just didn't see the sense of even starting to talk about that until we had to. And we had a couple of people that were, you know, in a, you know, older than me. And they were just said, and they said. Beautiful. That's not bad. I'm just saying a couple of people were very vocally opposed to cannabis saying we're so close to the interstate. They didn't want people just getting off the interstate and then, you know, buying cannabis, getting back on and not really spending any time here. So that, but that was just a couple of people that I heard from. What about you, what has been the year around? Conversations that have hit largely with the Equity and Inclusion Committee folk. The Bethel Black Lives Matter folk. And they want, they tend to favor voting for officers, Australian, because it's more accessible to a wider number of. So those who go to town meeting can vote, but so can those who don't. And it's, so that's, so, and if we're here, you know, half 50-50, then I think putting it on the ballot makes a lot of sense. Or I'm putting it on the warning and then having the town, let's talk about it, must debate it. So you heard some favorability for the officer piece. What about the budget itself? I've also heard great appreciation for town meeting. Okay. For the whole idea of the democratic entity of people getting to get in and, you know, share that. And what about the cannabis piece? If we just put the officers on, the cannabis piece would be an in-person meeting. So if you do the cannabis. Oh, you're saying. Because, yeah, if we, if we, the way this is written, if all we put on was item 12, the elected town officers by Australian ballot, that leaves everything else to be done through the floor of the town meeting. If we put it on the warning. If it were even on the warning. Right. So whether it's cannabis or a non-buddy depot, whatever, if it's not an election of an officer, it goes on the... Are you in favor of putting out a Woodward Act? Like it sounds like, from what information I feel like it would cause, like that people would rather just not deal with it unless somebody petitions for it. You're talking about cannabis. Yeah. Oh, cannabis. Yeah. I was just trying to go through the thoughts for you. Yeah. I'm mixed on that. I did hear a rumor or whatever that there may be a wholesaler, a person looking at growing it. And that's beyond our purview. But it's not retail. Right. But it's also telling me it's not going to knock out. Right. The thing is at some point we're going to have to... Well, cultivation, yeah, whether he was going to sell to someone else or what he's going to do. Right. And that's a state issue. We have current. Current? Wow. No, we don't. And among the castes, it's going to be perfect for the propagation. So, Sierra City, there have been a number of people who haven't suggested that to me. Yeah. Cultivation is a comment by the state, not in this regard. Part of me says we're going to have to face it at some point. Whether you agree with it or I agree with it or oppose it, it's decided at some point that town's going to have to deal with it. We want to have to decide to deal with a special election which costs funds that we don't have. Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be a special election. I mean, somebody could come to us in June and say, we'd like to do something and we can say what we're going to put on the morning march. Yeah, I don't think there's currently a deadline on when. I'd have to reread the stock. But remember, as soon as we vote on it, so if you did vote positively for it, at that point and somebody came in, they would grab on with that one. So whatever regulations get passed down the road, it wouldn't matter at that point. Right. So if you start with or, so even if you turned around and voted no for it the next year, anybody that might have been in. Well, you can't vote no. It's dripping. Okay, pass down to us. Why don't you let them get in there? That's a person's fault. Right, I'm saying you can't vote no. Well, you can't. Yes, you can't vote no. You can't vote no. You can't vote no. So we voted yes and the one person who managed to sell retail. Do you want me to go get it? And let's say the next year we have an over pouring amount of citizens who said we don't want this, put it back on the warning and we vote no. We would become a no-town that the person that has the storefront isn't that grandfather. Right. Yes, that's what I'm saying. That's what I agree with you. This is it. So, I mean. So, but advice first, if we were to have it on the warning for this meeting at the time of voting no. That we voted no. What about you, Dave? I think you figure out on the scale of 14. 14, can't miss one. I say that's not fair. Okay. And then what about the Australian ballot pieces? I haven't really talked to people that I personally like. I do not want them to get rid of the county. It's very important part of our, of Vermont, of Bethel, and the whole thing about somebody or any other city that is a majority of people. And now for me, this is what I'm about to say. I forget because I've heard that in the past. Don't vote for this person. I'll be used to it. No, no, no. And that's okay. But they aren't leading the vote. So, what, the audience wise, why don't I just take a poll to see hands or yay or nay. I have a comment, Chris. Yeah. My comment is in regards to the Australian ballot for voting and, you know, for the budget as well as the positions in town, that is from an equity perspective. I think it's worthwhile having that on the morning for conversation. That for equity, from the equity perspective, I think it's a worthwhile topic to keep on the morning. While there will always be people who are unable to take full day off to come and be part of the conversation, it can be worth having. And so I'm in strong favor of having it on the morning. Well, just remembering, Vermont, everybody's allowed to take the day off. It doesn't have to pay if they're allowed to. That's true. But the reality for many people in a blue collar, urban class town, is that they may not be able to afford to take the day off. So if we pulled, if I just pulled the, like, maybe a show of hands, I mean, we did this in the last one, too. You know, I think there was a lot of three people at the last meeting. So, you know, our sample population is pretty small. But if we went to a show of hands, I mean, is there in favor of Australian ballot by town officers? Can I? So this would just be like, you would vote for the officers by town officers. Yeah. I just want to understand completely that the Australian ballot is something where, if we're not here, you can still vote. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, an Australian ballot because, like, presidential elections. Like an absent ballot. You would go, yeah, you'd go between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. to the polls and you'd be able to vote. You wouldn't necessarily have to be the town leader. Or a man. Or a man. Yeah. You could do a, an absentee ballot. Correct. Yeah. But you're right. Yeah. If you requested, yeah. If you don't want to go to vote, you just ask the absentee ballot. It can't confuse you. You can't even vote. Yeah. You have to go to the polls. Yeah. I agree in a lot of ways that we should be having more public participation. But the problem is that the people who come to the meeting with people who can take time or are committed to coming in, and that is a slice of the population. And so if we're representing people in our town, then Australian ballot is a really democratic way to do it. So it isn't being, I don't, I wouldn't support Australian ballot as a supplement. Or as a, I mean I wouldn't, I would only accept it as a supplement to a town meeting. I think the town meeting is absolutely necessary for people to come in. But it isn't just about voting. It's about discussion. And I think it's got to be blending somehow. But I understand that you can't have both an Australian ballot and a town meeting from the floor vote for, say, an office. Yeah. It's one or the other. No, it's just that right now it's only being presented as one or the other. You can't, if you have people who have signed petitions and so on and so forth, to be placed on the ballot. That ballot is printed and it's hard and fast. It can't be amended at the town meeting by having another person nominate it. Right. So it's the accessibility of the voting process that I'm talking about. Right. There's a part of the other key discussion that you can't just say in this climate of necessarily being more inclusive. You can't just say the only people that are voting on this is people to make it to 10 o'clock on Tuesday morning. It doesn't make sense any longer. But at the same time, you can't give up. I don't think we can give up this meeting at 10 o'clock. So I'm not solving it for you. I'm just saying my preference is both. I understand that. I think is why the conversation has divided election of officers from financial budget and other business. One to have an edit in person for those. It seems to me from the full one that we've done around the state that most of it is two ways. It's either full Australian ballot and no town meeting day activities, which seems to be most prevalent in the state of Vermont, especially in the higher populated areas. And then the other one is some of the hybrid that we talked about where they may seem like most prevalent on a mountain was they vote for the officers through the Australian ballot system, and then they do the financial piece in what they call the town meeting set. So you can kind of blend both of those. And then there are very few towns in Vermont that still do everything from Vermont. And I guess a piece of what we've talked about for years is if it's old or not, it's still a tradition of the town and there's not many towns that still will do everything on the floor. It's not like everybody's landmine at home. So it's still strange things, but it's a big historic piece of the town. So how do you, how do you include it in your life? Yeah, I chose a lot of it. And it was only electric. And then on the other board, there's a lot that you can choose, you know, next. So now the inclusion control we're hoping before we're worried about isn't going to happen. You're going to have four people, you're going to decide who you're next month. That's not going to be a school year. No, it's not going to be a school year. Yeah, it's not going to be a school year. You know, nobody wants to lose the overall seemingly common that we were. Nobody wants to lose the community of town meeting and having people get together and have great discussions and pie. People were very adamant that they wanted pie. And so we had a lot of feedback. So it's been interesting. And we had spoke to, well, Jesse thought, remember, he was here one night representing the Equity Inclusion Committee. And Jesse said he thought, you know, Australian ballot, his opinion was Australian ballot for officers, but, you know, maybe not the budgets. Because we had, you know, but we've been talking about it at each, you know, meeting a little bit. So, and then, of course, it was the cannabis issue. Well, I think it makes sense not to do the body of Australian ballot. Then it's just, yes or no. As opposed to having it at a town meeting where you can discuss and change. Like a few years ago, we changed the rec money for the skateboards bar. You know, it's changed town meeting. So that makes, I think that makes all the sense to have the budget done from the floor. I mean, nothing's easy because it's, you know, it's just like we kind of had, I don't know, six, seven years ago when Amber's gone to the board, that town meeting was very confusing because somebody got up on the town, you know, off from the floor that changed the budget and half the people there didn't even understand what they were voting for. They voted for it and then we had to find 54,000 voters to take out the budget. You know, and nobody, and that wasn't the intent, but then went through, you know, so it's, and I guess if you had Australian ballot for your budget, it's yes or no, right? I mean, there's no, maybe, or if they're changing this. So, I mean, I guess there's a silver lining for all of it. You know, is any citizen of Bethel can come to anyone of these meetings planning for the budget, leading up to town meeting, and have an opportunity to mind the voting process and then get into the development of the budget. And it does not all have to happen on Monday. I mean, I think there's a lot of opportunity for them to have to come to me. And I, you know, I really stand in favor of at least having the discussion of coming in. That's the benefit of it, it goes on in the morning. There's a great side of it, I don't go to the morning. And then whoever is the president of town meeting is going to vote for them anyways. I mean, on the budget and the things, I mean, we've, you know, last year obviously we did everything in the question of the ballot because of COVID, most of the time it is from the floor. And we always have an informational night or two for the budget in person before that. And I wouldn't say last year we had just as many people that showed up on the, you know, on the COVID year as we did the previous years, which is three or four people, you know. So you're only getting a sample population of three or four people out of 2,000 that are voicing their opinion. But in person at least there's usually on average 200 people, you know, that are there. So at least at present and often they have a question or something. But we don't have to decide which is the better choice. We have to decide whether to put it on the morning. Because right now it's either the select quarter they put in our number two or three on the warning to vote on town meeting. This doesn't mean that this town meeting would change because, you know, unless it's voted from the floor, we will continue to be an in person voting on town meeting. So nothing would change in March. This would be if we decided to put one of these questions on there and it did, you know, was successful then, you know, the 2023 town meeting they would change slightly. Well, it would change. So I got all budget articles, but you're actually not saying anything about offices. You're talking about putting the entire town meeting on Australian ballot. Well, if you look at, we did it separately. I looked at BLC this morning. So 12 is Australian ballot for officers. Yeah, it's for both of us, what I'm saying. You're giving the official warning. Giving the voters a chance to say yes to Australian ballot on both offices. Yeah, that's what the dyslexia is. And that in 2023 would be just like that one more time here. I know, and that's why they're... And that's what I'm saying, is that you can't be a worker like this if you want to have an opportunity to blend them. I don't think there's any intention currently to have a job like this. This is just a job. I think the intention is just for us to have a talking point. These are the options that we could put in. Yeah, this is... Do we want it? You know, because we could just say we're not doing anything. Well, that's what I'm saying. And then somebody could petition... There's beneficial aspects of Australian ballot, that's what I'm saying. Sure. If you word your warning so that it can discuss, so that it opens up the possibility for Australian ballot to be part of the time of the legal process, then that can be a yes or no, and it doesn't need to change everything instantaneously overnight. But if you pass it like this, it's