 I'd select board meeting to order I would ask our guests to introduce themselves please go ahead thank George okay thanks Mark thanks Mark Zara Vincent budget committee hi thank you Zara yeah yeah jelly just sure hi jelly we're very you okay oh okay very exciting Halloween custom I know I should have had it the day welcome we need to approve the minutes of the October 17th regular select board meeting okay well pass over pass over that one thank you reviewing amending approving the agenda for November 7th tonight meeting are there any amendments to the agenda additions or amendments we did okay are you gonna discuss that under I would like to run report sure okay okay I'm sorry yes very exciting you can give us a little I quickly I quickly looked at it what I concluded is what we already know which is people are speeding 50% or not 50% are roughly anyway on any other amendments to the agenda a motion to approve I think the motion that we approve the agenda of November 7th as amended okay thank you Victor Randy seconds all in favor hi thank you any opposed we've approved the agenda thank you our first item on our agenda is meeting with Ruben but I do not see him is he in the waiting room okay he's right on time five minutes after hi Ruben good evening there you go you can hear us we can hear you thank you so the actual intended subject of the discussion for this evening was to have you go through this proposal for changing our email system but you also sent us a a server proposal and a battery backup proposal so why don't we do quickly do the or quickly reasonably quickly do the email proposal first I think I think just to just to summarize the reason for asking to meet with you I guess I would I guess I would say we were surprised at the price and largely that may be because we don't understand what's involved but we feel like we need to understand more that's fair I am just bringing this up so that it's in front of me tasks switching from the last client meeting that I was just wrapping up so I apologize I'm a little a little behind here so I'm the short version is that an email migration means that we have to go through every mailbox and find all of the data for all of the folks and and pull it across into the new system the system that you're currently using is not one that we can use our automated tools on so for some mail systems we have automated tools that we can sort of feed a whole bunch of credentials to and it'll walk down for us and grab all of the mailboxes blog in as the users sort of use delegated access access to pull the data across and so the amount of labor that we have to do is is substantially less we basically have to sort of spot check and make sure that the messages appear to be there and that you know we review any error logs and that kind of stuff this from my understanding is a much more manual process so that means that we have to gather credentials we have to go basically log in as each user and pull the mail across into the new system so it just it's a much more labor-intensive process but you're not you're not reviewing every email you're just going into each mailbox and pulling the data across no we're definitely not and we have no interest in reviewing every you know but but what we are doing is like checking the counts right so if we log into the account and it says there's 22,000 emails in this account and we drag it across we have to make sure that there's like roughly the same number of of emails and we have to do that at least on a spot check basis for each folder so you're going to have emails that are in different folders and all of that so it's so no we're definitely not looking at each individual email that would be a full error but but instead of just unleashing our automated tool that logs in as each user and copies the messages one for one across and does that automatically we're actually having to configure an email client as the user and move the messages across that way it's like I said it's just a much more manual process and that is primarily item number two on the proposal 36 hours or is that the whole amount of labor no it isn't I'm looking where it says service service T and M phase two migration right I'm still clicking around almost into the quote the other piece that is is included in this and in the labor side of things sorry I finally have the quote up in front of me is the deployment of spam filtering and email archiving so one of the things that that we wanted to make sure of is that the system is compliant with open meeting laws and all of that and so we included the email spam filtering and auto archiving so that there's a permanent record of all of the emails that pass through the system and that that setup is another fair hunk of work to get the integration with that system and the office 365 tenant set up and that's a one time as a lot of these sort of migration jobs are that's it's a one time expense that it takes to sort of get that integration all turned up and the accounts configured and synchronized across and all of that but again it's it's a fairly substantial amount of work to go through and get all of that done that basically we have to keep these emails forever right I mean there's no we can't I can't hear you I'm sorry am I muted somehow looks like the whole room is muted help Sarah okay all right yeah she's working on it can you hear us now okay thank you so much so my question was I believe I'm right that we have to keep all these emails forever correct I mean we can't say we're going to delete all emails from prior to three years ago or something like that we need to keep them either that or the only other way to go would be to keep hard copies of them or who knows what some horrible so this gets into a whole conversation around what's discoverable and what's not and you know sort of what folks decide to do and that's quite external to to what we do but email archiving service sort of checks that we've got a whole body of really old emails that we're dealing with here yeah okay yeah yeah well the service is actually more for than for new emails coming through right so that then those are all captured and and you know it just it obviates any question about you know well somebody went through and deleted all that stuff out of their mailbox it's in the archiving service so that that's out of the sort of line of sight of anybody's email client so that if you end up in a discovery process then you have a clear and definitive answer if the emails aren't there then they didn't go through the system yeah got it darinda I think he might have touched on what I was going to say because I believe our current emails are being archived right now and aren't they are you all of them are not being archived the rack space does not does not have a well I should I'll preface this by saying I don't know the rack space email system very well so it is possible but I'm not sure and you can go you can turn up litigation hold and discovery in office 365 but it's substantially more expensive to do it that way because then you have to turn all of the accounts up to a much higher level of access and so we found that this is a more economical way to do it okay we were under the understanding that it was all being backed up and all be an archived through something we were paying for and I thought through you guys we have nothing to do with the rack space email no we sure did not no absolutely not no we we kicked and made all kinds of stinking and soy noise about that I thought they did something with it no I don't think I don't think you guys meaning RB has never had anything to do with our email at this point we pretty studiously avoid anything to do with rack space okay okay what other questions can I answer for you I will plug a couple of the pizzas of the user security so spam filtering and it's called link detonation are a couple of the things that that adds in the other piece that it adds in is credential management for the whole organization centralized online and most importantly owned and managed by the organization so that you know you don't have to start using this immediately but it is a really important and powerful tool for for maintaining things like website credentials and that sort of thing that multiple folks in the organization might need access to and that's that's part of this service and one of the problems one of the problems we've had with rack space is remote signing in right during the you've had I have well we had a problem that we brought you guys in on that if I send something to the treasure from the treasure at home I can't it doesn't doesn't go through but that wasn't the case when we first started with them so something's happened in between I know there's a lot of people who can't get things on their phone they can't so there is a lot of issues like and you know I I know that we've sort of beaten this horse to death but our standard remedy for these types of problems is office 365 it just it it enables it enables the whole mobility suite you can and and this is depending on your as an organization your policies and procedures around logging into organizational resources and and what those devices are but from a technical level it means that you can log in from your phone you can log in from your workstation at home you can log in via a web browser you know you can do all of those things and from an organizational security perspective we can set policies in place that enforce certain configurations like you have to have a passcode on your phone for example you can't have a passwordless entry into your into your office 365 account through a phone so that the organizational information is appropriately secured turns on a whole bunch of features like that and you know one of the things that we that we've wrestled with over and over and over again is that frankly outlook is a wonderful tool but it's a really crummy IMAP IMAP is the style of email server that secure that sorry rack space delivers and outlook is a really crummy IMAP client to throw some more acronyms out there and so that has presented a whole bunch of challenges and to Dorinda's point one of the challenges is that as the security landscape has changed the things have had to tighten up in terms of where email can be sent from on behalf of an organization and that has caused another layer of challenges in terms of using rack space and you know where you're coming from if you're logging in from home or if that's a trusted IP address and there's a whole bunch of sort of other issues and features and security implications around all of that that that have been challenging and frustrating for the town. Yep so we won't have to have any extra software or anything on our computers iPads phones to access this. You can do it all right through the web if you want you don't have to install any of the apps and I would suggest because there's a cost associated with installing the apps that you internally review who gets apps and who only has