 Call the meeting to order at seven o'clock. Cliff is absent, he's on a business trip. Public comment for items not on the agenda. Why not? That's actually probably going to give you into, I was going to ask a couple questions. My concern has been for a number of weeks, A, the speed that drivers are driving on the county road. Town drivers? Anybody. Oh, I think that's a highway car. No, no, no, no, no. Residents? Yeah, or non-residents. Can't Hill Road? My God, on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, people with boats, they fly. They go up, can't Hill with boats? Oh yeah, from Minelson. You should see the road. You should see the traffic on Bain Kamoli Road. You know Bain Kamoli Road? Up and over, yeah. I think people come from, like, Woodbury, the Worcester and they have found the Bain Kamoli Road to be a good short cut. It's scary. And we have a special needs person that we take for walks on the road, and man. Here's our guide. I knew it was on the agenda. I was coming anyway to be here. But it was a good timing, right? It was. Okay. Good evening. So you've been doing that issue up with our friendly neighborhood sheriffs here. Guess what, we have speeding in town. No. No, I know it's a surprise to you. Don't see it at all. So I already called the meeting to order and we'll get started with our discussion with the Washington County Sheriff's, but let's do some introductions in case they don't remember our names. Denise Wheeler, Rose Pell Chuck. I'm Katelyn Cronus. I'm a resident here in Calais. So we're going to start out with our sheriffs. Oh, updated records. Thank you. Oops, I won't give you the phone one. Thank you. You still do the select board exception for the speeding ticket? The last one of those we had, we ended our contract. I like that response. So thanks for coming. We just wanted to check in once a year. We appreciate your services. And I know I can email you and you don't have to tell me when, but I know you're going to be out there. We have had significant issues, as you know, by curse pond as we do every year. There's just a lot of speeding on these back roads and it just gets worse every year. I see all these kids on dirt bikes. Some of them have helmets, some don't. They don't have headlights on. They don't follow the traffic stops like stop signs or yield signs. And it's really scary. I'm so afraid one of them is going to get really hurt. So I really appreciate the emails that you send because I'm able to communicate with Brett. Sometimes I'll just forward it right to the patrol guys and the next time we're out, it might be the next day. It might be the next week, but they're able to go right out. Unfortunately, things don't always happen when we're there. The last time you emailed me about the problems around the curse pond, we had had a guy out there two days before that had spent all day between the county road and along the edge of the pond. Do you have any success? When we're there, nothing's going to happen. Or just because we're there, it works out. And some of it, and I say this everywhere we go, and I use my dad's example, is some of it is perception because on the back roads, sometimes the speeds look really fast, but when a speed limit is 35 and someone's going 40 and causing a bunch of dust, it's not necessarily a ticketable fence, but it looks for the resident, if someone's walking on the side of the road, it looks like they're going really fast. My dad's the same way in Wolka, he lives on a road that's 35 miles an hour, and I'll stand out there with it and he'll go, look at that car, it's flying! And I'll say it's going 40, and dad, you drive faster than that. And I've always done a lot of things. So, I mean, for instance, we're going to be putting a yield sign, we're updating our traffic ordinance, and we're going to put a yield sign at the intersection of Kent Hill and Peekin, because there's been some almost near, I mean I've almost gotten piled into by people. They don't stop there. So we have the discussion about whether it's better to have a yield sign or a stop sign. Do you have a stop sign? That's what I thought. No, I win. I made the motion and nobody seconded it. Right. Of course, that lies, because sometimes a yield sign could be open to interpretation of, did I have enough time? Because you only have to stop at a yield sign if you have to yield it right away. And I didn't think I did because I thought there was enough time. Versus the stop sign says, you have to stop. It doesn't say you can California roll through it. It says you have to stop. And even people that do roll through roll through slower than a yield sign. So we would be better advised to put in a stop sign. Yes. I guess to help you about that, like last February, whenever Tom and I were here, I said, I'm curious, why is there no sign there? And he said, I've seen it come up for discussion. Well, we're going to have to revise our revised. And when we're revising the traffic ordinance, do you ever look at those? Do you review them for towns? Because we have to have copies of all the ordinances. So when we go to traffic court, we have to be able to show what the ordinance is. So Brett gets them from the town on a periodic basis, reviews them, and make sure that the signage is appropriate with what the ordinances say. And Brett works well with all the communities as far as speed limit signs, where they have to be, and now, so that we can, it doesn't do anything good to come out and do speed enforcement, if the signage is appropriate. Well, Toby's going around and checking to make sure that the yield signs or stop signs are where they say they are in the traffic ordinance, and they have to be a certain height hanging, right? Because I remember one guy in Maple Corner one here got off, because the sign wasn't the right height. Right height, right size. Because the new signs have to be a larger size. Okay, so when we get, when we, you would probably want to review the ordinance before we adopt it? We just need to know what it is afterwards, so that we can have a copy of it for enforcement, for traffic ordinance. Yeah, we're going to have to revise it again to change it to a stop sign here, but after that, it's what, 45 days after we adopt