like there goes a time in, in one vote. Yeah, I took this right from BLCT's draft warning selection because we had this conversation, obviously, that was always voted in the floor. So this was when I... I got my language from them because they said we would do it in three questions. We either do Australian ballot, the budget, public articles. So they're suggesting once we vote in three. So we've just been having this discussion because it was brought to the slide board so that to see... And some people want the officers with Australian ballot and some people don't want anything on Australian. So it's been this kind of mixed fact. Well, there's a real big problem in the way people look at governance. Yes. There are a lot of people who will just, could possibly just say, yeah, we want Australian ballot because it's more inclusive and it's all these things. And it is. But that doesn't mean that they understand anything about town meeting or town budgeting or town government. So you can't, I don't think you can use these examples like this. It's wonderful. So I would suggest that we... I'm just going to throw this out there. Leave 12, eliminate 13 and eliminate 40. Right. And I think that's what we talked about the last week that was probably the most feasible approach that occurred today. So what that means for folk out there is that the only thing about town meeting we would vote on would be whether or not to elect officers by Australian ballot. Everything else would continue that way. If we eliminated the... And it would be, in my opinion, less confusing to the people at the town meeting about what it was we were actually saying. I'm just curious. It's going to happen in here. It seems like the discussion is about making voting more accessible to more people. So if you word it like this, it's just like, oh, the interjections I was turning about for town office would be gone. I just wonder where the discussion is in this life board for expanding voting opportunity to town meeting beyond this. So give us an example. So obviously, as you know, this is just a draft. It doesn't matter. Well, I guess I'm just trying to figure out the way I see this for the way it is either... Why is it going to paper ballot to be a voting employee? So what's the motivation for you to be considering Australian ballot this year? The motivation is we've had people come to us who said they want us... They want this life board to consider voting Australian ballot because they did it last year. And now people are coming saying we want to do... We want to vote Australian ballot now. They don't want to have people come in person and vote for the officers. They want to be able to do it Australian ballot. What can we do both, Tracy, from River Road? What can't we do both, absentee and in-person voting? I don't know that... As a D, you can not have not Australia. If you're going to attend it. As a D ballot, when we count ballots, we can't actually do the other ballot. You do, but when we vote... Is the dog part where the dog walks? Is that out of the record? I don't know where I'm going. Yeah, it's out of the record. I know because right now the rec center is an issue with people not cleaning up dogways. So I don't know if that's an issue there currently. But I don't want to mean you have... Oh shoot... Or four to two... Is that right one down here? I don't know. I mean also people who don't... But it's hard. You can do events in areas. I mean, you know, I've been out for a long years and that sort of thing. But also to people... Something that we could toss out to them, record it or something, to ask them about. But... So I want to start with our infrastructure. I'm just trying to take notes. So yeah, I'm not sure. That's a good question. You can bring it up when you have your... I'm sure how that would back up. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. And make sure we at least have the discussions on what we can do better there on that. So we'll have the discussions on what we can do that hopefully alleviates some of the issues to the industry. Thanks. As soon as possible. We also have a note to Oscar and Justin about targeted enforcement. That's what we can do immediately. So I'll mention it to them. So when they're on... Just go down under the bridge where you can park and walk down. Yeah, we're the ones that clean up under there all the time. But if you just sit your car there and just for 10 minutes and watch everybody going back and forth. If you can ask them how much the bulls when they're on duty to maybe just look at River Street a little harder. Well, a few people are just so people understand that there's an activity going on. I can also reach out to Marcos Miller at the state and ask him about signs like that we have. What can he do on his end? On the state's end. Yeah. I'm sure you won't be able to do that. Oh, I don't know. We'll see. So we're going to move on from the comment to our first appointment discussion we had in regards to the Gilead Road. The end of the Gilead Road, the last three... Chris, could I just... I think you've got four minutes before we start this discussion. Is that okay? Yeah. You guys got all my stuff in the packet. So there's a ton of stuff in the reading. Yes. Yes, he's crying right now. I haven't met you, Mr. Christ. She's crying. Yeah, everything was in the packet. Okay. You read the letter to my doctor. I gave you all the stuff. I think it's really important you buy it in almost one month. For years and years and years up here. You've got the letters from my doctor. They got everything. You've got the letters that the handwritten register letter sent to my brother. Yes. You've got the register letter from my lawyer. I just want you guys to know that it's safe. Now I'm just going to have to go around this. Rick and Beverly have created a very, very serious volatile and harassing hostile situation that not only restricts me, my friends and family, the free right to use the easy right way in the town road and to enjoy our property. That's about this town road past the town road. And also the general public who wishes to use the road. We have 15 witnesses in 2008 with my lawyer and the list has grown to the ones that we know that have been voted and harassed about the use of the road. They have a huge control issue with everything. Everything up there, they have huge, they've got to be controlled. Now, I can go on for an hour about different stuff, different stuff that's gone and my kids can come in and the other people can come in. And he keeps on telling me, he keeps on saying I would say that if none of it happened, it wasn't over. We've got the witnesses. It's never going to stop. It's been gone. It's been going on for the second game, six in our building camp. It's slowed down a bit when we see the registered letters, but only for a short period of time. And I'm convinced that the only way that this cop man is a lawsuit where they suffer serious consequences for their illegal actions harassment, bullying, and being belligerent and aggressive behavior creating a hostile situation in the legal for people trying to use the town road. Now that I've brought this to the town, it's probably just being by our side on this matter and providing legal counsel that brings the situation and that it's been going on since I've been here. But the town can make an appointment for me to meet with the town council on this matter. So thank you. Thank you. So other than the documents that I'm going to look back at, a little bit about this last meeting. I was able to catch up with Therese up there today with the A&R gentlemen just to kind of walk through and clarify. Would you clarify that he was speaking about right road? Oh, right road. You're talking about right road. We're talking about that. We're talking right now. The reason I stopped the legal is because I'm the one who got it special. And number two, I'm hoping we'll make it to the stop. It's not going to stop. So I just wanted to stay on and ask the great deal of the discussion in regards to the Gilead Road and the stormwater issues, the classification of the road and some of the conditions and some of the work that we've done. So I guess that's the piece for anybody that doesn't know. So the Gilead Road we had so I didn't work up there with the the sprinkler of 19 and Therese and I had assumed at that point that the class 3 ended at the house you know, you get to the top of the road and Gilead is the house and then Gilead... It's owned by Derrick and Beverly that Andrew and then from that residence forward I had always assumed that that was a path or an ancient road type establishment. I didn't think it was even class 4. So to my surprise that that on our list is a is a segment of road that is listed as class 3 road but not up to standard. And I took some pictures while I was up there today just so you could give a little bit. I said it's been a long time but I was up there like 3 with Therese just to give you a little understanding of what the road is again and there kind of what the road looks like. I mean it's kind of traditional pictures of Gilead. That's Gilead. So right now I would say if you went on a majority of class 4 roads in Bethel that is probably an accurate representation of what the class 4 road was. There's often storm water that either flows down the road or there's some water bars that are installed to move water from one side of the road to another and there's limited culverts in place. We don't do maintenance of the road or plow or anything like that. So the current issues that we have is a bunch of issues up there but the current issue we have up there is that some water bars have been installed without our class 4 permit piece and the result of those water bars has moved storm water onto someone's property. So typically if you have existing storm water infrastructure and that could mean a culvert could mean acting water bars that you have permission for the landowners we can maintain those at any time so we can put a new culvert we can re-ditch the water bar but if any new so if all of a sudden you decide you want to put in a new water bar you have to get permission from the landowner and evidently what's happened on that piece of road right now is that an individual has gone out and done some water bars and that storm water is now going onto another individual's property so at the last board meeting we had talked about because the work was done we called illegally without permission that we would go back and so forth and then we would look working with A&R and the state we would look towards a long-term solution to standards or reducing it to a class 4 roadway those types of things because we also had received the person was receiving the water on their property and also contact A&R so there was a you know there was an investigation so we received an email from the investigation for the enforcement officer Dan Mason so yes the board had said at the last meeting you didn't have a road to go in and grade those out and I said well let's so we reached out to A&R and said okay what's the correct answer here how do we deal with you know this road can you walk it with us and give us some advice on what the road you know how to deal with it so we did walk today with a gentleman from A&R and he did go through the town you know well there's culverts there we don't know okay somebody there's three active culverts there are there well and do you know whether those people had on the bridge we don't know so I want to bring that up because the precedent is that people are going to be here throughout the town well that's why I said there's a combination of a short term solution and a long term solution that we have to think about the short term is the most recent work that has been done to the road that we had talked about the last one was putting it back to where it was and then the long term solution is dealing with some of the storm water well there's some storm water we can take care of now that's pretty simple that we can do and then there's some long term pieces which is more what do we do there do we declassify it down to class 4 and do some one time upgrades on the road or do we upgrade to class 3 which doesn't seem to be I don't know why it was ever class 3 because it's got boulders the size of this table but they used to be great they used to be great they used to be great they used to be great they used to be and it seems like there's one individual who has a home on the end of that road that seems like travels back every once in a while I think in a lot of these situations it had to do with who was on the board finding whether or not they thought there was a place to be developed at some point and then you go to the classification of the road up there you see so they didn't that nuts or not a standard classification allows 4 towns to have a road that's class 5 class 3 but isn't maintained that way because there's no year on maintenance and they don't go as fast as the year on maintenance it is class 3 so the question is in that in that classification how do you address albeit you're coming late to the department but you've got unauthorized you've got decades of unauthorized alteration of a class 3 road and just because it's not standard because your ordinance is different because I know like right now well it looks like a class 4 road but it's usually not like a class 4 road so people should be able to alter the train but it's actually not it's a class 3 road and I know that 5 years ago one of our neighbors put up a speed bump on North Main Street because cars were going too fast and that was a final offense because it's a class 3 road we do have a policy about it working in the town right away it's on the website it's a process for people to go through to do work in the road certainly so there is a process for it for class 3 and we have to pass for a road policy but there's still a highway access policy for curb cuts and stuff so when we met with A&R today there was some stuff that we could take care of and go up and we first accessed the road on the left past Andrew's there's some ditch there that we could re-establish and get some water off the road and deal with that to make sure it's going into the culvert so we did get some good information from A&R but you're right, the select board has to decide what are they going to are we going to turn this road from class 3 to class 4 so there's some options the agency has instructed the town in Vermont to do is we have to take care of the 10 or 15% of the not up to standard roads we have to take care of the 10 or 15% which we've been working on because it's the new municipal road permit so you have to make sure we're bound to some of these roads that used to be this class 3 that's not up to standards now we have to start upgrading these or declassify them to be into the correct skaters how much more what do you recommend? right, yeah, it's a good point so there's some other issues up on that road too in the book today clearly there's some off-roading activities that are happening on there there's a couple spots where I would say jeeping, there's some things going on that's kind of ruining a couple spots it has damaged some of the ditching, you know, what little ditch there is on the side of the road you're right so there's some activity that's going on in the road that is you know has a negative effect and you talked about putting signs up but we don't have people up there policing them so if the jeeps blow by the sign they blow by the sign unless it dips down by an end it was if you can get in there how would happen