 keep an eye on the waiting room but meanwhile as chair is the Rochester Select Board I find that due to the state of emergency declared by Governor Scott as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and pursuant to addendum six to executive order 01-20 and act 92 this public body is authorized to meet electronically and I got somebody else in the waiting room let me let them in and we are using the zoom platform for this remote meeting and all members of the board have the ability to communicate contemporaneously contemporaneously during this meeting through this platform and the public also has access to contemporaneously listen and if desired participate in this meeting and you can find the the way to get into the meeting on the publicly posted notices of the meeting on the town website and also by requesting a direct link from the town clerks so there you have it we're we're on and does anyone have any additions to the agenda before we start here I do I have no business all right okay grandma and um anyone else and um and seeing none I guess we'll move right on and I I know Julie you're in here I didn't see the um minutes for the last select board meeting oh sorry I wasn't in the office today they are posted on the website though okay I just haven't had a chance to review those I guess so we'll we'll put those off till the next meeting to approve the minutes okay okay um and that leads us to our our esteemed guest tonight um Kirk thank you for taking time out on a Monday evening to um to um welcome the village of Rochester to your your flock under your care now yeah uh thank you yeah I I mostly just wanted to to stop in and say hello uh to introduce myself to those of you who might not know me I'm not officially in office yet I don't get sworn in till January 6th but uh but they've the state's been keeping me very active all the new representatives have been going through literally four or five hours a day of training since the election which they don't usually do but because it's all online they they feel like we need more more training which has been fascinating and great um and so mostly I just wanted to say hello and um let you know that I am available um what I've been trying to do is set up with all the towns in the district um one of your meetings where if you're open to it I would just come and and if there's anything that was specifically pertinent that you wanted to know I could have it but more importantly uh if there's stuff that you wanted to to talk to me about that you'd know you had a designated time and place to do that uh although you can call me anytime you know if you're town if you're town clerk or anyone has any issues questions and I'm going to try to pay attention to any kind of legislation that might come down and be a surprise for for you all things are going to make you do something different or pay money or anything like that so um because unfunded unfunded mandates and all that are are no fun to have us a surprise yeah definitely well um on that topic I guess um um we definitely appreciate you um alerting us to any grant opportunities that you think may be um appropriate to our town and and neighboring towns of course but um you know there's always um we're always ready to to get any help that we can budget wise with the monies that are out there and slated for the towns to apply for and sometimes um they don't know about it so yeah I am not I don't know what my committee assignment is going to be yet but I have joined a few different caucuses one of which is uh the economic development for small rural town caucus uh and uh a few others that that I feel like might be able to provide some information and be able to funnel that exactly that kind of information to to to you guys great yeah um does anyone else have any um questions for Kirk I guess really the biggest um question that we're wrestling now is how do we conduct the um the annual town meeting yeah um today um you will the almost the first thing that will be on the agenda for the legislative session uh as soon as they are in place is a bill authorizing towns to officially either switch to an Australian ballot if they want to and I know sometimes haven't even really like Bethel didn't even really wait for the official authorization to do so they just voted that they were going to switch to Australian ballot but it would give you permission to do that uh it would also give towns permission to push back their town meeting if they really want to meet in person uh they could push it back uh you know probably as late as June uh just so if you want to rent a tent and do it that way you have permission to do so and then the third provision on that bill is to uh uh basically empower the Secretary of State's office to be creative in helping towns find solutions around their their challenges for these uh for their for having their town meetings now of course if you switch a Australian ballot you gotta one reason why they want to come through in a hurry is because then your stuff what you'd have to get your uh candidates to proclaim early you know from the floor could still happen but you know if that becomes a write-in vote rather than a from the floor so so there's mailing costs that are associated with switching to Australian ballot at this point uh that you know that whether or not that any money is going to come to the towns to help make up for that is uh basically uh what they're looking for is to see if the governor is going to put that in his budget then they do believe he is likely to put some money in the budget for that uh but but nothing's guaranteed at this point but but that's coming right along so if you all want to start thinking about how you want to