it, so somebody can appeal it, but after that, then we would, you would want to copy. Correct? I had another question about speed. Many of our roads are 30 or 25, especially in the historic district. That's where I've been seeing a lot of speed coming down the hill in the Maple Corner, it's 25. And I've seen one of the Sheriff's cars this summer, nicely hidden in the parking lot of the Maple Corner store, a better spot, I came down. People come right up on my butt. Tom Miller was getting out of her car and I mined, and so we just flew right through, and it's, it's pretty obvious one's 25, and we're doing 40 or 45. But I'm wondering if we used to have a mobile speed car. Speed car. Right, so we still have it. It's in my shield. And B, I'm seeing more and more of the pole planted speed in my pillar, but in other small communities as well. Let me, let me up, let me up. Southwoodbury. We're working on that. So let me up to you, Craig. We're, we just tracked down the speed car. I just told Toby where it was. It's in Marshfield, so we need to retrieve it. We are doing some work to try to put in those flashing speed limit signs in East Calus. We could do a traffic study in Maple Corner and put up a speed sign, but you know, it's flashing sign. They cost money. It takes time to do traffic studies. So it's not just like we have the money to just go out and buy them. And the other thing to know when you're looking at the flashing post-mounted signs is some of them, you can buy multiple bases so that all you have to do is go out in units. So you could have one or two units that you move around and have the bases and it's just a matter of a few minutes to unhook them. Right. But on Route 14, we have to get VTrans to approve posting those signs in their right of way. In Maple Corner, for instance, we could just do that ourselves because that's not a state highway. Do you get good reason? I mean, it seems to me when I'm in Montpelier or I go to Woodbury, you see that sign and people slow down flashing signs. One at Woodbury we have seen great success out of that. Most of the people that are not common to the area tend to slow down. Those who get used to it, unfortunately, those who get used to it, it's old news. Then they visit us. Right. They are a good tool. We have them actually on Wakefield or Wakefield Elementary School. I mean the first aid wakes me up. I've got one right in front of my house now that they changed the speed limit to 30 on Berlin Street. And I see people all the time slowing down from my house. It's a good reminder. You know, growing up at Harvard, I'm still back and forth all the time. And I'm used to around the lake being 50 in a passing zone. It's just ingrained that it's 50 in a passing zone. And every time they come around and see the sign, it slows me down, brings me up, reminds me. So I think they do a great job. Yeah. We just have to come up with the funding to buy the ones in East Calus after we do. There might be some grants available. I don't know. We're going to check them into that. You might want to check with what's not called highway safety anymore. It's through VTrans now. I used to be called Governor's Highway Safety. I can't think of what it's called now. But they at one point had grants for those. Speed limit. And also check with Regional Planning Commission. They're the ones that did the speed limit signs. They were involved in it. And there was also a school project at one point. They had a grant available for that as well. I know obviously they have a corner to another school. Right. Well, CVRPC did a traffic study in East Calus for us. Which was really very helpful. Before I forget, I want to address your concerns. What works really well is to let Denise know when, especially if there's a time frame or something, she emails us. And like I've already said, we let our patrol guys know so the next time they come out, they know and it's fresh information. So definitely if you've got, I mean, we're not going to get everybody we try the best we can. But word gets out. The more we know of when and we like that information because there's no use coming and sitting on one road if everybody's speeding on another road. I realize that you can't be everywhere all the time. Even if you're just passing through, I think people see, oh, the sheriff was out there today. Oh, they're out more often. Even if you're there for a half hour, you know, it impacts some people at a higher traffic level. Rumors, travel. Well, and I don't during the summer because I spent a lot of time in Wolcott and so I'm driving back and forth with my cruiser. But I can notice that people slowing down just seeing me driving through. Right. So you're getting the extra warning patrol of slowing traffic down. You're not charging us for that. No. I'm going to charge you the mileage because I'm actually going to go into town before that coverage. Only if you're going to stop at the store and have coffee or something. You know, it would be great as you cycle out your cars to replace if we get one of your old dead beater cars and we just park them around. You know, the state police did that for a while in the state. They would just park cruisers in the turnaround. Right, they did. The pull-throughs. Really? Nobody in it. People would just slow it down. It worked. Well, I was just talking to someone. Sure. They were asked to do that. They were placing cars out. And they stopped doing it because people kept calling, wanting to know what was going on because the cruiser was on. There was nobody in that cruiser. So for the community, it was happening in a huge pain. But I have seen where there used to be one on the Williston Road and the trooper lived on the Williston Road and he'd leave his radar on. And you could see cars nose diving all the time when they came into the radar. It came out to it that early. It does have some of that. Well, we've asked our legislator, legislature representative to help us get a bill passed so that we could make the speed limit slower. Like, for instance, I live on Bain-Kamalee Road. You probably know that road. Speed limits like 35 sometimes on that road. Nobody should be driving 35 on that road. But we can't reduce the speed limit ourselves. Anything