to help the 500 feet that's running down the road? what we're saying was that was one of the that was just one of the areas that we talked to that he gave us some advice on dealing with we didn't say it was a whole road, I just said that was a piece of it that he had talked about when we looked at culverts, whoever installed those culverts but right there he was just saying to deal with some of the water that we have at the beginning of the road his suggestion was that we we go in and re-establish that ditch line ourselves, that was just one comment he made about a piece of the road well there was an end to it if you go across that there's a waterfront I regulate to the left there's a prosecute over it just past that on the right there was always a waterfront that went down in the field for years and years and years and years and I guess probably the Romans watched Dano or I think it might somebody got filled into that was there for years and that would take care of a lot of it but also until you put a weight restriction on that road you can fix all what you can do all the things that you want and he goes up there with his 40,000, 50,000 down the waterfront that's a whole lot of the road in the ditch it's going to ruin again anyway well I know that that's how it would appear so you're trying to decide what to do with the road or are you trying to decide what to do about the issue of the current stream of road and all things so there was three things so the first thing is the water quality so there was an issue about the potential water quality of the runoff so that's why we got the A&R so A&R and that because you also just reported this so I'm just saying because this discussion blows up quickly so if you're talking right now about the alteration on that section of the road and how do you address that I think that it doesn't necessarily have to do with where you make new stages, you're talking about whether or not you fill in the water bar that were made in motion at the last meeting for the town to go in to remove the water bars the select board already made that motion at a prior meeting and then we obviously have our own issues and then we decided we had a schedule meeting with A&R because of the enforcement piece that came into play obviously it was the fact that the road work that was done that was under the guys that they thought we'd allowed road work to be done that was now damaging the private property and we never allowed that road work to be done so they select board already made a motion at the last meeting to go in and take them out we just met with A&R so we wanted to see what we had for additional information tonight so the select board's motion still stands so I guess what I was questioning was if you're going to start talking about the remediation on this road to draw your attention to our report because yeah I'm just saying that there's no point in the weeds about I mean in my mind talking about where the ditches go on the gilded brook extension of the talking about because my report points out six other roads and there's vicinity in which extrapolate to the entire town and you're going to start taking these water bars around but you don't have some more comprehensive viewpoint so yeah there's a lot of solutions that could come up with the gilded section but are you understanding how that plays out into the rest of the town you're right it becomes a bigger issue I mean they have a classical road policy which you guys have looked at what's your recommendation Carl do you feel like not about this road in general just in class 4 roads you've seen the classical road policy do you think that that's something that I think it's all the inaccurate I think the state has allowed the town to actually ask any responsibilities to these roads and both the gilded brook road and the right road exemplify the current conflicts and the right the problems of the state has allowed the town to create by allowing this no management issue of the 4th class roads the roadbed there's no standard roadbed up there everything on these roads making these 4th class roads haven't seen any town standard for probably ever so now you've got a town right of way in which you're trying to perpetuate public views and the landlords with faces have to deal with inadequate roadbed, water quality and a whole lot of people driving off the side of the road into the ditch because it looks like it's 25 miles so I think that the solution is that these roads need to be thought the greater they need to be closed off and I'm not saying they're going to be trucking material in all these roads but they need to have roadbeds that can sustain the traffic that people are expecting to put on and that has to do it has a lot to do with water it's water management you say storm water but it's not the storm this is groundwater we're building these roads and all of the roadbed operations in woods a wood road that's going to be used by a machine has to have more integrity than these 4th class roads do so that's just this is a big problem I don't think it's the kind of vehicle to deal with on its own but I feel like we had that road last year where we had the failings where we had to if I were going to do anything on a yielded book road for a logging operation something I would absolutely I would put a ditch and put water bars ditched all the sections of the water and all the way back the other way to those culverts and it would be a deep ditch but it would bring the water back the other way because unfortunately whatever the issue is that the neighbor does farm there and the water in those access points is just going to lead to more erosion and more difficulty in the farm operation that doesn't need to be there especially if you have equipment but you have to start building out every single road and it's like that in terms of that one Do you feel like there's a lot of issue in my opinion so I'm just asking a question it seems like some of these roads that we've hung on to forever just go to someone's private property so it's not like it connects from that hole or a branch tree or a field or whatever to an existing road so it doesn't create issues for landowners that have these roads when in fact is some of these roads again it's my thought or opinion some of these roads that we have that go to nowhere we should just I don't think that they should be class 3 or 4 because it's really cheap and just an easement just throw it right away to somebody's property and it creates a house of them because all of a sudden the jeep shows up we have this issue on Spooner Road these guys are pulling cars out they keep going and Hooper Hollow we've had people get off from Camp Brook Road to go down Hooper Hollow to try to go over to go to Rochester you just got off a perfectly good paved road to go somewhere so what do you feel with some of these roads do you think we just need to I think economically to come into space would need to get rid of someone for sure because there's way too much remediation and we walked on an entire road on our committee where the entire length of road was used regularly as if it were Class 4 road and it is no longer discontinued in 2007 people used two different private properties private land and most of the travel ways didn't even anywhere close to what was the ancient server and that's regularly the landlords on both sides leave their roads open because people use them as if they're a fourth class road and in fact you can find those roads on maps readily available online for that kind of recreation so if we do it if you did say well like the upper section of my road goes all the way up to the town line and Rochester has no road on the other side but everybody who drives that road goes on to Rochester they drive right forward so long they go right into Rochester they've made themselves a road and it's been there for 30 years so everybody believes it's there so now we gotta spend $10,000 on gravel or $10,000 on the road so I know that the Class 4 road committee is looking at this and obviously we have a lot of road is it something that the Class 4 road committee is hoping to make a recommendation at some point in the future to the Select Board to say hey look we think that this road X, Y, and Z you need to get rid of or discontinue should the Select Board expect some sort of recommendation at some point from the Class 4 road committee with some guidance to say get rid of these I don't think we've talked about it but it seems very difficult criteria are amorphous because you know you can walk on this road and you can say well it doesn't go anywhere but but you can solve that legally what Bruce was saying you can grant the right of way to the person to get there but the the difficulty is trying to decide where the where the dollar dollars amount so it's not really it's more of us trying to give the committee the Select Board information to you to decide whether or not this road grows up or not I think that's what it really comes down to we're not professionally capable of going out and deciding whether or not what all what all the factors are we're just going to have to start picking roads and going there are a lot we came we don't even know where the road is we don't always have to start a survey of how it goes first because there's no road there's no thumb so I mean if someone will say if you can show us roads and you can't find the road back we should then road this road but it seems like that's really a decision to the Select Board whether or not it grows it doesn't go anywhere do you say it doesn't go anywhere the Gilead Road does go to a trail on the rock I had one time to drop my home wood they only have it over in the 7th so that is a road was a road it was a pretty good road the town of Rochester no longer recognizes rights and ways on some of the roads on the other side of our town line so if there's a road that goes there and is being used by a Jeep Road it's not the Billy Book Road I'm talking about the Bi-Mode it comes up to a property line it's a stone wall and for 30 years people have been driving so it looks like a road and that would be a road that should be going up so it sounds like we have I think that all of these roads should be real it's true I think what you're saying I think we need to start looking at section looking at Franklin I call it boxes just because when we did the April 2019 flood we just divided the town to 4 and started looking at sections and saying it's a statutory process and I understand it's a select board decision they have to hold a hearing and I know what the process is for it I guess that's something that select work can start doing is looking at sections of town and looking at these roads and saying what does it go to does it connect to an actual another town road or are we dumping people out on private property in another town so we're just creating this nightmare what do we get from the state for some of these roads for us to maintain I think it's a good point I think that's what I tried to point out before you have significant barriers on all of these cross cross it doesn't matter like we're just saying we have a plane that started a benchmark somewhere that was oriented in 1823 and you can't find that benchmark now so if somebody is going to have a squabble about the center of the road by the way who's going to solve that that's the town battle holds that survey it shows where that is how are you going to prove it you're right Carl and that doesn't matter whether somebody drives on that 15 drivers a Sunday or if they never go on it at all it's the same thing as through and Charlie Wilson Road is a good example it's a major fork it's the stone chain trail all the time and there were sections of that where there's easily 100 feet from one road up to the other where the road has changed over the years and it's sufficient for a wide right there's a private land being impacted right there right now and so the impact has been demonstrated potential impact up on Gilly Brook Road active field access is exactly the same thing as some Sunday driver deciding they're going to drive where it's easier to drive around a mud hole and they're on a private property so they're right with these issues but how do you turn that around as the state is pumping money in the back country recreation and they're counting on towns having these public rights away open for this so this is not I don't think it's as simple as saying throw these roads up because I think it's bigger than the town mud hole where a statewide mandate to improve water quality across the state and every single one of these towns has 25% of their road base high elevation no water quality control no nothing it's just a mud mud bath wherever people want to go impacting water quality impacting public for privacy in order so my recommendation is it doesn't solve particular issues for the roads that we're considering right now but I think we need to be standing out to communicate with other towns to try to see what kind of resources we can get in the state to support this because I think it's beyond volunteer or this takes a lot of time to look at these issues specifically and to categorize which one of these roads we've found that there's a file folder in the town office for every one of these roads and they're really comprehensive they've just been sitting there nobody knows what they are but every single one of the poles has the survey they've got all kinds of data they've got several different iterations of the fourth class road committee attended different information over the years and so rather than just redoing all of what we just took on this section of the town I looked through there tonight but you're right, I hadn't thought about the problems you're right, there's a real dichotomy between what's happening between you're right, they're pushing out for recreation you're right with we're in the process of writing a $500,000 grant for trails but you're right at the same time they're pushing this, they're saying you don't have to maintain class four roads you want to do more outdoor recreation to get what, create problems for people on their personal property so you're right, this is an issue for everybody it's not just that fall that's why I think if the dollars are limited you're going to have to pick and choose which roads you're going to put this money into well it is we've been setting money aside on the capital road one between bridges and class four roads but yeah, pick a road and how do you decide who's the higher road we just started talking about last year actually setting aside some money to work with class four roads because we hadn't done that ever, we talked about that with no one last year we started to set aside a small amount of $5,000 a little bit here so how does that go so in regards to the Gilead road piece that we're talking about tonight so up there with the A&R guy his recommendations at this point was to fill in the water buyers the way they were originally I mean yes, there's probably culverts and many others that got put in by somebody that didn't have permission either but we were just talking about the recent stuff he thought overall that I mean obviously he said it was a fourth class road he thought that it was in favorable condition for a fourth class road with some minor upgrades obviously for a third class road it's not even close so because the farther you go up the road there's some culverts that active water currently is being relevant so there was I don't know four or five new water buyers that would be filled in and then the bottom when I say the