web access. Right because many of us myself included use the town email relatively sporadically whereas others Dorinda Sarah etc use it heavily. Yeah so only pay for what you need for sure. Yeah questions anyone Randy. Yeah I'm sure it's just standard template stuff but there's conflicting information on rates in here Ruben and a bunch of the terms you know base rate of $200 an hour and then $145 an hour for discounted base rates and the rates that are attached to the proposal themselves I think we were looking at $130.50 I'm assuming that that's right. That's the correct rate and the other boilerplate is our standards. So the rate in the services grid is what will go go on for you. And that's a reflecting a heavy discount for the town. We we discount our rates for for nonprofits and municipalities because we feel like that's the right thing to do. And this is this is based off from estimated hours and the buildings would actually be for actuals or for some reason that 36 hour allotment of time took 20 we're going to get billed for 20 hours. That's correct. And there's no guarantees. But I try really hard to estimate high. I would much rather have an uncomfortable conversation about the cost of the project now before we've started and it's too late to do anything about it. Then to estimate low and have to come back and say well I gave you a rosy estimate and I wish I hadn't because at that point like you're sort of on the on the train and you can't really get off. So I I tend to estimate high. And it's pretty rare that we go over and if we encounter something that's really like just completely blows our mind which frankly I don't expect because we've been peripherally involved in all the stuff for a long time. But if that was the case then we would open an out of scope ticket and we would tell you what was going on and we would give you an estimate for what it would take to to accomplish whatever that thing is that is stopping us and and sort of blowing our time estimate out. Thank you. Security training. Is that something that you're a lot of time to train staff here with security features within this new system? Yes. And I'm going to have to go dig into the project to see exactly what that is. But yes, training is generally just that user security training. That's usually that's where I come in and I care the hell out of everybody and make it so that you don't want to touch a computer again for a while. No, sir. Okay. I guess the only other question I have on this Ruben is assuming in a relatively short period of time here we gave you the good to go on this. When would you be able to do it? We are horrifically backed up at the moment and we're working on clearing the backlog. I'm sure you've heard this from us in the past. And the short answer is I don't know right exactly right now where we're at. I know that we've got three months, six months, well under a year. I think probably on, yeah, I think we're probably into March or so right now. A good problem to happen, a bad problem to have. It's a problem because nobody's happy when we say what a project execution timeline looks like and we're working on it. We're familiar. Does anybody else have any questions on the email? New to me today is the battery backup proposal. You got that about three weeks ago. Yeah, but I looked at it today for the first time. The battery backup hardware piece, you're recommending that we replace that along with the battery? No, I'm saying our recommendation is to replace the UPS. So that's that's the unit and the battery. And I think actually you should I'm pretty sure that Brittany sent over a proposal for the server that just added the UPS and you should just can the UPS standalone proposal. And we just rolled it into the server job. What's honestly what we should have done in the first place, it was an oversight and then we ended up sending a separate like addendum for the battery backup for the server. I've got that, but I'm still confused. And I think it's because I don't understand what this is. But this is a separate device that provides the battery backup. It is a separate device that provides power protection. The device itself has failed. You could just replace the battery again, but the device is seven or eight years old at this point. So our recommendation is once once it hits that timeline, it's a really good idea to replace the device itself. The sensitivity drops the words. I'm not word saying. It's sensitivity to voltage fluctuations goes down over time. APC actually recommends that you only run them for three or four years. Yeah. Okay. I've got it. I just I just I didn't understand that we'd already ready replace the battery possibly multiple times. Yeah. Yeah, we, you know, we don't really go too aggressively with replacing gear. But we really don't want to be in that position where, you know, either a piece of hardware behind the battery gets cooked because the battery didn't do its job or, you know, it's just a preventable mess. No. Got it. Anybody else have any questions about that part of the proposal? I guess quickly, Ruben, and this really wasn't the subject for discussion tonight. Since you sent us a revised server proposal, does anyone have any questions about that? I have not had a chance to study that study that proposal. And I think at the present time we basically decided that we're in at least a temporary holding pattern on the on the server. I guess the question though is, and again, here we go. We said today, we want to go ahead with the server. We're talking about the end of the next year or something like that. So we'd be into spring. Six months. Is anybody else have any questions about any of that? So is that the same timeframe, Ruben March? I would say we're, we're, yeah. And lead, lead time is on. One of them would have to come first. Lead time on equipment is an issue. No, no, we, the supply line is, I mean, it's ugly, but it's not that ugly anymore. It's better. Yes, Sarah. I know you guys are talking back and forth, but the e-mail could come in as early as March. We don't have it. Did he, did Ruben give us the time for the server? He said one of them has to come first. So what is the server six months if we went today or? He's saying March for both the server and the e-mail spring. Yeah. I would say, and this might not be the right answer, but I would say from my point of view, the, the e-mail is the urgent priority. We're very concerned that that's got us in a bad situation. We agree. I'm sure. Yeah. Okay. The server is, I believe the server is running a supported operating system. And so your, your hardware is getting old and a little tired, but it's also not exhibiting immediate signs of failure. So from an operational perspective, I think you'll be in a far better place. At the end of the office 365 project. And I think that makes sense. Yes. Right to prioritize that one. Yeah. Just go up the top of your head, Ruben. If we were to go to a cloud based system, would that be more or less money for a server? Set up. Um, so this is a question that we get a lot. And my answer is the same. You have to define what you mean by cloud based. Right. So, so for the town, for example, the driver for a physical server in the building is the Nimrick system that runs the data files and everything set on that machine. So you could move to Nimrick online, which would take, um, take your main line of business application and put it up in the cloud. Um, I don't recall if you use QuickBooks and the QuickBooks multi user set up. Um, all of your accounting, all of your bookkeeping and all of that is, is in Nimrick, correct? Yes. Okay. So, um, presuming that there are no other line of business applications and you literally just need file access and like shared access to files. Then I would go so far as to say you don't need a server at all, whether it's a virtual or not, you could probably do almost everything that you need to do with office 365. And so direct answer to your question, Darinda, that would be far less expensive than the capital expense and the ongoing maintenance of either a virtual server or replacing the physical machine in the building. Um, the challenge is that, um, that's a substantial project and there's a long tail on getting things set up, um, and sort of moved across. And it's a little in conflict with the age of the physical machine that you have right now. So you're saying doing a transition to the cloud with the existing machine would be a challenge? Well, I think you could, you know, you could stand a virtual server up in any one of, you know, 100 online services that I find generally is significantly more expensive. Like you don't have the capital expense of purchasing a piece of gear, but the operating expense when you amortize it out over four or five years, the lifespan of a machine, it always ends up substantially more expensive than sometimes exponentially more. So you're, what you're basically, I just want to be sure I'm getting this right. So to go to a cloud based system, we might not need a server at all. To move, you could. Wait a minute, let me, let me just finish. But to do the transition to move to the cloud based, we need a good reliable server. And you're concerned that our current server is not capable of doing that. Well, it might be a slight oversimplification, but it's pretty it's, it's close enough. You know, I don't, I don't want to see this server running for another year. I think the risk of it suffering some sort of a mechanical failure starts to get very high. So I, I, what I'm, I guess trying to say is I don't think you have the time to do a really nice orderly move over to Office 365 necessarily, not because we can't move the data, but because the workflows around it are going to take a bunch of work to figure out in terms of, you know, who accesses what and where the data lives and what lives where and all of that. So there's sort of an operational, you know, how you go about what you're doing side of things that's quite separate from, you know, dragging and dropping a bunch of folders from one place to another. And there's no, for lack of a better word, I'm going to say feasible short-term solution to that. I mean, we can't rent a, rent a server for six months or... You could, but the expense of doing that migration, you know, the physical piece of hardware is, is not, it's, you know, it's several thousand dollars, but it's not. The labor is, is pretty close to the same. And you're going to, you're going to take that on either way. And unfortunately this is a conversation that we've had several times where, you know, in an ideal world, we would be having this conversation and the server had a couple of years left in its life. And we could do a nice sort of easy migration up to Office 365. We could go through all the calculus of seeing, you know, if there are any things that, that you're doing that preclude that move, because I don't, I don't want to sort of lead you down a path of, well, you could do this thing