below... You can't reduce the speed limit but you have to do the traffic and the area you're studying. Right. Maybe lower it down as low as 25. But we were trying to get legislation so we didn't have to do that. Especially on the back roads. And that study, if unless I'm mistaken, there's an assumption, oh, this is a Vermont assumption or a National's assumption that they put speed trackers out, whatever they call this. Oh, those things on the road? The counters that track both numbers and speed and type of vehicle. And if 80% of the people are going at or above that speed limit, then that means that road is safe to go that speed. And that is boulder dash. You have to be careful because Worcester on Route 12 wanted to lower the speed limit and the speed survey in the state actually raised the speed limit. It's being spirited. There's no reason for that. That's a dangerous windy bend. The community is no best but is needed. And that's only considering the perspective of the car. Not the community, not the pedestrians, not the kids. Not the people drive. Not the cyclists. That's a bike route. Windy. Yeah. Yeah. What a motor vehicle society we live in. So what else is going on in the sheriff's world? Manpower. Like every other law enforcement agency we are losing manpower. We've had to cut back on our court contract a few years ago because of the decrease in manpower. Earlier this month we just had to decrease our court contract again because we don't have the manpower. Is that because you don't have the money? No, we don't have the personnel. We're not, we have been losing our applications over again and over again hoping something will pop up and we're just not finding the people. Here you go, Toby. I've just seen it. A retirement job plan. He's got a couple of those. I have four or five of those. Any time to work. You get a badge. I have one in the fire department so I'm already a badge. Yeah, great. What about you? I don't need no stinking badges. So that's the... So it's not money, it's personnel. It's personnel. And what do you do to recruit? You go to the schools and get them on the tech. I'm a brother of a law police association website. Our guys are talking to... The hard part with colleges, to be honest, is that with so many people leaving the state it takes so long to get someone part-timers level two now certified is that by the time we get them certified they graduate and they leave. You know it's another issue. I'm sorry, go ahead. Or they're looking for a full-time job as soon as they graduate and they go somewhere else. So we've tried that route. We went to Norwich and did the job fairs. We recruited a few people and we ran into that problem. We've run into that problem and the other problem is is that the level two certification takes so long and so intensive, time-wise that our best candidates that are 25, 30 years old that have a job and a couple of kids can't do it. I have five days of vacation. Well, a level two certification to start with, you have to go to the academy for two weeks. That gives you a provisional certification to work with a certified law enforcement officer for training. There's a week for control and restraint so there's another week. The DUI isn't included in the requirements but you can't very well work as a law enforcement officer without being DUI certified. That's another week. So there's four weeks right off the back that are spaced somewhere throughout one year. We're not certified yet. Then there's a bunch of other one-day trainings that you have to take and we're at the whim of the academy. Last year we had one guy ready to sign off in August but his last class wasn't until October. So we have to wait for the academy to offer the class. So that's level one. The academy, the first two weeks is level one. Level two is this additional training you have to take. Level three is a minimum of 60 hours working with a field training officer and we find it takes close to 150 hours to get someone comfortable and get them signed off. So if you have a job it's really tough to do it. Granted when we get someone certified they are much better than when we started and you went to the one week academy and you came out and your supervisor said you're certified you're the keys to the car and you're on and running. We'll take a few of those guys. We have the same problem with constables. We can't find people to be constables. There is no training. The academy used to, when Wilson signed on which was decades ago, there was a training and he went to at the police academy. Now there's nothing. They were having quarterly or at least every six months they were having some constable training. The problem is when the law changed about certification not all the constables were certified. Even we turned away constables for field training because it's so labor intensive that we were having all we could do to get certified without taking somebody else on that it was hard for the constables to find someone to actually do their certification training. So we have one constable you see how big our town is with all the roads and he doesn't do tickets and speeding tickets and things like that. And the hard part with that too is I was talking to one of the other towns local to you that we're speaking about certifying their constables so are you going to get them uniformed because do you want someone out in their pickup truck with a blue light in a pair of jeans stopping cars there's all the requirements now by legislature of what policies you have to have and once you have a certified constable you are now a police department so you have to have fair and partial policing you have to have taser whether you have a taser or not you have to have a policy covering that I can't think of all the other ones off the top of my head you have to report your race data information on all your traffic stops not just tickets but every warning you give so you have to have a database to keep track of that to report to the state every year so having a constable that's certified becomes a huge deal because huge liability too and the connecting with the leagues to see what having a constable or a certified constable for liability insurance was huge so it's really