bottom piece where the water buyers are at the very by the helm that we would move that water buyer up to where just down to where the field access there on the left is and move the water so we move the water buyer so it gets right into the ditch line there so there'd be some minor upgrades because right now the water flow all the way down to the home and then it hits a 90 degree water buyer and it goes into the ditch and if you get a large flow it's just going to come into the road so he thought by putting a 45 angled water buyer up by the field entrance and we can get it and probably maybe 100 feet of ditching where you can put the water buyer there the road is down here and the banks are up there well the combination of that bringing it over to the ground that we would fix that bottom piece in water bearer towards the field no towards the ditching towards the existing ditches here there's no ditch here there it is but anyways so that would be a short term that would be the short term thing so putting back the water buyers that were done and just doing some minor work on that bottom we'll call it bottom two or three hundred feet in the road to get the water at the bottom of the hill into the correct ditch and then I think it becomes this much larger conversation like Carl is saying not just for what do we do with the right what do we do with the gillier bro but what do we start doing with endless dozens of other bros that are very similar in situations which might be partnering with their neighbor asking for help from two rivers or biting off these single hand only as we approach them all the time and I think that's what we're getting at in a matrix way you gotta look at it like your other road survey and your capital plan for your road improvements and you need to have somebody do more than what we've done in terms of actually we could easily throw some out because you just can't figure out where they are weekly but there are others that somebody's gonna have to walk on and it's gonna have to be some authority other than a few neighbors that are going to volunteer time like you find the EMR you gotta have people who are being paid to in a professional capacity in these kinds of designs and these kinds of decisions and we all have, you know, practical knowledge and we can stick our neck out a little way but we're not gonna I don't think it makes sense for us to that's a great idea I'll reach out to Rivers and see what we can do for finding the survey for that I think that's a great idea and if the class for a road committee has any specific road where they can't find the road bed and they say, you know, just let me know and say, Trees, this is definitely a road you guys need to look at about whether we're gonna throw it up just continue, throw it up, whatever but I think that's an excellent idea and I'll reach out to Rita this week and ask her about we've already done our whole inventory of roads and culverts and road erosion and working on our hydrologically connected segments and all that so I'll ask them about that so along with that we started about ten years ago doing water quality assessment on the fourth class roads for several of the towns in the way of the water so they may have a lot of really pretty comprehensive data about stream crossings and water and road beds and so forth so we should have an understanding and what they they're very biased they're very biased on what they consider water quality these are all pictures I showed you when we zoom in on the next video a little trickle of water going into they're very biased to the farmer the little trickle of water going into the farmer's field also does not have a big water quality issue he can pass you a 50 cal in the watershed very eager to go to the watershed about the gillian and this is not a water quality issue they follow that you read the article there's a big the agency of the water farm agriculture in the A&R they turn their backs on it it's going to come to a head eventually you're not going to get away with it forever right now all we can control at the town level is how it impacts the selfishness how it impacts the town I mean the private disturbances will have to be settled privately in this case where there's a shared interest of a town road and some private annivers we had acted as a board last time to say the most recent work like Carlos said a lot of work has gone on that road over decades but just the most recent work we're going to put the recent work back we're not going to direct that it had to be done by others with the greater we're going to fix it ourselves so maybe do a couple of minor things while we're out there and then the culverts function the three culverts we looked at today had running water how far did you go all the way down then we went almost to the fly you could see it right before there's not six or seven great culverts there's some so I guess what we were looking at was to fill in those water wires that we recently put in do a little minor break while we're out there it's going to be there and then re-ditch the water on the very bottom end of the two or three hundred feet of road there from the field entrance down in the house get the water into the ditch line sooner rather than have it come down just cool we're going to have to do a ditch out of two of them there's no ditch from Andrew's house up to the second bar there's no ditch zero ditch so that's where we're at now there's obviously going to be some long term discussions on do we keep it a class 3 road do we change it to class 4 do we do upgrades what upgrades do we do to it and how does that impact the dozens of other groups in a similar situation that we're probably not exactly what both of you are looking for but that's kind of what we decided as a town for now I can live with that but then when that gets all done and he goes up with a new spare and ruins that ditch that ditch that you do then what we're going to pay for that we're going to fix that taxpayers again are you going to put some kind of weight restriction on that road so that you don't rule 50,000, 60,000 pounds or however much it weighs I don't think so you know I think that's kind of those are the issues that the town is facing on numerous roads for different some of them may be agricultural related some of them may be rental related some of them might just be rental or ocean related but we have those issues going on I mean I think it's something bigger issue that we're going to work on it's not going to get settled now or maybe even next year or after that one of one of the most used recreational roads so there are people who use it a lot with no seasonal or any kind of regulation on best practices and that might be how we may prioritize some of these fourth class roads based on usage I mean if the state of Vermont wants to see more recreational usage on these roads then we have one second of most usage now and then we go from there and I think too you could talk to a lot about the valley ramblers I can't remember the name of the ATV group but if the town plants a road you can preclude all public use of it you can make it a legal trail it's only what it has to do with it and in a case like that private land owners can make arrangements as fast as they want to have seasonal roads so they don't have to be entirely beholden to those arrangements but you can close them or you can throw them up or you can change their uses but you have to have some kind of public education what if you start getting ready to close these roads down they become private land and you have to have some way to protect those private land owners from any kind of use and we had several people give us testimony that they had 4x4s backed up in the driveway looking for the old stage road for example that is supposed to be at the end of the driveway but there's nothing but long there and the road has been unused so long there's no place for them to go so if you start taking roads where people have been going and you start changing their classification then we need to figure out how we're going to educate the people so that that private land is protected that's a good point whether you gate it or pen to it you're going to have some kind of sign there with some kind of authority so that when somebody decides that I don't have my grandfather taking me on this road I should be able to go on because it was a class 4 road 50 years ago who's going to remediate that issue when people throw about their ancient roads I don't think that that was done when it was a few years ago everybody went through the whole ancient road roads were discontinued but you're right there was no sign put up that said everyone in the state was doing it at the same time they were all in the same statutory timeline so you're right that's why I say it's a big issue isn't it true but it is you're absolutely right I know it doesn't solve anything but I'm interested in seeing what kind of a collaborative approach can be created because you have to actually have communication with the towns on the periphery if you have roadways that connect because both of you can make decisions about whether or not those are the roadways that you all want to connect to keep connected and then the state can come in because the state is implementing trying to connect all the control so it's kind of hard for the committee to make decisions in the road for the people you know I think that's a great idea so I'm getting some information from Tomb Rivers and from Warrior Valley partnership putting it together and kind of starting looking at places reaching out to these right other towns like Oregon saying hey we're looking at this section of roads these are the roads that come into your town what do you have on your side you're right and starting reaching out to the clubs that are using the roads now they'll probably give you a better picture of which roads we need to use more it's a road that's being shared between let's say us and Rochester then we can meet Rochester and say what do you think about upgrading and putting more money into this or if it's not being used you know do we use that different to the classification of the roadway sorry I'll make it all faster and then we had and then up on the right road we're doing some discussion some tree clearing and Teresa and I are up there today a little more difficult to pick up than I thought it would be but it's got some challenges and some spots probably only about eight feet wide but it's another one of the and when I was up there today Carl and I was thinking about when I first came to the board there was a discussion at that time about it's class three road up to the house and I think a quarter mile past the house currently and then it turns into class four from there to Rochester Rochester and then what we had talked about potentially taking that quarter mile chunk and back it down yeah well peace was an energy of the time and we talked about like basically what the gates at now that would be class three that would change before right there the discussion we had was trying to evaluate what the differential was in terms of the class three the height of the certificate I actually saw so I pulled it tonight and we got back looking and I did find an email between you and Keith talking about this where he had driven a staining and then there was some math on a piece of paper about it what it would take to upgrade it versus taking it from class three to four but there was the email exchange between you and I found it with those folders that you were talking about earlier so I didn't take a peek at it tonight to see what it was like I can tell it kind of stalled out right there it just what happens a lot which is the road here and I don't think that the state doesn't maybe from what you said earlier the state is putting on more scrutiny on that so your third class road certificate is going to have to be tighter possibly as you move forward so that's not an equipment but again that's another one once you get to where the truth class four limits are it's not passable but it takes a little bit of work and that road and there's no Rochester road on this side that's another good example of what we're talking about and if you actually respect the private property owners you probably will be able to turn around and then it might be wide enough but do you know that the turnaround is going to last for a while today you're right, it's a good point and so the private home as a public traveler you're making a big assumption because you see real facts but yeah I mean what we have to the first part of the permitting process was identifying the roads that you have and now they're actually going to start looking for you to upgrade 10 or 15 percent each year of the roads that don't meet the standard currently and you have to you have to you know send that information to the state with a little bit of proof saying we did this work so anyways we have like 10 years we've got to upgrade all the roads so you said the next year well the question we do have what obligation do we have to maintain a road so that there is access to all property owners that's true if it's class 4 either, any we can't abandon if there is a property there right? yeah you can, there's a process for it but yeah you can there's a statutory process if you were going to throw up say class 4 I mean class 3 obviously a better maintained section of class 3 this is a broader example of class 3 road but there is a statutory process for the select board to throw up or just continue a road and the chances are if somebody lives off from a class 4 road anyways they probably already have they have a right of way over it and they already maintain it figure out how to get through our property because we're not planning to play somebody who lives on a ranch for example we don't go all the way up there we don't have someone that has a home up there to bail in so they access either to some of you they don't come here in the winter so you don't have an obligation to the legally to the people this process I think that the obligation on the road is not to provide access to the private ownership but provide public safety this assumption is that somebody traveling there is going to want to talk to them I think there are a lot of these the basis for the road certificates and then can road safety for people to travel on So Carl, if someone gives you a way to this class 4 road and you get back to the private planning there's a government or beyond who has a peace problem and he's never come to my bank to meet me because the count right here is big how does that work that I don't know if it's a statute where a state of law says who shall never land on I think you have to grant that person a right away you can't do that because the town has a right away now across the that's my question you'd have to strong you'd have to strong I don't mean to cover but you'd have to it would basically be you would take your right away the town's right away and between it to the private owner that was actually that that but it becomes a private road so then that's where it issues is that now you've got Sunday traffic was on that road with four wheelers and you decide that it's only going to be a right away with one property then you inadvertently put all that depression away but they could they could they could get it but they're also right and they're right you can't create a land block piece of land and so you know that's why people say signs in their deed we've talked about this before with another piece of property Mr. Sharp I think we talked about this