and then pull the rug on you later and say, oh, well, I didn't realize there was this other thing that you're, that lives on the server that means that you just have to do another one. There's sort of that discovery piece as well. Okay. I think I'm all set for now. Anybody else have any questions? Thank you, Robert. We appreciate your time. Absolutely. Glad to do it. If you have other questions after you guys talk, definitely give me a shout. You will. We know where you live. That's right. Thank you. Thank you all. Have a good night. Oh, baby. I'm Doreen. Did you want to talk about the? We'll do it at the end. Okay. All right. Okay. Um, highway report. Gentlemen. Don't all jump in at once. Right. Well, as far as equipment is concerned, we have hopefully the transfer case for the freight letter will be back in by the end of the week. How long has that been down? Right. Yeah. And that's the transfer case. Yep. Yep. And are we able to repair the existing transfer case? We got some more grading to do, but other than that, we pretty much put all our own material pretty much out. Rain dollar stuff from the pit. When you say what? I haven't looked. How are you budget wise? I was taken and grabbed a lot of our pit. So that was part of the budget. How are you with budget? I can't get. I don't have a budget thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, we've got to be over in material. Well, have to be with FEMA. Well, but yeah, but FEMA is out in outer space somewhere. I mean, yeah, in terms of looking at the, at the money we've spent where versus what we budgeted way, way. Well, as you would say, what we budgeted, we're probably not putting that material. That went to FEMA work. That went to. Right. Remedial work. Right. Repair work. Not all of it. Like if you are using material, you know, if it's coded for FEMA, it's not affecting your budget. Right. That's what I thought. Yeah. Well, affects our cash flow, but not our budget. Right. Okay. Well, then our budget is probably okay. We'll have to check into it. Yeah. I'll have to. I think about the last meeting. Two. Two meetings ago, there was a budget status report. I can see that. I don't know. The questions I've been getting are, you know, is this the way the roads are going to be for winter? Are we done with all the. Repairs. And certainly I've been hearing that from people on East Hill because they redid East Hill to the extent they are, but there's still some tricky, nasty places on East Hill. And other roads around town, but we're going to live with those until spring is that the, theoretically not. They're going to put the, remember we're going to have blocks. We had the concrete blocks and we're going to put those in. Yup. Eric and I have talked, maybe if we can, we'll put that covert back in. I said, Bill, I don't know. The big covert. The big covert that washed out. Yeah. That popped up, the peace pop. We got to do something there. And then, you know, my heart's been in my throat. I mean, somebody could have her. So we're thinking of taking that pipe and putting it back in the best we can. And then, so we'll widen that out a little bit. Yeah. But, and then of course the one by weeds. I mean, that's got to be done. I think they're going to be doing that. They're working their way towards that. Yeah. Yeah. Those are the two, those are the two worst ones. Yeah. What is the pile of material beside the road with the cones around it? What's that? I just haven't got to it. I think they were going to try to fill in that wash out, but that's of where a culvert is. And they can't fill that in. So they're going to end up moving that material. Okay. Because they've got to, we've got to replace that culvert, come spring time or whatever. Okay. But that wasn't really much they could do with that material there after they put it there. So they're going to end up moving it. Okay. Because the first pass by with the snowplow, that's going to get shot into the ditch. Yeah. Maybe tomorrow morning. Could be tomorrow morning. Watch your mouth. So I see my, my beloved associate and friend, Mr. Ray Hill is here on the, on the zoom. Hi, John. Can you hear us? We can't hear you. Are you muted? Are you muted, John? How's that? Much better. Thank you. Much better. Thank you. John, as I think both Eric and Victor know, John lives up on Wood Road. And he has expressed to me over time, over and over again, concerns about, about Wood Road. And I suggested that he, he come on the zoom and give it to us all right between the eyes about what he can and should happen on, on Wood Road. So, He talked, he, correct me, John, if I'm wrong, he talked to, he talked about a lot of things. He talked about how narrow the road was, how the ditches were wide and it made the road narrow, how the stones in those stone ditches are higher. So when they plow, there's going to be an issue that you need gravel, you need a crown in front of, at some point in front of Viola camps, got to cut the road down. So what he, what I got from him is he really wants to ask Eric, what's your plan for this year? We're, we're going to, we're going to grade the road and make it as best as we can for winter. That's all we have for an option right now. Okay. When you grade the road, are you going, I think, you know, there's two, two thoughts there. We don't, don't, sometimes we don't want to really crown the road a lot. We're just going to clean the edges off so the water can get off the grave. I guess, I guess it's up to you, John. You get some more questions or desires or, well, I'm delighted to hear that there's, we're on the list finally before winter because there's a couple of dangerous spots that the road narrows down to one lane. It's right at the blind turn where you don't have time to react. So I'm glad we're going to have a plan to make the water somehow get into the ditch. You know, they did a beautiful job of making some great big ditches, but they're so big that, you know, narrowed the road down and their big rough stone. So if your wheel ever went off, you, you'd have a hard time. So I hope that we can address that. Blind, that first blind corner and make it wide enough so two cars can pass safely. And then just generally, you know, we've been waiting. I know you're out of money and no point in complaining when there's no money, but when there is money and I understand that maybe next year, FEMA would have some money so we could address some of the underlying issues that were there before the flood. I just want to make sure that we have a plan that isn't just business as usual because there were problems. I talked to Eric here three, nine months ago about it. And, you know, yes, yes, we're going to, next year we're going to work on the ditches. So I know it's been on his radar, but I kind of interested in knowing what is going to be done before winter and discouraged to hear that you've shut the, there's no more gravel and that the, I know you're very limited. So I hope there's an opportunity to sort of find out what's going to happen and before we're just winding afterwards. Next, next summer we have a plan that the three of us are putting together as far as rebuilding that road. That's one of the roads that is on the list to get done for the FEMA work. It's a money issue, but it's more of a material issue. There's just not a lot of material there right now. Everybody's exhausted through everything. So we're going to have to drop it down a little bit and hopefully we can get through the winter without any problems. I hope there's an opportunity before the major work is done to sort of find out what's going on and make sure that we're, we think it's going to work. And for the winter, can we get an idea of with a limited amount of time and money? There is what is going to be addressed and what isn't. Yeah, we're going to go up there with the machine and see what we can do. And then I guess we'll determine how much we can get done or not. And you keep saying before winter and I want to remind you, this is winter. Could be tomorrow morning. So you can, you know, we've tried to be patient and understand there's no money, but it's been kind of a dangerous situation all summer. So I'm glad to hear you were on the, on the plan. And I guess we'll talk to you when you come up the road. And I, you know, fairness of John Brayhill is that, you know, there's other people that have mentioned we've, we've had emails and stuff and we've had emails from all over town. Right. And like, like Sarah says, this has been a very devastating year. Challenging year. Yes. Challenging. Hey, thanks. I don't want to just be a whiner and I don't want to end up after the work is done whining again. So I hope the selection will support some kind of plan that, that can be reviewed. Peter mentioned that the FEMA engineers were going to get involved in that work, which would be great. But I just don't want to go back to whatever we had before the flood because that didn't work. So we got to try something new and I'm no highway engineer, but I'd love to hear some ideas for some ways to keep the water going to the ditch because there's all kinds of places where the water is traveled right down the road. It'd be a 10 foot bank on one side and the road washed right out. And I don't know whether that's maintenance or did road design or material that's over my head. But I think we need to try something else. Well, I think the only thing I would add to that, John is I think step one in that process was the, what's the ditch work with in the short run, run may have annoyed you more than it helped you. But until we have, until we have good ditches, there's no place for the water to go regardless of how the roads ground up. Well, I think that's, I think that's actually, if you look at some other towns that don't have ditches as marvelous as ours, they actually fared better. And so I would challenge that. And again, I'm just a person that drives around and becomes an expert through the windshield, but that's the kind of thing I think a question we ought to ask ourselves. Because I know we got halfway done with the big ditches, but they're not doing any good now and they're, they're worse than if we'd done nothing. So I would, I think that's the kind of question we need to discuss with somebody who's, let's look at some other towns and see how their roads have held up. But I'm not at all convinced that that's the, just saying we're going to build more ditches is going to do it. Deeper ditches. Randy. So I, to your, to your point about looking at what the plan was ahead of time, John, I think, I think Victor, Steve and Eric, if are putting together, you know, bid packs for that road work that I don't understand why that wouldn't be able to be reviewed and, and whatnot as it, as it's getting ready to go out. So, you know, these guys are going to put together a package and you know, I'm sure that that's something that could be reviewed as it's going out to contractors. Well, that would feel more constructive than waiting until it's done and griping. So that'd be great. Okay. Thank you, John. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else in the road report boys? Do you want to do the curve cut while we got Eric here? Sorry, what? Curve cut while we had Eric here. Curve cut. Yes. Up on North Bear Swamp, they have a lock and they need to access it. There's a drawing there. Looking at the site, a standard 15 inch culvert, plenty sufficient. Yeah. And you've approved this. Yes. Anyone else want to take a quick look at this, Victor? Yeah. Thank you, Brian. You want to take a quick look at this, or are you satisfied that? Oh, I want to take a quick look at it. There you go. It's not there. We're not sure it's on. Does it matter? No. It's pretty good. Thank you. No, it's not. Is that pretty flat up there? Fairly flat. Yeah, it drops off down to where they're going to, they're going to have to build. The only reason I mean, and I second guess you, I apologize. I mean, it's not totally flat. You know, 15 inch weird. Yeah, but it's not going to be carrying that much water there. Okay. I'm all set. Thank you. So we need a vote on that. Yep. You're willing to make a motion? Yeah, I was just going to do that. Good. I would like to make a motion that we accept the permit application for, I just read it and I forgot it. WL Martin LLC. WL Martin LLC. As presented. Where is that on the first one? Is there an address yet? It does not have an address. It's 1.1 miles from story road. Is there a second? Okay. Thank you, Randy. All in favor of approving the, the driveway permit for driveway road cut permit for WL Martin LLC. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. We've approved it. Thank you. Do you want it? I'll get a look at all of them. We all set it up. Covering salt storage area. I just got to put a roof over it. Just buy another term. That's loud. That was an invitation. Yes. So is there anything else, gentlemen? No, we were just discussing that. We've got some proposed road upgrades for, that we would like to put out before the first of the year for next spring. So get a little bit ahead. Get people a chance to go over it. Maybe give us a good price to get it in their schedule. Yep. That's what we were talking about. Okay. Okay. So we're a little ahead of schedule, but it looks like the people are here for the, Oh, I thought you were going to talk about Mead Road at this time. Do we have time? Oh, well, we could do that. Yes. I thought you were going to. Okay. Five minutes. Okay. Go for it. Well, I was just, Sam sent us an email. I'm sure everybody read it. Yeah. What I saw was a stone. I'm asking. I'm not, I saw a stone. And then on my rock space email, which is not a great, but the other thing was his car was in the way. Is that when it was in the yard? Rowing a rock, a large stone in the roadway. And then there's another stone that's been put in the roadway. And then part partially in the roadway. Okay. Now my only question was, is that stone, you say that's in that 22 foot area that we are concerned about? And is that stone and that activity on your side of the road, meaning from the center road towards your property or the center of the road towards his property? And in this picture, it's not just one, it's two is what I'm seeing in the picture. That is probably based, and this is an estimate on my part, but five feet or so from the markings that were placed when we were there on site before. What markings? How the stones were pushed back while we were on site. The ones that originally had lined right on the side of the roadway. Yes. Towards the? Out onto the French property. Yeah. That's the picture that was sent. So they're farther away than they were when we were there? No, they're back up on the roadway, the traveled portion of road. Right on the edge. Right on the very edge where it was agreed to have that moved from prior to. And I guess the question is, you believe he put those stones there? There's a video showing. Oh, I didn't see the video. Sorry. I mean, ultimately, since the other thing should be put in the roadway, you know, and this has been addressed a couple of times. Inside that 22 feet? Yes. And it's clearly violates the agreement that everybody had when we settled this the last time. Have you hit those with your car? No. Do you have to turn out? Well, I have to go around them. Okay. No, I'm not going to hit them. And I'm not going to move them. But ultimately, they legally can't be on the roadway. You know, and this has been going on. No, and that also wasn't as Randy just said, that isn't what they agreed to. Right. A year now, but it's been brought up to them more than once. And what's their response, if any? You had mentioned last year in a Zoom meeting, the speed bump and the alterations to the road. That was when you first addressed the policy and what couldn't be done. And then when you guys came out and brought this up this year, and that's when it was addressed again. I mean, it should be as simple as no alterations to the roadway and don't put things in the roadway. It should be that simple. But it just keeps happening. Sorry about that. So what do we do? You want to go down and have a chat with them, Victor? Do we send them a letter? What do we do? I'm baffled. No, I don't want to go down and talk to them. Because then I'll be accused of siding with them. So I think the only fair thing to do is, not just me, any of us, they're going to be accused of, like we were before, of catering to them. So just send them a letter. I agree. OK. I mean, kind of separate us from doing anything other than what we're supposed to do. And then it's clearly documented what was said. Right. When it was said. Right. Like everything can be documented about it. Whereas a conversation is, oh, well, Victor told me this. He said it was OK. Right, right, right. Whatever. We don't want to be there. Right. Is there a fine based on compliance? What's that? Is there a fine based on compliance? Not that I know of. Well, there's a latitude to impose a fine, I believe, yes. Yes. So in the legislation, there is a fine. So it's Title 19, Highways Chapter 11, protection of highways, subsection 1105. So it says shall be fined not more than $1,000 plus actual cost of repairing the damage and reasonable attorney fees. Excuse me. I'm just going to remind everybody here that when you're addressing the board, you need to address the chair. Yeah. OK. So that way we keep order. OK. Well, what I would suggest is this. We write a letter and given the opportunity to remove those stones or move them back, I guess would be what we should say. What I will do is with Sarah's help, I'll draft a letter, send it around for everybody to look at. And then we'll send it out. And to the extent those are two pretty small stones, my recommendation is we give them, we give them until our next select board meeting, whatever date that is to remove those stones and just warn him that if he doesn't do that, we're going to have to pursue further action, which might include a fine. I don't know what else we can do. Hold on one second. I support the letter and two weeks time frame for next meeting is plenty adequate to move that. I mean, take five minutes to remove them. Yeah. OK. Yes. Can I include vehicles as well? So like the parking in the roadway. I see no reason to park within the roadway any vehicles. I mean, he has over 40 acres of property. So I don't see a reason to be parking vehicles in the roadway. He's not blocking the roadway. I think that may be a little out of our purview. Right. I mean, it's frustrating. I will I will agree with you, especially in the wintertime when people park their car alongside of the road in front of their house and the plow has a hard time getting by. It's a little tough. I know we don't plow that road, but you know, I don't. That's a little tougher one. I mean, I mean, is it there all the time? Let's pick our battles. I mean, there are people, unfortunately, there are people park fortunately or unfortunately, there are people all around town who park in the roadway at one time or another. And some do it more than others. That's for sure. But I agree. I don't think we can. Yes. I know. I know. I know. Kyle Weaver reading Woodard cannot make it. Gloria, this is for the that's for the applicants to sit here. Here. And also maybe we can just work this so that we can get the JPs and the board of abatement closer to the meeting here. Well, push this back. Well, I mean, I know it's just so I know that we've got everybody to see stuff. So maybe somebody can sit here. John, you can sit here. Yeah. And this is for Gloria. You're going to sit here. Here. Here you go. You're welcome. I'm friendly. Relatively. Here you go. And the listeners get a prominent position. So you guys should come up here. So, Dorenda. Right. Sarah. I just want to say something in your in your packet there is you can. Thank you. So, Dorenda. Right. Sarah. I just want to say something in your in your packet. There is. Chris, did you get them? Thank you. Did everybody get one of these? I don't know what the deal is. So we've got everybody here and everybody's got the information. Peter, you should notice that I've given a sequence of events going through. Yep. Okay. Just to give everybody an idea about how to work through this process because it's not something that happens. Okay. So yeah, Kyle, we were. So here's the deal. Do you want to call the meeting to order and then I'll tell you. Sure. Go ahead, chair. I will call the board of abatement meeting to order. Welcome, everyone. And we definitely have a majority here. So, right? So the board of abatement, Gloria and Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Mary. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. Carol. So, okay. Yeah, before we continue I just want to play an important role of the select board, the justices of the piece, the listers, town clerk and bye leisure. consider Kyle and Renee's? That's for the board to decide. We don't have anything from them. We do. Yep, there's a one-page sheet. So this is for the board to decide, but Reedy emailed me this afternoon to say that she was very ill. And they've had some bad luck in their family in the recent weeks. So she asked if we could reschedule them. You can either reschedule them or it's up to the board's discretion to go ahead. I said you could also write something. So she asked to reschedule. And considering those circumstances, that's where we are. And otherwise, we've got Gloria here. She's the number two. Okay, well. Anybody have any objection to that? I mean, there's not, I mean, there's some information here, but relatively little information. And I'd like to be able to hear from that. So unless anybody disagrees with that, I'm gonna rule that we will reschedule that, Sarah. So with that, Gloria. Welcome. What? I'm sorry, this board of abatement thing is new to me and new to the rest of us. So we're finding our way. What would you like me to do, Sarah? I would like you to follow the list of procedures. List of procedures. The hearing. I get that. Now, as now, Gloria takes her open. And any other witnesses on Gloria's behalf will take her open. Okay. That's number two. Okay. Do you have a written oath or do you want me to make up? No, you can't. We have a written oath. I'm pretty good at making. Oh, it's right there. Sarah, there you are. Okay. Are you guys gonna be witnesses as well? Yes. Why don't you come up here, then. And state your names. I'm Sarah, right? Yeah. I'm looking for a square, yeah. Okay, so this is applicants and listers. Yes, applicants, witnesses, and listers. So these are the witnesses, and those are the listers. Okay, so here we go. Do all of you applicants and listers under the pains and penalties of perjury? Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the evidence you give in the abatement hearing under consideration should be the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Yeah. Thank you. Okay, listers, you're good? Okay, thank you. And everybody should state their names. We need to know who we've got. Well, she's tough, isn't she? Yeah, we need to know who the witnesses are. So, Gloria, we know who you are. Sorry, Kirkpatrick. Okay. Troy Kirkpatrick. Okay, and you are neighbors. Sons. Sons, okay. And they were there when the flood happened. I wasn't. Okay. So they dealt with everything to begin with. Okay, thank you. And listers, why don't you introduce yourselves? I'm going to have a lot of them on the list, sir. Can you tell me if you're sure? Okay, thank you. And do any of you have any questions before we start the process? Okay, so I'm supposed to request any board of abatement members to make any disclosures due to conflicts of interest that they may decide to recuse themselves from this hearing. Is there anybody who feels they have a conflict of interest or need to recuse themselves? I'll disclose that Gloria and I worked together for a long period of time, but I will honestly say I don't think that would create a conflict of interest. You know, the small town were familiar with each other, but it doesn't go beyond that. But if anyone thinks I should recuse myself, I'd be welcome to that. But you're not concerned that you have a conflict of interest? No, I'm not. I don't. Okay. Ask the applicant to identify the statutory abatement category under which the abatement request is being made and then present his or her testimony and other evidence followed by testimony of any other witnesses on behalf of the petitioner. Gloria, you are up. Yeah, and you want me to do what? Sorry to tell you, Gloria. Fryden? When you check up on your abatement, whether what statute would you be, what, here I'll help you out. So the conditions for requesting an abatement are no probability that the tax can be collected and this can be requested only in the town. The bill was not properly assessed. The person liable for the bill is deceased. Financial hardship, collection, would work in injustice. Crate an undue expense for the town. This may be pressed down by the town and property was lost or destroyed. And I believe you checked property was lost or destroyed. Yes. That's okay. Okay, thank you. So tell us about your situation. My house is unlivable. The flood blew my basement floor out. I had five feet of gravel in my basement, a five yard of gravel in my basement. I got grass growing in the basement right now and it was a finished basement. Had water upstairs. My floors were all ruined. My cupboards are ruined. And they said that I would have to got the place from the basement to the roof. So, and I just barely had a new roof put on it. So it's, I blew my water pump out. My furnace, they said is not usable, not fixable. And that was a new furnace after Irene. So everything would have to be, it would have to be gutted and completely done over from the basement. And I'm the basement floor when they were down there, there are big slabs of cement that are blown right out. And there are whole spots where it doesn't, where it looks solid. But when you pound on it, it's hollow underneath. So I don't know how much damage or what, you know, what it would take to, the whole floor would have to be taken up, I believe, and redone. I have a hole outside of my house. That's what goes right to the footings or below the footings. And it's probably what, six by eight, six by six? Six by six. And diameter? Yep. So you're not currently living there? No, I'm living with him right now. Okay. I'll find a place. Okay. Witnesses, do you have anything to add to that? No, basically what she said, I mean, just, I mean, to look at what's gotta be done to it, you know, it's, we even talked with Kevin and he basically said it's, look at more than 50% of the value of the home just to fix it. And is it your plan to fix it or not? No, I've been hit twice there and it would cost me more to fix it than it would be worth. And it's in an area now where I can't even sell it. Can't even what? I wouldn't even be able to sell it. You know, they told me it's not in the flood zone, it's in a floodway. That's worse. Yes. What is your plan to do with that half picture? Hey guys, really, so the, to keep this orderly, Gloria should give her testimony, then the listeners, there's a whole procedure for following this. Oh, okay. I know you guys don't do this, but I want it to be done correctly. Okay, just next. Perfect. Yeah. Okay. Hold your questions. We're on the mission stage now. Listeners. Yeah, if you can't live in it, it's me that's no longer on. Okay. Now you can invite the applicant. Okay, other board members. So this new support, the application. I do support it. I mean, if you can't live in it, this. Okay. What do, what does, do you plan to do with it? I have no idea. There's been talk of the town of FEMA buying it out, but I don't know. I haven't heard anything more. So I don't know, but I know I can't live in it. I'm sorry. Have you applied for the buyout? Yes. Okay. So you should be at some point here. Yeah. Do they have any idea when that will be, when we're here? Sir, that's a question for you. Yeah. Next steps on the buyout. Who knows? I'm just waiting for the state to come in. They're well aware of your situation. Yeah, I'm sure they are. Were you able to receive any insurance payments or FEMA payments at this point? I had no insurance and FEMA paid me like $14,000 for that. So. I have a question, Peter. Yes, Roger. I just wanted to ask Sarah if it's appropriate. Has she reviewed in lieu of this conversation, the paperwork that's been submitted for the buyout and everything's in order? Have I reviewed it? I just, in your opinion, are the parties involved? Have they, is there application for the town buyout? Is that all in order? It's in order and it's been approved by the select board and sent to the state. Thank you. So, and maybe it's here somewhere and I don't see it, but what exactly are you asking for? Do we evade the taxes as of the day to the flood? No, I pay the taxes. On the portion attributable to the house? I paid the first installment on the taxes after the flood. I paid those. So, I don't know what the procedure is here. Okay, that's what I'm asking is, what are you asking to be abated? The property taxes. I can't live in the house. The total property taxes, which else for the house? Well, for whatever, I couldn't after the flood. Like I said, I paid the first installment. I know there's another one coming up right away. Okay, well here, I mean, this is where I'm a little lost and confused too, Sarah. I mean, basically I believe it's up to our board to respond to her request and say what we think is reasonable, right? So really what we're doing at this stage of the hearing is we're taking testimony from the applicant. We're taking testimony from the listeners because they're the experts in property evaluation. And then we close the hearing for deliberations and we deliberate and then we talk to them. But that's how that works, so we have 30 days for the time we close the deliberative process. So in other words, the board, Gloria, might decide we're gonna recess this meeting until December 1st. We'll pick it up and they'll have our deliberative session. That's when the clock ticks for 30 days. Or else they may close tonight, go into deliberative session, make their decision today, or not they have 30 days to issue a decision. It'll be in writing. Does that make sense? But now it's your chance to say, this is what I want abated. I want all the year's taxes. I want, this is where you get to make your request. Not necessarily the board will go with it, you should make your request here. Don't look at me. Well, when does property taxes start when in April? As of their tax gas of April 1st. So I will live there until April till the flood. So I expect to pay some. I'm gonna have to tell you that there's a court issue on this that's been gone back and forth in the course because the assessment year begins April 1st. Derange is absolutely right. The tax year begins July 1st. That's what I was gonna say. The tax year begins July 1st. It goes back, but there's... I'm sorry? You're a lawyer. But is the tax based on the April 1st? I'm not, okay. We base our taxes as of April 1st. Whatever exists. Yeah, but when the tax year is July to July. But there's dinner. Yeah, my question is if Gloria paid her first installment, that covers from July 1 through September, right? Is that not correct? That's how the town of Middlesex collects their taxes as of they just write it into four installments. We could say everything was due at once and they can pay the entire thing. So you can't look at how the installments are done. Okay, but does that cover, like does the tax bill for the full year, regardless of how we're gonna... Does that cover April 1 to March 31 or July 1 to June 30? I interpreted the law as to be from April 1st because that's how the house is taxed up. But I'm not a lawyer. I don't know. That's a good question. We need to figure out. My understanding has always been that the value was April 1st, but the tax year was July 1 to June 30th. But I could be wrong on that. I don't know. I guess we better find out. When we go to deliberation, we can figure that out. Yes, correct. We can. So just for information purposes and to get it into the record, I'm looking at the list of card and the land value was 39,600. The dwelling value is 75,000 and 17,000 per site improvements, $900 for outbuildings. That's how it's divided up. So does anybody... I have a question for the listeners. Do you have a sense as to how the valuation on the property has changed? I guess the house is destroyed, but the property's the same. Okay. We haven't heard anything otherwise. What you mentioned, was it void your property damage? Your property itself, not the house, but the land? I mean, she's got the big hole in the front yard where the water was actually what happened was the water whirl pulled in the corner. So washed out some of the property also. Sucked it