go about it uh that's going to be the very first bill that's going to pass and it will probably pass in about a week after the session starts um I have a question yeah um you said something about from the floor now I do I understand correctly that I know Rochester's talked about doing Australian ballot and pretty much decided to do so it seems like um am I correct that that means there's absolutely no public informational meeting or anything at all if everything's done via Australian ballot we we've set up the Australian ballot um and also we have figured out that we'll probably have two informational meetings it'll be near the end of February we haven't figured the exact dates out yet we'll let you know further down the road on that it's uh but we are going to have two informational meetings and voting will be on the March 1st and it'll be from 10 to 7 and hopefully at the high school where we have voting on March 1st okay yep it'll be like the town meeting day well where we usually have our meeting at night that'll be the town meeting day and we're going to just have two informational meetings sometime in February after the the town reports are printed and and put out where we'll answer questions and be available it'll be through zoom I believe we haven't finalized it yet but okay it'll be coming out later thank you I I I thought there had to be some sort of thing like that but I wasn't sure thank you for does that mean that um the town is going to vote on the unmerger with stock bridge or is that something different that's something different I believe right yeah there's there's nothing on the the slate right now with that I know the town of stock bridge has presented their select board with the petition to have a vote in stock bridge about that and then if they the town of stock bridge votes in favor of that then the town of Rochester has 60 days I think to to set up a vote to respond to that but no that's not um that will not probably be part of the our town meeting I'm doing as far as that goes even Bowen sent me a short article that will be in this week's herald about the committee that RS the RSUD has formed to talk about that okay so um yeah it's it's 90 days yeah okay good so um anything else you have for me that you'd like uh and and would you be interested in me visiting you on your your last meeting of every month uh during the session just to again in case you've forgotten or then welcome that would be great to have your input yeah yeah I will be in getting your your email address right here uh so that everybody can get in contact with you if need be yeah you want me to put it in the chat or uh I would like it to be in the minutes as well okay I mean the the easiest is is is the my legislative email address which is k white at uh ledge dot state dot bt dot us uh yeah and uh yeah I'll put you on the plan my original intention was uh and hopefully we can get back this in the summer my original intention was you know to take a Saturday or Sunday or something and and find a spot in each town you know once a month and just you know sit in sandy's bakery for a couple hours and you know speak and wander and tell me if they think I'm Kirk I might suggest that as far as I know um depending on you know how everything goes with COVID they'll continue to have our um every Friday our um farmer's markets on the park yeah that might also be a good vehicle some time for you to stop by as we get generally get a lot of people there yeah I I certainly visited it during the campaign so yeah um thank you for time out and now you can leave and start celebrating our birthdays yeah yeah I'll have one for you dear okay all right thank you all night so Burma what what did you want to talk about well um I have been very concerned about a rumor mill that's been activated in regard to COVID cases and um I find it very disturbing that I have to listen to rumors about people coming down with COVID various names being bandied about numbers being bandied about and I find it's very um upsetting and creates a lot of anxiety and I don't think I'm alone in that because we all know that the number of cases in Vermont is growing we know that the spread is continuing we know that family and friends get together without regard to quarantining or using precautions in in this town and in other towns and so I am asking the town if they would take it upon themselves to create a venue a way to alert the public through various mediums it could be a Facebook page it could be front porch forum it could be the town community communication website I'm just looking for ways to alive the rumors that go running around and to see if perhaps the health officer could connect with the state department of health this afternoon I had a very lengthy discussion with a woman named Leslie she encourages anyone with any questions to call the following number 802-863-7240 and use option eight so it's 802-863-7240 option eight as of this week they're adding four more people to their staff so there will be 16 people working on a staff to answer any COVID related questions so what I am asking is if the town selectmen who deal with the town business to make sure the the welfare of the town is in their in their sites if they would authorize the health officer to go to the Vermont health website and use that phone number if there any questions and keep the town apprised of the number of active cases in our town now it's very tricky because a person gets tested it could take one to three days to get the results it could take one to two days or longer to get that posted on their website so there is a large window in which someone could inadvertently be spreading the virus but we have to do the best that we can