because maybe just because someone's property doesn't necessarily outline your access it's because someone the only one who can give grant someone authority to use a town road is a town so in some cases even if you just continue to road they still they might actually be able to take legal action against the person who you know the other property so they're almost the property so it becomes a sticky witness as far as this continues you grant someone a right away just to make it a clear ownership for it I think that example is a good one because you joked about that a little bit in our community because yeah the town could say oh no we don't want to fix this road up it's just ran through right away the dentist that's where it's right exactly yeah any kind of yeah exactly that was another question going through my mind that you were to give off any of these roads we have to know where they are because now we've got private property deeds that need to be written in such a way that they can be yeah so I think it's really about this you know if these were my assets I don't think they would define it all and need to feel secure about them at all that's a good point Carl any rights not just ours so in regards to the right road piece of the tree path tree path for clearing I mean just like our permanent processes right now you work inside the right so but the question has become as you walk through that piece of road at first it's the same land on both sides of the road at first half a mile or something not quite that far and then your lands on the left your lands on the right so right now Brian wants to do a little bit tripping tree clearing up on his side but also wants to do some on the left side of the road correct in the right in the right I've got a needy right away that says I can we have that we have saw that we saw that no you did well you gave us one that said that there was a right away on there and it didn't talk about it it was back and forth between your own but when you drove up anyways we started driving up there wasn't a lot of brush on the first part right before your camp that actually looked pretty nice must be you've done that in the last few years and then yeah it was nice I went on the left hand side through the tree eventually I'm thinking maybe my grantee might have the house up there I need two walks out anyway so if I cut these trees that are the right of the tree you can reach out and touch some of these small ones I'm going to cut because somebody down the road on the right in that road to make it so you're around passable it's going to be a lot cheaper than it is to cut a tree like this plus it's the danger of it it's too close to the road you don't need to worry about it that isn't what my deed said my deed said but my deed says you can't my deed is probably as important as yours so I guess the trees are right up through there today trying to envision where you wanted to have trees without a legal opinion I guess on my end of things it's as simple as the person on the right side can get permission from the town and the person on the left side can do it or you guys can work out a mutual agreement that it's okay if you cut these three trees or something that are on my side but when it comes to can somebody go from one side of the road to the other because that tree may or may not affect their side of the road how does the tree policy what is the standard do policy on a fourth-class road because on my third-class road next to Billy I can't go cut a tree down without the with the standard next to the road I need to get permission and drive it and that's the way so I am in that plan I almost had an agricultural drought across so it's no different than if I had a right of way to do it so your town tree policy trumps the right of way and the state law the state law says that the towns have within the towns right of way that we have the authority to allow or not someone to cut trees within our right of way and so basically right road when it continues on to Rochester is still a town right of way so we can control who cuts trees and who doesn't within our right of way and so yeah we had that conversation so I think the first step is it was good that Brian reached out to get permission to cut trees right so that's the first good step is to reach out and get the permission of what you've done and it seems like obviously from what trees I saw there had been the first quarter mile really well kept on both sides of the road really good and then once you get more into the I guess you know the fourth class road as it you know deteriorates but more impassable you know there's a lot of there's a lot of obstacles right there's ledge and some rock faces there's some really close trees that make it you know tight you know we did when trees and I were driving up through the most part of the road looked pretty good we were looking for dead trees with possible trees that could fall in the road and stuff like that didn't really see there were two that we had brought up your attention that are sitting on your land that are you know one is a dead tree it's just leaning over that could fall in the road in time you know maybe those would be opportunities to work together that clean those up when you're going up they're not working together well I guess my opinion recommendations were after looking at they would be you know to allow Brian to use the tree clearing on his side of the fourth class road I understand but his lawyer sent me what I was saying that his lawyer is trying to take my variable that's what he's doing I've got a written variable that my two uncles granted and they passed it on to go to the the church the church walk in the grandeur they reserved the right to widen that road from 25 feet one side in the center or whether that's a class whether it's a class 4-0 or not that's not how it works well I don't okay yes and that only takes place if the town throws up the road anything about the town whether it is a town road or not I don't know how a lawyer could give you or anybody the right over a town road the only one who could give you or Karl or anybody the right to expand the town's right way or to build out that road would be the town nobody would have had the legal authority to grant anyone the right over a town road except for the town and your deed you know from what I've read that you sent obviously the town didn't grant that that's something that was somehow done amongst other people and we did not as I said spend money to get a legal opinion on your needs we didn't do that that's between you two that's certainly a civil matter so it's a town now besides trying to take besides trying to take my right away he's also taking your right away he's saying that he doesn't want you to go on his side that's your right way it's true it is when Chris and I went up and looked at it that was exactly what we were saying what we think needed to be trimmed on either side of the road what we were looking at we were both looking at it we're not robbers and foresters here if I wanted to upgrade that road to say up to class 3 step and pay for it myself how much would you let me try you don't visit town make a commitment to accepting the class 3 road before go with something that they have to consider because you know for someone to bring that up to like A76 or B72 standards it's very expensive in whether the town you know it's rare that a town would agree to take on more responsibility or more road because you're right you have to bring it up to standard the select board would have to you'd have to go through a bunch of groups engineered and have it brought up to standard with an agreement or hope that the select board was going to agree to take it on because normally last thing any town generally wants more road to maintain and once you had done that and the town accepted became their responsibility so I'm not really sure I mean it's probably not let's try to get the class 3 part in I want to upgrade it so it's a lot better possible for myself to have lots up there there are no obligations to do so if I want to do it they can go better to my level if you can you can put in a request to do the road operation to do the permit when I do that are you going to come up and listen to him and say if he doesn't he doesn't want his two trucks we're not going to grant you that for me I guess it was federal road work with the title I mean it was just going to be road work only going to affect any property on the left side of the road that it's a case by case it's a hard issue because we don't know exactly where the road bed lies originally it's tough for the it's tough to look at it there's a policy for it the highway there's a permit to put in there's a policy to go through we have to look at it but it's trick because that road you have some ledges over here you know that would be something we have to do some research for to see if is there documentation where exactly is this a road that we even know where it existed originally as to how the road was laid out so it's not a cut and dried issue and certainly not anything that anyone's going to answer tonight because I'm basically losing complete control over a whole line of roadways in my property what you're saying what you're saying you know I don't think you have a right you don't have a right you have a right there's no public right since there's a public right your right way is redundant it doesn't have value now you won't believe that right way is if the town highway but isn't so American being my D.P. not no it means you have a right way it doesn't exist so if the town all of a sudden because that's the fourth class road so you're not moving that if the town decided to throw that let's say at your house we decided that where it ends at the front we're going to end right we're going to throw that road up and it's no longer going to be a fourth class well part third class but fourth class road then your D grant you right now I'll get more access to your property with specific rights right with specific rights but right now being that the town has a fourth class road there that you have the same rights that he does to use that road and any other property over that may be you know I don't know but I don't think so but you guys, you guys need equal rights basically however the general permit to do work in the right way the most part is for us to say we don't want you to do work in the right way because we want to encourage you to upgrade the road and get better and do water quality and storm water you know revision this is more about we want to know what we're doing so we know like what people pretend or did certain work on a ghillie somebody at some point put his clothes and I don't know if he knows what it's at you know but it's just giving some documentation of the work that's being done on there so in this case with the tree clearing you know the select work went in you know Theresa and I felt that anything on your side of the road if you wanted to we personally didn't think that there was a lot of tree clearing or driven that needed to be done we thought it was actually in pretty good shape but if you wanted to do some on that we didn't see any issue with that on your side we're going to ask him to mark some trees that we saw that were dead that we saw that were dead and that we're leaning that we think that you know the ones that are on the front of your truck I mean we did recommend that we did see a couple of trees that were leaning over the road that you know that should be taken care of and that could be either or not you know either one here you're planning to even rip it off three trees and say you could take those three too or maybe he has to take care of it himself but that was kind of the way we looked at it basically unfortunately we are not a judicial body so we cannot resolve the legal dispute that you had with other gentlemen here regarding what your deed right away includes or not the information that was provided to us also indicates that there is a second opinion on that that is a legal discussion that we don't have any jurisdiction on capacity to solve what Chris is suggesting is in fact your best option even though you don't believe that the two of you can get together to resolve anything but I would request that both of you agree to decide whether or not the trees that you would like to remove are if there is any reason from your perspective that he could not remove and if there is kind of figure it out and do that as two human beings even though you say that you've got years of contentious relationship I'm respectfully requesting that the two of you sit down as adults and say here's what I would like here's what I can do and that you find a way and if you need somebody to kind of be a mediator in that figure out how to do that but what your your bringing to us a legal issue we do not have the authority to resolve if both of you agree that this could be taken down on my side and it's in your right away and you agree this can be taken out in my side and it's in the right away I'm sure that this select board will try to facilitate what you would mutually agree but we don't have a thought to do what you're asking so who does you two have this agreement between your piece that you two, it's a simple matter and you two would have to work it out between yourselves but no so anyway back to the issue of him kicking people off the road the town can't the town can't do anything about that that you're right away the town is supposed to be promoting the recreation and for people's enjoyment when he's kicking them off in my family people that are going to my camp that's an issue that you've got well people's the obvious is the road is open people are driving up the road you don't understand no it just doesn't yeah to take the people to come to you I haven't had any that he's stronger well you know something I really kind of overlooked this when I hired a lawyer to take care of this he's stronger he kicks my family off chasing them off the road no but the town would have to keep public views open on that road absolutely so this is what I'm asking this is why I want your legal counsel and I want to give them the witnesses that will testify in court of law that he has stolen them off and he is not allowing us to enjoy our our rights to enjoy our properties he's done it for 35 years I guess what I would say this is the right road so on the right road I mean it technically is the public road that anybody can enjoy that road however it is landlocked up through there it's either your property or your property so it's kind of one of those things that anybody that's going to go up there and use the road is going to have to be a visitor or a visitor because once you get up here it's all private property there's no town you're saying yeah but everybody Dave myself everybody's got the same people rights to access that road typically people that probably would access that road it would be some sort of relation to the landlocked because of the location and the privatization of the land there unless they're traveling they're following the road and they don't know where the road is and they don't realize that this fourth class road extends into a farm right where it ends so then you have what's driving on and what's driving on but it's more of an official you know when you choose the people down at this point I would just say if there are any issues with it not being accessible for all the individuals that have been impacted have gone to the town to right at that date at the beginning you talk for whatever reason and