down and blew it up through the basement floor is what happened. So it just relocated the property? Yeah, inside the house. So it means that the house is dead. Okay. And the shed is ruined, right? Yeah, all the buildings are ruined. Yeah. The land, probably, other than cleaning all the mud out of it. And contaminated, probably. Yeah, but... Do you have a well? Yes. At a different point in the basement. So that's gone through? Well, it's... I don't know, but that's where the basement floor blew up. So... And we drew water out of it. We had to buy a new pump and everything. And we drew water out of it to like... Yeah. Yeah, pressure wash downstairs, but there's still mud everywhere. But it seemed to be working fine, the well. It seemed to be, yes. Well, the well had the water. Anyway, drink the water? No. No, who, I'll drink the water, then. I can tell you have the water tested at the very least. Right, we used it for cleaning and rinsed my hands off from all stuff, but... Okay. No drinking. Thanks. Someone said earlier that the zoning administrator said that it was more than 50% damage. Did he give you any clearer number, like, or did he just say more than 50%? Well, he said he wouldn't move back into it either. It would cost more to repair it than it was worth. He said... You had to pay for what you got. I didn't bring that. Okay. I think I brought that. One of the issues they told us, because it's in floodway, to rebuild it required us to bring everything up out of the flood zone. Correct. He said I would probably have to raise it a minimum of five feet. And that would impact my neighbors. Yeah. Okay, that's a fine question. It says here, let's say, if you have a life of state in the property. Yes, I just turned, I went through a lawyer and turned the property over to the kids with my, with me with the life of state that I can do, buy, I can sell, do whatever I want with it. Does that include selling it? Yes. Did that call an enhanced life of state? It could be. I didn't bring that with me. I do have the right to sell it. You sell it, okay. And what about your subject? Do you have a lease deal? I couldn't tell him. Yeah, I do. It's toward crossroads. It's on the side of the house toward crossroads. Any other questions to anyone? Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. We will, we will deliberate a new course and be back at that for the, Okay. Okay. Thank you. I think you have his address for me because, I'm not there. Is it on your paperwork here? 158 tree miles? No, no, it's 109 Sadie Railroad. 109 Sadie Railroad? Yeah. Okay. You got that, Sarah? Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Good to see you, Jim. Yeah, you too. Sorry. It's under the circumstances. Thank you. Okay. Stop. Carol Maloney and Karen Jeannette? Just one. Just Carol. Good evening. Good evening. So before we begin, I need to swear you in. Swear me in. The Listers have already been sworn in. Why don't you state your name? Carol Maloney. Thank you, Carol. So Carol, under the pains and penalties of perjury, do you solemnly swear or affirm that the evidence you give in the abatement of hearing under consideration shall be the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Okay. Thank you. Great. Thank you. And do any of the Board of Abatement members have a conflict of interest in this matter? Okay. So the first thing we need to do is ask you to identify the statutory abatement category under which your abatement request is being made. And again, I'm confused about exactly what this is, but. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. Taxes are charges upon real or personal lost property lost or destroyed during the tax year. Okay, perfect. Well, it's because the property is the destroyed property. Yeah, damaged. So tell us about your situation. Well, thank you very much for making time. It sounds like we're all learning a lot about a lot of things. Whenever you hear stories like Gloria's, it's, I just count my lucky stars. We did have a horrendous situation. I live in Putnamville, 175, Vermont, Route 12 with Karen Gannett, we're co-owners of the property. Karen, unfortunately couldn't be here tonight. She would have enjoyed it, I'm sure. We appreciate this consideration. First, I want to acknowledge a town's generosity during the drama and trauma of the flood. It wasn't even the first week. And I think Peter and Sarah were emailing me at nine o'clock at night saying, and Peter was gonna meet the dumpster at five a.m. in our neighborhood so that we could get a dumpster. A lot was being written about the flooding and the damage at Three Mile Bridge and over the town roads. I saw nothing in front porch form for several days about Putnamville. And so I wrote to Sarah and sent a few pictures. So we woke up Monday, I think it was the 10th, to four plus feet of water in our house and surrounding our house, basically. So we're the closest to the river and the bridge. So we sit behind Jim and Sherry Page on Route 12 on the east side of Route 12. So we're in a little red house there. Many of you have probably seen it back there behind Gloria Dupré and Jim and Sherry. And we've done additions and significant improvements over the 18 years we've been there since 2005. In that time, water has come up to our driveway once in the spring of 2011. November of 2019, the water was high. Some of you remember it, the reservoir. So we're upstream on the North Branch and generally love our waterfront property. So that day, the water came in and it didn't leave for six days. So we didn't have glorious situations when we had rushing water through. We had the late, we became part of the reservoir, basically. So our living space, our entryway, our main entry, a finished mudroom, a 12 by 16 space with tile floor and finished wall insulation, a storage area pantry where we kept food, personal items, freezer, Costco items, my treadmill, et cetera, coats, jackets, winter stuff, and our full basement, which is a stone basement that's been weatherized. We're all inundated, over 500 square feet with, by the end of that first day, as you all remember, the water kept rising on Wrightsville. Our good friend and neighbor was tracking it and sending us hourly. So the water rose until 9 p.m. that Monday night. It stopped at about six feet in our house, much like glorious. So we had six feet of standing water, 90% of our property, our point to acre lot was under water for the week. I had a canoe, a little canoe. I paddled in one day into the room to grab coats and personal items to rescue them. So it ended up being about 35 to 40% of our finished house was under water for that week until Saturday. We got in on Sunday. We had lost pretty much everything in our basement. It turned out to be about 15,000 worth of personal items. Our shed was six feet under water as well, which is all of our tools and our toys and our yard stuff. Our well was submerged. It tested for E. coli. Our mound system, which is two years old, was completely under water. I could paddle right over it. And that did not get ruined. For some reason, we ended up having power through the whole thing. It turns out our panel boxes in the furthest back corner, the northeast corner of the house, and it was six inches from the water line. So there were a few good things. We were able to stay in the house. We didn't have water. I mean, we had running water, but it was contaminated. Our pressure tank was knocked over and ruined. Our furnace, the propane heater for our mud room. All the electrical, obviously, wall board, wall, we filled the dumpster in a quarter, like the first dumpster that came, we filled that large dumpster with personal items and household debris. Our driveway was washed out. There are three drains in Putnamville, right? Within, there are three driveways, and we have one right at the foot of our driveway on Route 12, and that failed. That might have completely washed out our driveway. That's never happened. So the systems are HVAC, water, electrical, and it basically looked like we had to gut everything. We had tons of help. Good fortune of having friends, family, neighbors, et cetera, strangers from Syria and Amsterdam, New York City came and helped. We gutted it, and it's been like that for months. So basically we had to take out our stairs. We had to come in through another second entrance that we hardly ever use. So I have some pictures. It's basically, we were able to salvage, it basically was torn down to new construction, to studs. So the big chunk of our, so our entryway and our downstairs. So this... I think we've got the pictures. Well, I don't think you got these. I took them since I submitted mine. So basically we, I mean, there are worse things. We're basically living in an unfinished house that was finished. So a big portion of our house was, it's uninsulated. It got insulated last Thursday. We still are without heat in that entryway, which is also our only heat source for our bedroom, our primary bedroom over that. It's not finished walls. They did spray. We decided to go to spray foam because we were never again gonna tear out fiberglass insulation and sheetrock. So right now it's spray-foamed and painted. They painted it for fire retardant stuff and we won't finish it till next spring. So it's a basically, finally we have insulation though after almost four months and hopefully the heat guy will come in and put the propane heater in. We did get a new hot water heater. It's up in our living space. So we've lost actually quality space. We put a heat pump hot water heater up to get it out the potential flood zone. We put, the water was three feet. Us and Evelyn Gant turns out we're on the same elevation because her water came up to three feet but hers was an unfinished basement. So she didn't have the same impact. But so we have the hot water heater upstairs. We have all of our electric had to be taken out and redone and we had that move. So we have a nice new piece of our 40 inch panel in our living room or den because we have a very small house upstairs and we had to get it out of harm's way. So we moved that up. And so those also impact our quality of life in the house. It's a very noisy hot water heater. So the TV on you can't really hear much, but so we're finally getting settled. We don't have full use of this space yet until it's finished, which will happen as I said next year. So again, it's the furnace was able to be repaired. We were shocked. It was 56 inches under water for days, but our heat guy was able to old, I guess these old things last better than new things, but Ryan at Alpo Energy was able to repair it. Ours and Evelyn's, it's an oil burner. We're going to put in heat pump upstairs. But we've got a new hot water heater, new pressure tank. We need a new propane heater. We have all new electric down there and moved upstairs and insulation. And then we'll finish up, as I said, the finish work. Yeah, it's almost like a new house, but it has, we slept water for six weeks because we had E. coli in