with that so I'm I'm not asking for a reply right now I would like it to be discussed uh amongst the select men and come up with some ideas if that's not a viable option to figure out some way of keeping the town informed of the number of active cases that are happening in our town and so I really appreciate you taking the time to listen to this I know it's not over we all know it's not over and people can sometimes have a false sense of security thinking that they are going to get a vaccine so they may not need to do the precautions that are necessary for everyone to chip in so I'm asking if you can envision a way of making the information available to the town's people uh Pat you want to respond to that um I believe that there is an announcement a statement on both the Rochester community Facebook page by our task force members and on front porch forum um about this issue um there has to be a little bit of uh official um confidentiality because we are dealing with medical conditions so um the statement that was made is is how it was recommended to be made by the state by our task force um john what our health officer believe is also in that loop um if you remember back in march uh we created a task force um to help with information and help people that have benefited their content is still readily available on that facebook page if they did communicate um I I wholeheartedly approve of not revealing any personal information or any medical information whatsoever the only thing that I'm asking for is that the number of active cases be be kept current and that we understand I I saw after the fact that a letter went out to stockbridge on December 22nd saying that there was someone in the school that had an active COVID case and nothing was presented in Rochester at that time so I'm just asking if there's someone who can be officially appointed by the town to take that on to make sure that that information is disseminated amongst various sites it could be the Rochester town site it could be a Facebook it it it is Burma as Pat was just saying in fact I was just at a meeting with the COVID task force before this meeting talking about this very topic and going over the um you know the information that we we can legally communicate about that as far as I understand there are two new verified cases in the town and it's the the main thing to communicate is that everything is a risk and it's not just in Rochester but throughout the whole valley and people have turned up positive that have no idea where or how they've been exposed and it's just um we have we have to just continue to minimize our our exposures and wear a mask and keep your distance and and be patient and vigilant but in terms of um having a tally somewhere up there where every time there's a positive case in Rochester it's gonna gonna show up I don't know if that's that's really um really really realistic but that was my my agenda to bring up tonight was an update on the fact that yes there are another couple positive cases in the town and then I understand a few more throughout the valley and that's really legally we can't say more than that I think it is realistic to say that you can post whether it's two cases or eight cases or no cases I think it's it's an important piece of information it's really we default to the the state in terms of contact tracing and and if you've been exposed to someone that's been proven positive the state is the one that will reach out and contact you and say hey step back here you've been exposed but can I ask a question as a member of the public or is this the wrong time no no this is why you're here yeah okay um this is my area of expertise there is research and the two data types that I work with the most are medical data and education data so the issue of COVID in schools is something that I've been following very closely so um I want to just say that there are some issues when I watch the way COVID information is portrayed at any kind of political level town level state level and you'll probably hate me for saying this but I'm just going to say that a lot of people are very much afraid of of starting a panic or being blamed especially kind of at the state level I see that a lot I see it a lot from the department of education um the thing is that and at the state level and this is something that we can do here in the town that we could do a better job about they the state when it does the contact tracing they contact the contacts of a person who's positive well okay let's just say that I got sick okay and I just went about my life and didn't know I was sick for five days and I went and let's say I broke protocols and I went and and spent some time with my sister and her family who's a teacher who then went to school and and through some uh touching of one thing that somebody else touched then then kids get it okay so that's two levels this is possible okay this is not impossible this is possible that would be two levels well the state would notify my sister and if she was negative at the time they wouldn't even if she's positive they won't notify anybody until her test results come back so this is how COVID gets away from us because the contact tracing is just one level down and we really need it to be more than that we need to contact the contacts and then the contacts of the contacts until we follow it all the way to the end and we've reached all the people that could possibly have been exposed and the reason we have to do this is that COVID can be invisible for a very long time or even for the entire time you're sick and it's it's really hard to to jump on it and smush it so I think that maybe that's something that our town could look at doing and the very least