then we can contact them and discuss it not going past we're saying from here going forward people have the right to access your camp their best property it is a town currently a town situation so yes from this point forward if somebody is disturbed from access in your camp then let me know who it is and we will deal with that absolutely because if it can be happening there are better to do that again it happened twice this time going forward if there is an issue it's no different than you can't get roads and things like that there are certain legal reasons why we can't be sure it access to public roads right you can't use equipment in a way or leave it out or whatever you can't do that if that happens then it's going to Theresa's and then we can go for that and that would include intimidation and that's what's happened in the past and that's what I've had enough of so what the board is suggesting to you is that in the future anyone comes to you and said that they were harassed intimidated or whatever and I'm saying this so you're hearing it too that individual needs to contact the power office and file an official complaint that we can respond to we need to respond to it from the person who felt intimidated and as close to the time of the intimidation as reasonably possible we can always go for possible people that absolutely absolutely if someone stops to say hey who's driving out the road just to see who it is they're going up to your camp it's you know just wave and hey if they know the person especially let's face it you're related you probably know each other there's families then let them go if it's a stranger with you're in place I would expect you would stop them at your camp and say hey where are you going you know you could turn around here for pronouns or whatever I would expect the same thing from the GDS yeah absolutely not people are authorized to know each other each other's family but I would recommend on the legal end of the end you can get a mediator sit down and go through your needs and try to find some sort of common ground for resolution going forward on certain deep restrictions they have on one side of the road versus the other I'm going to get that sort of out I don't think at this point in town so back to the trees I don't want to cut back so that two cars can pass going forward hold it down you can turn on stuff on your side of the road when you know some of the dead stuff on the other side we will ask Derek to mark but you can't make that too I can't hold it if I can I cut trees that are four feet from the road I'm not going to cut I'm interested in cutting the stuff I'm going to be five inches and down it's just going way too close to the road like we said the trees that are on your side of the road so the one that's up right the trees that are on your right side of the road would be the ones that we talked about that we're giving you a slight look at inside the town right here but hanging on the left side of the road that would be happy to do something that you would mutually agree on or something that will happen ridden off or whatever to say that I can't do that unless we get something else given to us and if there's any I'm not sure it's about going forward if you have any potential upgrades to the road that you want to do like you talked about do you write down or create a travel in it then allow me to get three involved what's essential is that you want to do the work out there and we'll work with you on allowing you know what's easy it's bad enough so that you can consider selling selling out because that's how it landed he's driven one couple of other two of them dying so anyway so anyway if I was to sell this piece of property okay sell it to Dave Dave comes up and the first time he wants to have a family I mean if they want to have a cook out even if his wife chases up the road where the hell are you going this is probably the property after you know if you're a tiny piece of land after you know where the rest is private you're going to come up and ask him to do this role and then so if I sell it to Dave he's going to start asking them out we just come and all this he's debating that he drives people off it's going on at your point if there's any issues out there having a party involved no so what I really contact if I sell it today and then Dave starts talking out to the neighbors and they say oh yeah he's been like that for 35 years taking people out that's why I'm growing so old he's going to be in a lawsuit for selling them one of the true issues negotiating is that you assume that you have already have a pack of mutual distrust but each of you is going to do that which is in your own best interest and that's where a mediator can work with you so that you get what's in your best interest and respects that you don't trust Derek and Derek gets what's in his interest and respects that he doesn't trust you that's not the job of a selective that is a legal issue and I'm just encouraging you even on the basis of mutual distrust after 35 years of relationship however strain that's there there's something in there where you are mutually that can be mutually advantageous recommend urge encourage suggest that each of you consider some sort of mediation to resolve this it's not going to happen here not going to happen with the ANR because that's not what our job is our job is to maintain the road our job is to police the road so that it is accessible to all persons but our job is not to resolve your this your issues and it's not because we are just for bias in favor of agriculture or in favor of private property only it is because that's all we can do all we are legally able to do in the future if you have an individual who feels threatened coerced whatever have that individual contact the town office and we will act as we would with anyone in coaching town property town property hold me and we'll get the date, time, the information and the time the constable obviously everybody has access to that road and that's that's headed up there families and friends absolutely let me know and we will deal with it because that's unacceptable and I can only cut the trees the trees that are on your side of the road or any other way that he agrees to on his side that he agrees to on his side so then you're my aspect there he's a landowner on one side of the road landowner on the other side it's a town road it doesn't matter he's a landowner on one side of the road landowner on the other side of the road that doesn't make me that my name is down the road that I walk across the street that history is down but if you had a reason the town could send the road to us on the other side of the road that's what we did today that's what we did today that's what we did today so you can't just we public can't just assume agency to the town to go out and take care of your family we went out and took a look today and we saw two or three trees that were out of distinctions with Brian Brian's wanting to take care of a section of road who uses but we value the same thing on my part but I can't act as an agent to the town to address hazards that don't belong to me because I'm not an agent exactly so in this case I want to go down the road to my neighbors it's no longer on my road I can't decide if it would benefit me to be removed that's a town decision a road through decision or it's pre-ordered into decision so that's all I can say you're on one side and you can make those decisions on the road if you're going to make decisions on the other side of the road you have to make sure that those decisions are suitable with the road to bed or you have to make it on the town the town road I'll have to look into this written right away I'll have to look into this Steve Wester did it Steve just took Doc's eyes and Steve's still on it so you can ask him about obviously you have a letter from Rick and Bev's attorney who's telling you that your interpretation is different than theirs so ask Steve, Steve's, you're right and then you guys can so for now I'm on your side and if it's a convenience factor then there are a couple that we had pointed out today that are on the other side of the road if you want to take care of those then you can make the agreement and that's talk about that but that what we just know and if you come up with any other information just feel free to share that with Theresa Ward I appreciate you guys this time this evening we are going to move forward with the Wester Warrant agenda if you have anything else we can reach out to us what's your what's the what's the what's the what's your stance on I'd like to know what's your what's your stance on what our position is if this is in regards to the other stuff about in our house and stuff it's beyond our curfew the state the thing about Vermont is the state we only have the authority granted to us by the state the state is the one who set the rules for stormwater and water quality who is enforcing those we don't currently have a policy or a town ordinance that I can think of in this second that is about stormwater whether we have horses in a crossing or this or that I do know that the state of Vermont has changed some agricultural which used to be agricultural best practices to agricultural regulations so but that's something that where AG and that is definitely covered by A&R and not within our curfew as the town but I'm just asking what your stance is on the town you promote clean water you promote clean water I think at this point Brian we're going to move forward with the rest of our data to this evening and we can go ahead so we have the piece of the budget I guess when you went written so there's the budget pieces that are there that is also human service appropriations that's something that you end up calling that yeah so the way it works out in fact we've taken the applications from the nonprofits that are historically requested appropriations so we started to ask questions to make sure that the folks that we were giving wanted to actually service Bethlehut residents and so we changed the wording a little bit this year to get to ask that they give us more specific detail numbers of people that they have service to get a little more detail with how they actually work with Bethlehut residents so out of the first five that we got in three of them don't service any Bethlehut residents so the question came up then how we want to look at the appropriations concept and change it we want to focus more on Bethlehut groups that don't necessarily apply for it now like the food general or the voice or whatever so I'm just asking for an opinion and not asking for a decision and we just want to get some conversation about the direction that you're going so when you say currently service zero Bethlehut residents is there any historical data I think it's because there's not an animal there do they serve some five years ago well we have to go back and look at some of them over in the Hancock event if you sit in pass they were a few people from Bethlehut they all passed away so they no longer service any Bethlehut residents a lot of adult learning Windsor County mentors Windsor County I think are relatively new group but they don't serve Bethlehut residents but they could but they could the next question is is there any futuristic opportunities for Bethlehut residents to use these services oh yeah modern health learning is certainly an opportunity if anybody wants to be involved in the programs but currently does your criteria ask for is currently the city people in Bethlehut or is that a filter that you want to discuss that's what I wanted to discuss it's part of historically it's been in the letters that we send out and over the course of time it used to be when I first got involved they were more specific with how many folks that they served and now they're starting to kind of drift in a different direction for example the Montrans those folks they're still very specific about how many calls they had how many students they took care of after school and things like that you were saying early on so far you've recognized three apparently they'll have membership who it can be here so I guess the question is do we continue to support these organizations because they historically applied and had received appropriation money how often does the list change it doesn't really change that much it very rarely has a new new group come on it's pretty consistent maybe one that comes on and off and we have some that also apply we asked for financial and it's obviously not profitable there are organizations that serves let's say Winsor County but not specific to the best of course I think also where it calls me to go with this a little bit too is we do have some of these human services that appropriations that aren't at the level that the identities we'd like to see funded too so there's always like you know, Tritown you know, where they say you know, Bethel's piece should be 8,000,000 currently given a 6 based on right share things like that so I think where Paul might be going with this a little bit too there are some identities that are getting zero Bethel usage as of currently would some of that money be better appropriated towards the other services that aren't given more usage? or is that becoming a metric that's overblown as everybody has stumbled over themselves and proved that they've got higher level of services down there we're going to evaluate the services based on the potential clientele that they could serve and the need for those people to have that access when they're in need of it and we request that we increase it everybody's under pressure all the service groups are under pressure we hold the situation so I'll just try to get a little feel about the appropriations due by that we meet in the first week or so it might be it might be best to just see what comes through or you may get some new ones that might pop up there I'm sorry Paul I don't remember how my head I feel like I've seen one but do you have a does that people currently have a policy plan? I feel like I've seen something about human services I feel like I've read something in those books maybe a policy or a policy about it I feel like I've seen something but it could be just going through something old that I found something old but I'll come and see Teresa I should say from the perspective of someone who works in human services I found the navigating process for municipal allocations complicated and unclear and I've worked with municipalities all around Vermont and New Hampshire and I have a very clear policy on the petitioning process and many people need to sign a petition I think before the select ordinance it's really clear for the human services providers they also give really clear details called to your point what the request should entail to the number of service the number of citizens who will serve or different formalities around funding and I've found that the process is hard to navigate because I think to hear about it because it was really unclear how to access the process so I think that's a good point which group are you in? It's a bit different now but at that point I was working for a stage coach and I was the one who first pushed it through for a stage coach to receive funding but it was really unclear so we currently have been a little more active in the last couple of years than it was a few years prior to that we do have a human services committee that just meets around the budget time that does have the certain criteria laid out for potential applicants of the deadline a couple of things that we look for which