our water. So our neighbors, we slept water and weren't able to take hot showers for almost two months actually until the end of August. It's getting there. FEMA was very, you know, I wasn't expecting anything out of FEMA, honestly, but I have a little, I tallied up. We've had our own spreadsheets. This has been a full-time job to manage this on the contractors, at least for two months it was. We've gotten a total of $28,713 from FEMA, which is pretty remarkable. Okay, what was that phrase again? Two, eight, seven, one, three. What do you have from FEMA? Pardon? That's from FEMA? That's from FEMA. Yeah, they were at our house on a Sunday. Monday morning, we had our approval letter in our email. Tuesday morning, we had money in our bank account, our first almost $15,000 in our bank account. Time should have such luck. Yeah, it was crazy. We just were shocked. Then we didn't get anything until the end of September, but they paid, but you don't know what it's for. You have to call them and ask them and then they call you back, whatever, but we ended up with almost 29,000. Our repairs to date have been less than that, 28,000. So we're about $500 ahead, but we haven't finished our electric. We haven't put in the heater, which is gonna be $2,500 for the propane heater, and we have to finish our stairs. They have no risers, they're no trim, it's just rough construction right now. So our hope is that you would consider the loss of a portion of our house for use for several months and still not heated, that it's value certainly during this time has been decreased significantly. The property, it had water on it, my organic gardens were, I have to dig up potatoes and throw them away and all the greens, but that's, I think it'll be okay. It's, you know, there's not a lot of contaminants upstream, it's just row and runoff and stuff, so I'm hoping with some work I can repair it. The flower beds weren't ruined. Nothing, the septic wasn't ruined. So the land itself seems, you know, it's resilient. The house, not so much. Thank you. So anything you can do, we appreciate. That's just giving us a pretty good picture, what's going on? Good explanation. And the only thing I'll confuse that is I know that you can do something with taxes, but it's almost like a value right now, which we wouldn't have any control over for this year, has gone down because of what happened until things repaired. So I'd say it seems the only thing that you can do is give a little better relief for the taxes, because you can't charge the last. We're gonna talk about that when we deliver it, yeah. Yeah. But it sounds like it was a hardship and you couldn't stay there for, if I read this. No, we were able to stay in the house for the whole time. We slept water, that was the main thing, yeah. And then, you know, the septic work, the mountain system kept operating, which was amazing. Which was amazing. Yeah, drop the door. Hey, I have a question. Yes, sir. Do I assume you didn't have any other insurance that paid for any of this, no homeowners? Thank you, thank you. We're not in the flood zone, right? Right. Corner of our house, we've been, we've got a survey of 12 years ago or so after I came. And so we're three feet of our corner where there's no, you know, no utilities in the flood. So we have no insurance. But the only case that you received was from FEMA. Correct. We did apply to our homeowners and they said if you had said, if you had had done some mitigation work, like some pumps, and I'm like, yeah, that wouldn't have helped when you were surrounded by water. There's no water for it to go. But if we had done that, we would have gotten $5,000 roughly from our homeowners. But we weren't eligible. Do you have an estimate as to how much more you need to spend to get it back to the state it was in, the house it was in before the flood? Just a good faith estimate, because that's what we have. It's very cheap. It's gonna be less than $10,000, I think. Less than $10,000 more. We're gonna do it differently. We're not gonna put drywall in fit. We're gonna do something. We're gonna try to be smart about it and not do something that has to be thrown away when it's, you know, there's all kinds of unique materials to just create a finish. It won't look the same or won't have the same feel as a house per se. It's like stuff they put in freezers, car washes. That's PVC, corrugated PVC, we think. That you could just zoom out of the studs. Wash it off. Put it back up. So I think we're gonna be able to do it for 10. Thanks. When did you say your heating system was repaired? It isn't yet. It's not in. We don't know. Oh, I thought you said it was repaired. That they were able to fix the furnace. Yep, the furnace was repaired in, when did it come in late August? Late August, yeah. And so do you have heat now? We have heat in part of the house. And the heat, yes. But not down in the, this space has no heat. The down, the base. The entrance. Yeah, where you enter. But the living space, where the kitchen and all of that you do have heat, okay. Yep, it's repaired for us, it's amazing. Okay. Anything else, anyone? Okay, so I screwed up the first time. I'm gonna do better this time. Um, would you like to make a brief closing statement? Do you have anything to add? No, I've said, I've said way too much probably. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. And I would entertain a motion from the Board of Abatement to close the testimony. And we'll give you close testimony for this board hearing. That is the second. Thank you. Who's second? I just couldn't see you. Jan? Jan Dick. Yeah. All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Okay. Thank you. We've included your hearing. Thank you. We will deliberate and we will be in touch. And thank you very much. Thank you very much. I love your renovations. Thank you. The court has stopped. The goosan. Okay, so I'm gonna put the meeting on a back office board. Okay, hold on. I gotta remember where I was here. Bear with me a second. Hi, kid, sorry. Who are you sitting in the bar? Yeah. Because it's downstairs, I've got to keep you. You don't need me. All right, now I'm right here. That's why we did it. All right, I see you have that back. All right, the board has got stuff sorted out here. Recording in progress. Okay, we are reconvening the select board meeting at 20 minutes of eight. And next on the agenda is budget workshop, treasurer's report, beginning process for FY25 municipal budget with discussion of planning and cemetery commissions. Action possible. So we only got in, did I give you guys copies? I made copies of everything I ever came in on. Committees that submitted their budgets. Oh, here it is. Oh, so that's a packet. That's a packet. Okay. That's a packet. Thank you. There you go. So only three groups submitted their budget. The cemetery is asking for an increase to 7,500. They've been 6,900. And the planning commission or whatever they are now are, I guess it's still the planning commission. They are asking for a placeholder of $4,450. What were they going to hold? Hmm? Were they before? I do. What were they before? It was more than that last year because they had some other things in there. Oh, okay. Let's see, I just got my computer closed now. And then the last one is the recreation budget. So I have a question. Yes. Why is the town clerk's office in the recreation budget? I moved it into the town. Because he contracts with them. Right. But it's not part of, I didn't... So it's really not part of his budget? It's really not part of his budget. Right. And neither is the parcel, I took the brush hogging for the Three Mile Bridge Road parcel out of there. Oh, there you go. That should be down too. That's down too. And I took those out. It's just he contracts. How does that compare with his current? He added in the extra really comes down to the miscellaneous group. And the other thing is the port, when we, you print this out, you'll see that the Port of Parties, he continues to put in a lower the facility for the recreation field at $1,000. And I think we came in over that last year. Yeah, we're only like $1,800 or something. Yeah. I think the Port of Parties stay out way too long. I think we could cut back the usage on that. By, I mean, he just had last week the ones pulled from running. And I don't know when the ones from Walt Kellyfield got pulled. Well, he only put it in for a thousand, so maybe he's thinking the same way. Well, I think that's fine. As I always say, those are placekeepers. When we get to the end, we can really take a look. I mean, I certainly don't have any problem with the planning commission or the cemetery, the recreation, I think we need to look at. The other thing is there's nothing in here. I worry about those damn tennis courts. And there's nothing in here for the tennis court. Well, that comes under CIP now. Yeah, there's a separate line in the capital improvement plan. That doesn't look like they are any more. Okay, thank you. I've forgotten that. So to answer your question about the planning commission, it's down without anything else, it's down $2,750. But they didn't account for any advertising, which there was $750 in there for advertising. Last year, and there was a $2,000 future grant match that was in there last year, that's not in there. So we're saving money, good, we need it. But those, I didn't hear from. Who do we have on deck for the next meeting? For the next meeting, that's what I asked Sarah. The fire department. Is it, it is the fire? Okay, fire department. It's five hours per week. And the highways, first we get to something. Yeah. Yeah, and he's budgeted five hours a week. I'll have to go back and see what he budgeted last year. But he's not, I think he's making more than $20 an hour too. What's the, what's the labor for? He gets paid for the job. This is meant for the ref, yeah. What's he doing? Managing all of the mowing and contracts. He actually does, he actually does quite a bit. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, he's putting in for paint to, you know, do different things. He painted, I think he did the benches over. Yeah, there's some stuff that he's not contracting out that he's physically doing himself. I see. We get pretty good value from it. I remember in the days when we were trying to deal with all this stuff, we didn't do such a good job, by the way. So that's all I really have for the budget right now. Okay, any other issues or items? I don't think so. See, I don't know if you want me to bring it up now, but. You wanted to talk about the computer. About the computer stuff. So based on somebody Randy reached out originally to somebody about the cost of all of that. And he was given a name. I called that person this past week and asked them a little bit about what they do and. You were able to get a hold of him? I was able to get hold of him. He has been doing IT for 25 years. He currently does it for Waterbury, Coxbury, I think, and Eden. He's familiar with NAMRIC and all of that. He's a former select board member in Waterbury. So he's in tune with the municipal needs and requirements. And he's happy to come in and talk to the board about his services and whatever. And I told him that I would bring it to the board and ask him if they want him to come in. I think we've got to explore the options. Well, we're looking at, what are we looking at? Did you add up the total of all these things, Randy? This is like $18,000 for the infrastructure. And then the email stuff was like 11,000, I think, if I remember right. Yeah, so we're looking at spending $30,000 pretty quick plus the battery backup's another two more. Yeah, that's included in the report. The one thing he said in the email piece was like pretty concerning to me. Like, even with the explanations tonight and looking over stuff, based on my conversation with my contact at Vermont Vanity, we should absolutely be shopping that piece of it. Well, if we're gonna shop, I say we shop because I don't see us doing the email with one vendor and buying a server with somebody else. That's my suggestion. This guy said that he doesn't wanna come in and just install a new server and new email and then walk away. It's either he's gonna service us and do the whole thing. No, that's a good, so, you know, I mean, you know, the struggle is what always used to happen in my world, I'm sorry, Bridget, I'll be right with you. In the insurance world is everybody would always give our proposals to everybody else and I always hated that. Let them come up with their own damn proposal and compare. But to some degree, we have to, I didn't like Ruben's answer on the cloud thing. I mean, we have to buy a server so we can have a server so we can convert to the cloud. That didn't make sense to me. But, you know, what do I know about IT? Almost nothing. But I think it's good to hear what somebody else has to say and, you know, we can give them in broad strokes what Ruben is proposing so we can compare apples to apples. But I don't think we should share Ruben's proposal. Well, you can't, you don't have that luxury. That's a public document. If he wants to look at it. Well, if he wants to find out what it is, I guess he can find it out. If he asked me who we were working with and I told him. Yeah, it's also gonna be in the minutes, all of Ruben's figures. And those minutes will be on loan. Yeah, but not the detail of what the proposal is, so. All right, wow. I understand he can come in and ask for it, Sarah. I know. And if he does, he does he'll think less of them because he did that. But I'm just telling you, from the point of view of somebody, I mean, Randy competes out there in the world all the time with different projects. Do you share information on other people's proposals in advance? No. Do you work for him? Of course you don't. I do not. I'm not obligated to either. Anyway, so I'm throwing it out there, and. I'm done, kids. I just think, you know, we've been consistently having struggles there. We've talked about this for a year. If we don't ever invite somebody in to have the discussion, we're always gonna be complaining about the issues that we're having with the vendor that we're dealing with. Well, I found it interesting tonight that he knew why he was coming to the meeting and yet he didn't have the proposal in front of him. He was kind of just piecemealing his answer until he got the proposal up in front of him. I mean, I just, that's kind of like how they've been operating. Like they don't have time for us anymore. Peter, I just wanted to follow. Yeah, go ahead. I was wondering if with this proposal in front of you, have you felt any movement with regards to his service? No. And if he's looking for business, then you think that he'd be a little bit more forthcoming. And if he's not, I don't think it's a bad idea at all for us to find other quotes. I don't know either. And I mean, the other problem is he admitted that they're completely overwhelmed. I mean, he has too much business according to him, so. Well, that's another thing, is that if he does have too much business and he kind of is just play acting that he wants this, but I don't know if this is a level he doesn't, then maybe his numbers are off. The other thing that I- Even though he says that they're deeply discounted. Well, the hourly rate is deeply discounted, but the hours it's gonna take are just, I think it's very worthwhile and I think it's good for us to do our new diligence and talk to this person. I'd like to just add on to that and not limit it to just this person. I wanna do it with that, Randy. I think trying to engage with at least one other person here is in our best interest, is in the town's best interest, so. Yes. Sarah. If you want me to go back to my friends, the Vermont Business Registry put up an RFP, saying that the town of Middlesex is seeking proposals for an IT provider and you might be getting people from out of state. You might get people who say, yeah, we can absolutely do it remotely or you might get other people, but at least that's one way of getting this out. Because they do check that. I mean, that Vermont Business Registry is pretty active. It's gonna piss off Reuben, because he'll see it too. Right. But you know, in our meeting with Reuben when he came and he sat with us, I don't know how long ago that was, a year ago, nine months ago. That was two years ago. Yeah, whatever it was. Yeah. You know, we told them that we were at that point. So I don't feel like, you know, we're being open about our intention. So. I'm just asking if we're likely to do that, and we'll do that as your platform assistant. The only thing I don't like about that is we're gonna, I mean, that doesn't mean we have to use them. No. Or talk to them. I think recommendations, I don't know if we call other towns and find out who they're using. We did that, didn't we? We did. I did that. You did too? Yeah. And what they say? Was there anybody else? I was, a lot of them used RV technologies. All right. Who does Bobby Bremelcom use? Are you making fun of me in my relationship with Bobby? Me. Me. Again, that one went over my head, I guess. Oh, no. I don't disagree. I mean, if we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this, we should talk to at least three people. And as far as I'm concerned. I mean, if we are worried about what Ruben thinks, then I mean, somebody could suit him an email saying that, you know, it was discussed and because you want to do diligence for other people and you know, you can tell them first, we'll be gonna find out anyway. Technically, according to our purchasing policy, anything over $15,000 has to be put out to bid. That's right. There we go. That's the purchasing policy that FEMA thinks we abide by. Well, we should be following that. But this isn't, yeah. This isn't, we're not, I just want to be clear, we're not contracting for just these projects. We want somebody to handle our routine for us. Absolutely, what we're talking about. And we need somebody that when we call them, they can come in and support us. And I mean, that's the biggest thing is we can't afford to be down. Don't we have a contract with these guys? When does that expire? Yeah, when does our contract expire? We have a clause in the existing contract to cancel services. We've had that discussion with Ruben as well. We have to give them notice. That's what I recall. That's like something like 60 days ago, isn't it? I thought it was 30, but it might be 60. So you tell me when you want him to come in and. Whenever we can, whenever we can, I mean, what I'm concerned about in this guys is we've been sitting on our hands on the server for various reasons for a year. And I know for myself and my own experience when this equipment gets old, you're just, it's just a matter of time before there's some kind of catastrophic failure. And then there's no opportunities for bids. Then you're frantically trying to get somebody in here to replace the server. And that's not the way to operate. So we need to be moving on this stuff. And we definitely need to be moving on the email. The battery backed up, if that thing's seven or eight years old, it should be replaced. I agree with him on that. Whether $2,000 is the right price or not, I don't know. $1,000 for 14 emails is a lot, but where do I know? It isn't, it isn't. I will say that his hourly rate that he's offering us is in line with other hourly rates. So it's not the rate itself, it's just. Just seems like a lot of hours. Yeah, absolutely. And there were some fixed fees in there that weren't based on hourly rate charges that it's very broad. Well, let's see what the other folks have to say. So Sarah, I would say do it. Let's put it on Vermont Business Registry. Don't you think? I mean, unless. Hey, yeah, that's probably better than trying to find a third person in the other way. That's easy too. I mean, the other thing, I guess before you do that, Sarah, if you can unearth when we asked the other towns who they were using, or if you can, make a couple of phone calls and see who some of them are using. OK, before I do the Vermont Business Registry, right? Yeah, I would. Just because I would prefer somebody who has. Recognize or something, yeah. Did you guys pick a date for when you'd like this other person to come in? No, we were just talking about that. I'm going to get together with you and we'll figure out what will be the best date, I guess. I mean, it may be that it's more beneficial to have them come in and not sit in front of the board, but to come in and do an evaluation and then be able to put together some information. That's what I think. I do too. I did tell them how many computers we had and all, but OK, I'll talk to them about that then. Yeah, I would have them come in and check out what we have. And back on the budget stuff, the one thing I failed to mention just because it's part of the budget is I got the new insurance numbers for health insurance and that's a 12.41% increase. Yeah, yeah, forget about inflation when you're talking about health insurance. It's the good news. Hey, the guy that comes and does my water filter went up 25%. So four of them sound bad. The guy that details my car is going to look 40%. I said the cost of soap was going up. I said, really? I've been there for 20 minutes. We set for the meeting at this point? I'm waiting for the render to finish up, I think we are going to do all the good news. Thank you, listeners. I have the speed stuff here, but we don't need to go over them tonight. It's not like we haven't had a chance to read you those anyway. They're pretty fun. They're pretty fun, yeah. It's your idea of fun. It's reading over those speed things so you can get yourself alive. 35% over the speed limit on Center Road? 60 miles an hour. Yeah, I don't believe it. I don't doubt that one bit. They had them set up down at the bottom of the hill so everybody's coming off the hill and just cranking. I know. And you know what? OK, so we are adjourning the meeting for this evening.