would be and I know this is tricky with HIPAA when you're doing research and you talk about patients you're only allowed to talk about them to the level of the state that they live in you're not allowed to get any more specific than that but that's if you're a medical excuse me professional if people who are sick want to go on the website and just click the one more sick button without it you know even by keeping their privacy they could say without revealing who they are we could give them an opportunity to say I'm sick or or we could get involved in doing a better job at contact tracing than they can do or have chosen to do at the state level and I'm happy to answer any questions about the spread of COVID and the medical issues around it surrounding COVID because it is my field and the state you know the people that talk to you from the state they have reasons for making the decisions that they make but because people in the schools are sick that is proof that the protocols that we have in place at the schools are not sufficient to protect everybody ipso facto this is truth so we have to make sure that we do our best as a town to protect our citizens um shila this is martha slater from the herald i don't know your last name and i would like to quote something you said but i need your last name if you can tell me it's brawn oh okay you're any hi martha okay i was gonna say i think this sounds like amy sister but okay thank you yes it is i'm sorry if i've offended anyone in the room that wasn't my intent but i get very tired of hearing half truths and twisting of you know the data and you haven't nobody in this room has done that i'm just saying that it happens so um be warned everyone um stay home and no it's not it's no that is good advice for the children as well as the adults yeah yeah so um the um i know does anyone have anything else they want to contribute to this other than no we have to um you know even with the um the um vaccine on the horizon there's no reason to to um relax vigilance and inattentiveness and um in terms of of of having an official counter on the town website or something i don't know how realistic that is but it's um the the that's what we're saying now there are there are cases in our community and and what's not realistic i'm having trouble understanding why second that question um the state does have a town by town tally and yeah there might be a couple days lag between true and the numbers but uh vermonthealth.gov i believe is what it is um does have it where you can look it up by your town it doesn't necessarily say four i think it says zero and then one to five and then six to ten um and so i i i do know that there is a place that those two for that i mean basically what we would be doing is going to the state website and then regurgitating what they're doing but people are not directed to contact the town office and say hey i've got covid they're they're directed to go to the vermont department of health and but that's why if they're allowed to couldn't see couldn't see uh health officer the person that the town votes on every year to become health officer couldn't that health officer do that monitoring and let the town know on these different sites i mean what why is that not feasible what what is the problem with that well there is i mean posted today was on the facebook and on front porch forum was the information right so i knew because so this is happening already okay so this is after the fact i mean you know this i heard about a few days ago it got posted like yesterday or yeah and so well it's also the issue of you don't want to just be posting rumor exactly that's my point you you hit the nail on the head we don't want to be posting rumor right so it does you know create a bit of a lag you can't just anytime someone says oh i heard someone has covid you go and oh that's why you would you would you say health officer the appointed and voted in health officer who takes on that responsibility to to get it right and to post it as as it comes up i i just think that that would be a service to the town and i don't see how why that would be a problem i really agree with you berma thank you so am i correct due from what patty said that both the facebook and front porch forum sites for the town of rochester have the latest information they've been able to receive from the state health department they would reflect information there but they're actually are posting information that is generated from the town itself and and the the four members on the covid task force and and the attempts to distill um rumor from reality and and the fact that legally we have to be very um circumspect about not pointing to people and and telling yeah i just wanted to say something in my article about where anyone was reading this and wanted to know places to look for information that would be the the um the state department of health would be the first right okay and i i got that woman's number that you had vermice so i wrote that down too but i thought people could also look at those two websites you know with yeah in the town facebook page and they and and so yeah well i guess we'll talk about this vermin and is this something that um and john would take on to to um keep that tally but i mean it's um he's a great person i mean he's a great person there's not a question of that it's a it's a matter of the um managing um managing worry and concern and um you know in in town and not hiding information that's for sure but but it's um i know it's it's it's it's definitely tricky to giving people data is not it's it's like don't tell people how to feel just give them the information people can figure out how to feel on their own but this fear