is basically what revenue are you looking for and any information about the residence that you can provide they're all a little bit unique with ride shares some like stage coach but they're a different name now we've had individuals come in to give us really good presentations in the past showing like not just ride share but how that makes up what personal visits they do versus what just random pickups so we get a lot of data but it's kind of a there really is no big guidelines I think which we ask people to give us a specific number that they're asking for because some of the groups don't do that and we also ask for financial information and specifically how they impact the town of Bethel it's basically the three things we ask them to send a letter out in late October we send another letter out in November and we ask to have everything back by December 1st and we still end up chasing people just to make sure that they didn't send it we've had some that send it electronically to the town clerk because that's historically what they did and we didn't find out about it because she thought it was something else she thought it was an invoice for last year's appropriation those were different elements and that was a good example of the in-person budget discussion is we had two years ago we had an issue where in existing human services that's exactly what happened is their application got mislabeled as a potential bill they put a different pile and we were able to vote from the town from the floor that year that would've been left off by making an amendment to the budget under the human services where if that was an Australian ballot type situation it would have that option to make an error type deal and then we had another one the other year where we actually ended up doubling because we hadn't forgotten had a prior year prior year and people have voted from the floor to increase people appropriation that's why I'm not sure if you've ever had people to share with them but all of them can see what I see they came one time and had a regular appropriation and then they gave a speech on the floor at the town meeting and the town voted to increase the appropriation so we thought it was a knowledge of some things but we also had a camera to jump in but there was an appropriation that it was a small amount I think it was like $250 a year that dates to this point and then nobody knew who the identity was it was like you just signed off every year and we're like who is this identity and then we found out we can provide any services to anything locally it was like a world type organization that only you know I was the one who raised the question about quintess and whether why we were supporting that when we had agencies that were closer and more accessible well maybe some doubt over that and maybe something that maybe and so I think there's some statutory stuff so I think the question of the number of people served is relevant I think also the question of whether or not the agency is has a service area that that kind of officially like it's the Windsor County or the Randolph area you know but what's their service area and how do and then we make a decision accordingly but so I think they're definitely good ones to take a look at and question as we get further into the process and I would suggest that we are not supporting the food sales that we consider that would that go down as like that part of the human services appropriation or would that go more under um I mean after the budget like like the library and you know the section of the budget I don't know if you look at it and say you know pick this one for one that you just one you just sent me for Green Mountain Economic yeah and then part of that is there's dues that you pay as a town and you have to look and see what your statutory requirement is to support some of these like to rivers obviously we send money for capital for economic development there's something for capital that you send you know for the most part those are something you're paying almost like a dues I think more of it as a dues and appropriation so if the food shelf wants to go I think they should go through social security well historically they've never applied they've always the churches have always supported the food shelf that was the source of funding the four churches that established the food shelf I mean again you have these three that may or may not continue they're not you know there's opportunities to whether it is to I think if this number is right it looks like you're asking for a 1200 dollar appropriation which I imagine for the Quintown would be a sizeable chunk of money it doesn't seem like that's the correct number but to say okay we're not going to support a particular entity maybe not they're budgeting also so it's another consideration it's like the gentleman that came in two years ago the stagecoach kind of gave us how the formula has set up you know I think 10% of the funding comes from the channel maybe you know just show how we tie it into their budget so do we have one? yeah good intention good work they came up with a topic you know something to talk about I mean it's good information we were talking about where some appropriations didn't even know who the identity was was it appropriate for some of the money it was a period of time so this is what we'll give you and then we found out the stagecoach was like you really should be here and we'll give you this bunch and yeah whatever we had double the ridership for the next town that was good so can I just hit the highlights of this draft budget I was thinking you can probably look at that one right next time this is just this is the first draft obviously we reached out to Perfoy to figure out what the retirement is going to be you know currently in this last budget year we went from 13.84% to 19.5% so I'm looking at like 22% I'm not really sure waiting to see I know that Perf is reaching out about the peers to talk to her a little bit to see you don't know how our portion of retirement is going to be we don't have to say that it comes directly from the state I know there was a comment about us going to his suggestion was that we went from Vermont State to Perfoy Retirement so visas to Femurs Vermont Municipal Retirement which is what I was familiar with but when I spoke to the state she was like once you're in visas you can't go to Femurs Perf did say he would be willing to if we were interested in that he could be happy to support that legislation but obviously that's not going to help us for this budget year so very small health insurance increase actually the premium only went up 0.10% so we did I did look at this in the past I think that we budgeted 12% for a premium increase so I actually cut this 10% see that I have a couple notes there's still some things that I need to double check like my FEMA schedule for our ERAF I need to check some debt schedules I wasn't in the office when I was working on this but if you skip along you're going to get to the constable and you can see my note constable math below so basically I took a full time constable I'm saying at this rate 40 hours a week 100 hours of OT part time person because that's something that you can talk about so you can see what that cost is obviously at that point you have to pick up retirement there's some increases so there's some other stuff so I did try to look at that increased gas trying to take the first rough draft that's what you asked for that's what I have done so you had some numbers on that too if I understand correctly roughly the benefits and withholding and all of that winds up being about the same as the purchase so well it depends you know I think I looked at this you see what I put in here you know what I'm missing here is this is why I'm talking about this now I have a health insurance so I would have to add a health insurance premium in here and I calculated that it depends if they need a family plan simple rate anyway I calculated that it's 2100 or 21 it's the same as a fourth of what you get for the town office so anyway what I wound up with was about $100,000 for a full time for all expenses yeah because easily I'm looking right here at 63 plus 11 7 for retirement which comes up to about 80 yeah so the difference is $20,000 which now that does not include the part time that's it's all one full time but it seems to me that that's sounds like a pretty good investment if if that's if my numbers are at all accurate so once I, I'll add a health insurance line but yeah my numbers are accurate what I have here so we're not far off and when we looked at this before with the state police we looked at this two years ago and I think we were looking at 40 to 43,000 and that was only going to get us 20 to 20 hours a week and because the air rate was quite high so the $24 an hour was roughly $48,000 $49,000 so you're right I mean this is what it was I was just on the brisk beat I know I know I was like in terms of value yeah so you're feeling like I'm feeling like that may be a a good event what is the value of a full time police officer in the town of Bethel well you get four times as much time if you drill I think the challenge over here what's the value of a full time police officer in the town of Bethel I think the challenge that we're having right now Carol is like we said is finding somebody you know you look at any place you know you deal with the town of Bethel typically they have 14 full time officers and they value that so so you're all fighting for the same and we're only looking to hire somebody for 20 hours in our time or you get the people they can only do the hours on Sundays what is that so what Laura was saying for the other people we're suggesting is you might be able to invest in our community in things like infrastructure sidewalks entryways into the community that will last with the community so that you can address some of the speed vehicle issues in particular and not have to feel like you're being backed into a full time police force because once you get to it's just like firing a road when you start firing roads you gotta keep firing them and you know what I get because we have to know about because you can you can and it doesn't make sense but we're creating a law enforcement society a law enforcement environment in this community that may not be law enforcement beneficial and we aren't looking at some of the other issues particularly the speed traffic issues that could be addressed in long term community social development as opposed to law enforcement I'd like to just add on what Crow was saying since the last time we were meeting there was a lot of conversation about issues beyond just eating like substance abuse and issues about dogs and I think those things you know right on top of the human services conversations have historically been dealt with much more effectively through non-police approaches so I think community seems tied really well together and the conversation goes well together and I do think it's really worthwhile to consider that level of investment into the existing services of communities so well and you know consider investing in that rather than more produce there's a great kind of call for more that's I know there's four of you here tonight but we've heard it all together people are saying we want to see someone out there break tickets we want to see somebody stand on the crack house there's some benefit to that there's some things that you can't sign but I don't think right now it's your question that we are saying no it sounds to me like somebody's presenting to me that you can't afford not to do this and all I'm saying is once you create that environment of full full-time law enforcement you have a completely different aspect to the county so that's all I'm saying I appreciate deeply the comments I want to say that Thursday night we had a talk on our back road we were waiting for that the fellow had driven off of a road on North Lane and gone into the jet pond there was one in the river it's the backwater in the backwater area we wound up with a town constable a highway control two ambulances and a fire department trying to A, find his car take care of him and we would deeply appreciate him of all that but now my guess is as of the condition that the fellow was in it's going to take another day or two of the constable's time just to do the paper so that's another piece of the of the puzzle and it is a puzzle and this is just the first right of the budget it is usually not just what you need but what you want or your wish list and how does it fit and over the next month and a half we're going to say if you're into this or you've got that or add this and move our way I think if we we talked about it a little bit it's kind of one of those things that we did decide to maybe go in a full time position that would probably be something that we could put on the morning you know at the community level but we have heard it on multiple levels we've heard you know if we needed any policing we've had someone we need more policing than we have the up until this past year was going pretty well but we had a kind of good thing with a good constable that could be before that half time then now we don't have that so now it's kind of now the speeders are back we also don't have the pump out which you'll go back in this spring we have one more year so they're going back in this spring we didn't put them in this year because we were still doing well we were still doing construction on this main street but yeah there's other obstacles too there's more information that's going to come out I'll start with that what the town wanted for police services when the town decided that they wanted to have a constable what were they looking for and it was traffic control and dealing with dogs and and those types of things I don't think the drug culture I don't think the drug culture was a strong back then when we were talking about going back several years but we might have to put it on the water and ask the town now what are your priorities it's tricky because Bethel has always kind of taken advantage of other sources of policing around the town and it doesn't directly affect us financially so like the state police shares and what's happening is they're all short handed now so you don't see them in town doing some of that speed enforcement that you used to see because we used to take advantage of that you know and you don't see nearly as much of that anymore it was probably 20 minutes after the local police were at our house before the state highway control got it so anyway so we'll move on so there's other things in here so we talked about that that was just something that I put in here after taking a look at the revenues because which I hadn't thought of until just now was this will happen when you're doing it by yourself we're going to be good at talking about oh yeah I didn't increase the ticket revenue but then parks and public places were obviously looking at we've been talking about doing flower baskets etc doing a little bit more there so some of this was a reduction we put some money in the budget to work on the stone wall which obviously I haven't found anybody yet so I think we'll end up maybe trying to move some of that into a capital fund and holding it and putting half the amount when we did 10,000 last year we could do 5,000 this year we might actually be able to get some 12,000 maybe and so that's what I was thinking there there obviously you'll see my notes where I'll say double check this or what's I went leasing reducing the town hall the same thing to the fire department the town hall budgets we all have building repair lines in there but what makes more sense to put some amount of money in there 15, $1,600 to deal with the stuff that comes up of the bigger things that need to be done for town hall or the fire department the town office all that needs to go into the capital fund and we have a schedule for that so we need to take care of that thanks Carl the other thing we talked about under town officials was adding a stipend for the fire warden and the tree warden so you can see that I had added those in this iteration of the budget it made a note in here under government operations you had asked about putting some money in for social media basically hosting like any website like the inclusion committee has a website and obviously the town does so we had looked at that I had put in we had put in red cross shelter maintenance obviously I had my note about about replacing the storage unit we're not replacing that sucker for $1,200 but the listeners had given me their budget government operations capital improvement the reappraisal fund the listeners are saying that in the research they've done they think we have what we need for the capital fund right now for the reappraisal so that's why I dropped this amount down so they're in the middle of looking at reading other RFPs and it's definitely something that we're going to be looking at probably in the rolling reappraisal which would be over two years sometimes three depending on what we need to definitely get that nailed down this winter because we need to get into somebody's schedule because people that do town-wide reappraisal are fewer and farther between so so we have a couple notes here like I said check that schedule obviously we budget money for the town garage last year for a damage we didn't go through so I basically said we could not put it in for a long payment of that we could kind of reserve set some money aside because obviously we're going to need to bring in engineer something up there to look at the site what we're going to do so yeah this is the first iteration I need to talk to the town clerk about town clerk fees usually pays twice a year I'm not sure where she's at right now so this is just the first so a couple of questions that I had not like getting into the weeds so for the next meeting can we just more like the highway rehab highway equipment trust fund and the capital improvement fund can we just get some up to date schedules of showing how those investments fit into the long term picture of our improvement funds just so I can get that number right to be hired lower than normal as we're going through here I went through and looked at I had the chocolate that we're getting it seems like up and up and up on the repairs and tires and parts for the a little concern about that one well I have not had a conversation with Alan about that I threw a number in there and I agreed because we looked at I know so their budget came directly from being that they are fully staffed we need can we take out the assessor services now well he asked Moen Judy asked that we did not that we leave it in there because they're not sure about well I'm going to pay $25,500 right because I think we could take the assessor services well the problem is this right now we're looking at you have all you know Louisa's getting closer closer every day to retirement so which we thought she would have by now so Moen Judy are both new listeners so their issue is they are struggling a bit with commercial property which makes sense I've seen other towns where they bring somebody in to help them praise commercial property because that's what they're trained in by names by defense and the people that are certified to look at commercial property the other thing is too they're not sure say Louise does end up retiring are they going to want to bring in an assessor too they've also said themselves in regards to how old they are they said you know some way we're going to want to retire and so the idea bringing in an assessor one that they want to keep on the table but so I specifically had a conversation with them this was their numbers that they they brought in and obviously we haven't used the assessor but I can see us using some of it for commercial properties which I think would be fair to have somebody come in and praise commercial properties that have certification to do so no maybe and just overall overall in the municipal office because of 15 hours a week position and it just seemed like all the I'll call it supplies but it's like postage and computer and all that seems like everything is like considerably more well as you go down through all those lands it's like you know something that might have been 500 last year in the year seems like everything is up so we went through it well because we bought envelopes like telephone like you know 5186 well because we need to upgrade we don't have high speed internet really at the town office we get a free account from Comcast and now that we moved from a software system that's cloud based it's slower than that so we have so easy fiber we're not paying for our current Comcast connection to the internet we get that for free from Comcast you get one free account you get something free from Comcast I don't and that's it but they won't even let you to upgrade it it's very expensive so we're having EC5er which was much cheaper because we did try to work out a deal of Comcast so you're right the other thing too is we're right it is a little bit and supplies seem to be keep growing I think some of that maybe it was during COVID when some of the stuff maybe needed to go to one apartment and it got coded to another I can go back and look at some detail but I'm also looking for someone to do some grant writing and other things so that was one of the reasons that I had put that number in there it was just a shot in the dark to look at but I can also see where I put in telephone I said double check in EC5er bill um but you're right everything goes up you're right and some of this was just me throwing in a little bit of a higher number because I'm looking at two year histories to see what it's spent so I'm trying to be reasonable about what we're actually spending versus budgeting because it doesn't I can budget $500 but we always spend $1,500 which is more on ourselves so we just you know we absolutely should because we guys have wanted fire warden to be warden we added those I think Paul was going to update us a little bit on the storage unit so overall obviously it's a 5% this is our first thing I know my debt schedules I have debt schedules with me when I was doing the budget so I know there's some savings there I'm going to go back and look at it we ended up being flat last year pretty close I'm not sure I've seen the 411 for the listers so we can see if there's any growth from the grant list but we also have a pending possible charitable payas contribution that we need to look into a little bit more I was out last week so we're part of the week so we'll look into that and we're going to have to have a town attorney take a peek at that there's some very specific rules about someone getting a charitable payas contribution but anyways, like I said this is the first tab and I think you're ready we should put it in the next meeting go through a little more detail I can refine it a little bit in the next two weeks and look at those debt schedules and look at some things and I want to look at it I passed the road budget off to Ryan Slack to ask Ryan to take a peek and I haven't heard back from him I know that we'll continue to grant the parts the lifeguards wherever that comes in both of those we have found are reduced yep, that was a conversation I had with Deetree about what we have for staffing last year and we're looking, first of all it's very hard to find lifeguards paying existing lifeguards a little bit more but cutting some positions and by investing hours are cool and different things so her and I had gone through that and she's going to create a schedule over the winter of about a dollar value so you start with this base dollar but as you have certifications there's a little bit more money to go with it so that was served to be a whole conversation about it I just want to make sure that we fight to be sufficient yep, we went through it to talk about that too because that was my concern so first of all it's very hard to find lifeguards harder and harder to find lifeguards call go through the emergency cell well, yeah two channels, a day or two so the the the so I went over and took a look at the container the I mean like that I had heard of folks and going through the container I came away with the opinion that it needed to be replaced that it was beyond repair so I made some calls excuse me, there's some pictures there of the existing container when it is, yes it is covered with surface rust inside the door has surface rust not out of the bottom simply seemed to think there was a bit of a bronze in there but I didn't find any of that but I put out tracks last week and as of today there's nothing to track the areas that are looking very bad in the corners are there's solid surface rust it's not, I didn't go through it so what you got here I made some phone calls through Pac-Van and another company out of Essex so you're looking at $5,200 for a new one plus the delivery I also talked with two different scrap haulers that said there was a possibility they could remove it but there's nothing out of it by the time of the time and effort you end up keeping it out for a scrap talked to Jen at the transfer station she said she'd love to have it and I'm going to get the storage but we have to get it and pay somebody to come in and take it out and whatnot and then down at the bottom here I've got a hold of carriage jets just to see what they might have and the similar size that Cindy is suggesting in 8x10 or 8x12 so those are the costs that you've got is that we go in and work on the rust spots that are in there and paint the interior of it I don't see any daylight showing anywhere and do a little bit of work on the doors I lubricated all the hinges and all the latches so the doors operate very well and just go with it the way it is for now until we can make a little plan now there was some discussion I thought last there's water in there so there's not a whole lot of water and I was just chatting with you because I wondered if there's any potentially grant money out there or state funds to you know to do anything with emergency relief shelter you know supplies maybe like you were saying in the short term doing some of those I think you were saying we have a long term solution like talking around with some of the budget and the wind and changing off the rust spots and the wind spray the whole thing and getting all the light out of it it's not broken through at all it's solid out there floor is solid but there's a lot of so much stress it's definitely something that's going on tomorrow of the year this looks like with some maintenance this could be a few more years but we can make it weather proof and there's there's a couple of gaps on one of the front doors that potentially something could be there it looks like they made something they got trapped in there's a pile of fur over one point so no I think it was a little work now the other piece of that we talked about potentially potentially not having that certain material that we have purchased you know that is something that she's done she's done that makes we can't get money to the state to help on that we get the money over the next couple of years there's also money there's money in $725 I think and then it wasn't I think actually that was something that Cindy mentioned was maybe them getting a bigger annual appropriation so that currently what I put in there now is money because we have to generate we have a contract with Yankee generators so they come in and deal with that I guess it's still just this 1200 but there's still money left because I think that I've paid the I feel like Yankee generator was about $725 so there may be money in the budget I'll double check that all because we may have money already built in the budget or if we Yankee generator that annual contract is $700 then we already have money built in here so we could be buying supplies so it may not be in the budget but yeah thank you so much I think we can get a couple of years out of it in one of the years because the prices are just out of sight yeah well and not necessarily the size that we want but yeah we're going to get something much larger than necessarily the well right also right now there is material in there but there is also I'm sitting here telling me a hundred why so we've got that it's being stored in common schools because they were concerned about putting it in there and if you put them in plastic tubes and put them in there it's going to fill up on the town management before you get through the sessions I got that that the we'd met from the 25th if they had any amendments to it would it be good to prove them as no need thanks for I didn't know Eric Derek you didn't want to be written in as Derek my legal name is Derek I'm fine with that most people know me as Greg I go back to Alan he always calls me Derek I would call you Greg and then he's looking at me like I'm talking about the same person I'm like so yeah I don't know what I have this problem to so any emergency story for the president of the second phase 2 I often spearhead investigating the problem not solving come on so if we don't if you don't approve that and you're still stuck investigating well yes I suppose technically you could do that I think it's the way it is I got 52 on the part of my partner there you go into the committee minutes and the defendant so one favor and there were some other committee minutes in your chapter was there anything else for the board there's a light bulb oh what is it about Eric that I don't know I think we got no money I think so we just picked the damn color so the board is that broke so I was concerned then I was not happy really happy I've got three years okay I'm going to go up with I'll make a fine slack and go up with me so that I can lay the entire thing out and then we'll head out up there and tell them you don't go through to exactly what needs to be done so since it's not I'm not going to go over the hard part I'm going to be great at it but I don't know what you're going to do this is the third time I've done it okay I'll get a fine I'll get a fine I'll get a fine I'll get a fine I'll get a fine I'll get a fine I'll get a fine and we'll go up to take a look at that thank you and speaking of trees we're going by this little jet I think it's going to grow I've been on your list the strong trees and I know that you've got to settle, you've got to think it's fine you've got to think it's fine you've got to be quite better at work I actually want to date it's on this side of the road oh it's not Jets it's going to wind you up to that it's leaning about 40 degrees into the road I know we've had a conversation about that so I'm going to see Adam tomorrow so I'll ask him about that because we had a conversation about that we did talk about it trees it couldn't be that he talked to somebody else if he didn't want to but it's maybe he talked to somebody he had a couple with him and he was waiting for him so I'm going to ask him Adam it's moving back now it's going to be long it's on this side I'm already talking about that do you work across the road do you work around do you work back here on trees