of starting you know that emotions might go the way you don't want them to just like that's just put that aside and let us have the data as citizens let us know i think if people have accurate information they will use it wisely i think he is accurate information and getting your information right and it's and it's the um i don't think we can try and jump in front of the the state health department and i don't know if we'll get information that much sooner um than that but it's um they're working very hard on the state level to get as much accurate information available to the public as possible yes yeah i do know that that's why they're adding four more people in this this covid uh interfacing with the public because they're worried about the public and they don't want the public to get caught up in rumors they want the public to have real information i'm worried that we put information out there so then you'll have information on the state level and information on the local level and if those numbers never agree the credibility of everybody's numbers goes down the drain if if they don't if they don't that's not that's not well if it would be if john uh didn't have an internet connection that day and he wasn't able to update the town website well then his numbers would be different from the state and and someone would say well then i don't know whose numbers to trust it oh god we are so used to that already everywhere you look they get different numbers um if if his numbers match up every couple of days that'll be an improvement Joan you had something you wanted to say well i was just wondering if there are other towns uh that you know in the vicinity that might be doing the sort of thing already and maybe have a model that would help um let you decide whether you know it might be something Rochester wants to try or not i don't know who else might be doing it except you know i read on Vermont digger that Burlington is keeping its own records but of course that's Burlington yeah maybe you know some of the other towns Bethel South Royalton whatever just a thought right well it's um yeah definitely more information is better than less information so it's um it's a matter of um getting accurate information is the hard thing that's the hard thing and and um where that goes i don't know if it so anyway um thank you Sheila and Burma for for bringing this up and that's it was on um my list of things to talk about tonight so i guess that's um you know can i just make one more quick comment sure um about about accurate information um the thing is that you've got you've got the data that we get from the state that tells us how many confirmed cases of covid there are and then you've got the actual number of covid cases that are out there in the world those two numbers are not the same and they never will be and it's not fair to expect it but it's why we really have to know when there are cases in our town because the you know from the research that i've read you multiply the number that you know about by almost a factor of 10 or in some researchers encourage you to multiply it by more because there are people who never get sick or never i mean you know they're they're positive they're transmitting the virus but they don't get any symptoms or they don't get enough symptoms or it just doesn't last very long and so they figure well that wasn't covid but meanwhile it's been spread so you have to always take with a grain of salt what the data is saying but if there's one known case there could be 10 actual cases and we all have to act like that's true right well you have to just consider everybody's got covid you have right you know that's really what you have to do it's true you do yeah hence here we are meeting on zoom again all right um well thank you berman and shila and everyone else and and um yeah we'll um see what could happen in terms of a but that like said that was on my agenda to bring up that tonight there's at least um two cases that we know of in town and more in the valley so that's um we were kind of doing what you're asking but not on a daily basis um okay the um well Joan um what have you got for us in terms of your updates today i really don't have anything for this week all right doesn't mean i'm not doing anything but i don't know what i'm doing yeah i do want to add to your because it's his birthday so he's happy hey jones are you are are you around tomorrow uh around where can i'll just give you a call or yeah chat with you for a bit yeah sure you're welcome to do that i'm home yeah all right well i'll chat with you tomorrow okay um and tony i see that you're in do you have any updates uh on the library nothing really new we're still doing the porch pickup and that seems to be going very well and i guess that's the way we're going to be operating for a while yeah yeah sounds like it sounds like it all right well thanks for coming out tonight thank you around that um so we wanted to talk a little bit about the um for cybersecurity we've talked about physical security now let's talk about cybersecurity for the town office um and julie you want to speak to that uh sure uh so wednesday we had a meeting um and uh for budget and finance and becky dona attended with um a team that is interested in providing the town with cyber security uh brian and jeff and um we'll have numbers in front of me here sorry um so they had provided us with two worksheets uh basically money that would be needed for this year to get started and then uh information for the following year for the budget and finance for fiscal year 2022 um i was asked to find out because we were looking at the four thousand um for this year and i was asked to check with nathan about the excess that was in the budget from last year or would be in this year sorry and uh because the funds that were from the cruiser were not put in a restricted fund we uh will not be able to use them um so uh we're gonna have to think about that and how we want to finance that so that's that's another discussion so but the but the cyber security as far as the the uh service itself i mean we have felt a couple times um you know we had jones computer at one point and then uh our computer in the office so we were down several hours from work and uh having this service would definitely keep us uh would allow us to go back to work quickly if we were hit um you know he he just he explained how real it is and and um the need that our town that our towns you know it's something we need to think about and work toward so it's just a matter of how we can put our heads together and figure that out right now so basically what they did said to us at that meeting was uh this year out of this year's budget we'd have to come up with forty six hundred ten bucks and next year it would be seventy four fifty for twenty one twenty two and it's roughly uh five twenty five per month but i don't know how many years that five twenty five per month goes um i'm not sure that was a question we didn't ask i wish i had if i think i did have that in an email to becky but i haven't heard back yet okay so i just wanted to bring it up because i think we have to move on this and we're doing the budget now and i think we got to put it in there and we're just going to have to try to find the forty six hundred bucks for this year if not we can we'd have to put more in the budget for twenty one twenty two some of that forty six hundred in order to get this service which i think we need it's like an assure insurance policy for our computers and everything's on the computer now so yeah we have one go down then the whole business is shut down for a day or two until maybe we can get it back maybe we can't so i i think it's something we have to do as a town so you said this is like an insurance it's more or less an insurance policy for our computer system and they're going to come in and do a bunch of work there as far as organizing our we've got three computers that aren't even hitched up there i think the new ones that we've already bought so they're going to do all that work too that's included in the forty six hundred so we need to figure out how we can find that money and see if we can do that is that something that i see how did you think about it pat it's a comprehensive very comprehensive backup system so that if we were to be compromised very similar to what uvm just went through um we would we would be able to restore our data from the night before so we would never lose anything more than a day's worth of data and um it's just kind of doing in a very conclusive system backup and um we do have some of our data that is that lives on the NEMRIC system which we are paying them for protecting our information too but this would encompass everything and um that includes what's on our system now and you know emails are legal documents so um you know you lose a day's worth of emails you lost a day of legal documents that you would have to go back and try and recover so um this assures that we've got the most up-to-date coverage of our data as we could possibly get so is this something that you the board is voting on tonight or or um there's not so much that we're voting on this is an expenditure that we've already had um you know enlisted and we're just um figuring out the numbers for the budget on this day so it's pretty much you're going to do it you just have to figure out how yeah okay thank you are there other companies that have also put out bids and do they guarantee that they'll clean any computers that were infected we had run with um had another company that um that kind of fell through and then the guy was not able to take care of it so this is we're going on the advice of the um you know our someone has been giving us technical support on their computers um for many years and being this under the $10,000 mark we're not required to put it out to bid so we're basically just um just going on the um you know on the interviews and then then yeah or analysis that it's a good way to go and what about cleaning the individual computers if they get infected i would assume that it includes that yeah yeah yeah they take care of everything sounds good all right um thank you um julie everyone that um really um rob i see you just joined us a little um um a little later um we've talked a bunch about the covid reality in in the valley and the importance of um keeping that um front and center and we were just talking about cyber security is there anything that you were attending to want to talk about because we're pretty much at the end of our agenda here no i was supposed to be in that school thing but there's some problem with their with their link up or something so i thought i'd see what's happening over here so yep cyber security that's where it's at you know keeping that work um we're um basically we're going to move into executive session to um then discuss some employee um situations and and no one else has anything they'd like to talk about i think that's what we're going to do well oh and happy birthday to you and patty's no thank you yeah happy birthday to both of you yep all right happy new year yep i'll see you guys next year have a good have a good birthday and a good evening thank you everyone for your um your um patience and and um persistence and being vigilant around the um the health care that we all have to take care of ourselves and then each other so right keep it up okay thank you good night