cost prohibitive and it's like I said it's a lot bigger deal you basically have you're running a police department at that point well and like for instance Calis can't afford to have its own police force and our budget for you is not all that much but that's what we can afford so you know we're kind of in a well but for the most part the revenue that you gain from the tickets they write pretty much balances that not anymore not anymore that changed they changed the formula well and the other thing that's happened is that we are it's almost beyond encouraged almost forced to if someone can test their ticket we were expected to make some kind of deal with them at the traffic ticket hearing so where we used to if I was giving you a deal it was on the roadside this is what we were running for the hearing officer, the hearing officer would chastise you and sometimes send you back out in the hall to make a deal that's not the correctional legislature that was the law two or three years ago they actually imposed here to make some sort of deal is it state police and law enforcement? why? but you still have to show up you still have to make the deal so the court still has to be involved well there's less appeals that way there's less court cost that way it does in a sense help and the traffic ticket finds when I started there a speeding ticket was $2 per mile speed limits if you get somebody for $15 over it was $30 now it's going to cost you $170 so they raise the fines but now they want you to make a deal that doesn't make any sense but so be it so I heard that if you get a traffic ticket and they give you a date for a hearing and you say sorry I'm in the Bahamas that day and they reschedule it the chances are that you guys aren't going to show up for this rescheduled one and then they don't have to pay them is that true? well a lot of people take their chances I mean that's been since the beginning if the author doesn't show if they don't show they can appeal with an excuse and try to reopen which happens quite often but if we don't show it's an automatic dismissal because maybe you might be out catching some bad guys while they're there are things that happen that we don't have to control over but there's one note too to let you know that there were needles and stuff found on Robinson Cemetery Road somewhere over by Utah that people were out walking and they found needles and we obviously know what those are probably from I do remember getting that and we talked about it and I never followed up the person to talk to Deputy Chief Joe Wallsworth a wealth of research and information and they've got drop off place for needles in the city how you pick them up, what you do with them how you dispose of them so he's our go-to guy because it's also concerning on Green Update people have found needles did you get that name Katie? Joe Ellsworth, Deputy Chief and Barry because that would be a Fire Department because I was thinking maybe we could hang up some signs about drop off boxes he can tell you what they've done in the city and had great success with it and I know that he's got some grant money that he has spent to buy the boxes to be able to put them up in certain locations as well whether or not they're blocked outlying communities that'd be a question of his but we ended up getting them for the courthouse for our office etc and it worked out very well that's good to know we've got needle receptacles in the bathrooms of the library and a plan for disposal as well we haven't had them filled yet and they've been in there for quite a while but they're there because there are legitimate reasons people use needles as well use the one to contact and in fact take them up to dispose them as well and we got that from the Oldridge Library because they were in contact with them we have a policy and we have a procedure for a disposal if we were to find needles which has really happened once since I've been at the library what else can we pick your brains for get information or what can we do to be I was going to make one comment because I worked out here two Saturdays ago this is your turn on the kind of hill that needs the speed limit sign needs to be cleaned up from where? okay we'll make a note of that and I guess should we be going around I guess we should be going around trimming ranches that are in front of stop signs and speed limit signs it's becoming much more common for people to show up at hearings with photos that say couldn't see the sign well, my brother a long years ago missed the stop sign and he said it's been a long time I mean we're doing as much we can with the people we have and we appreciate it I know that our civil process guys when it comes through their main focus is civil process but it definitely has a sheriff's plate if something serious happens they're making stops so we're all doing it we're doing it we're doing it we're starting to make stops so we're all trying to make the effort of showing the colors showing the flags making the extra trips I know I appreciate so much when I send you an email and you always respond even if I don't ask you to you always respond sit up on account of the east calis store so on your way to Hargoyle you can stop and I can stop He's kind of a star. My daughter rules there because she's a palace resident now. Your daughter who's your daughter? Brianna Hill. She lives on Loose Road. OK. Does she have a sheriff's card? No, she doesn't. She's a white one. Can't you recruit her? Recruit her. She likes what she's doing, working for the state. Well, she needs a part-time job, though, right? She has a full-time job, then, right, right? But you visit often in your sheriff's car? Occasionally, I've been out there. I'm just thinking outside the box here, you know. And you get the fairy town bruises up there all the time, anyway, so. It is? The chief of the fairy town lives on that. Buzzy, buzzy dog. Oh, right, right. Yeah, buzzy. Yep, yep. My daughter just lives around the corner, so quite often I'll make a loop. There you go. We like you making loops. We'll have to ask buzzy to make loops, too. I was the leader of the Civil Air Patrol, and buzzy was buzzy this big. Yeah. But definitely, I like the emails. We always encourage that. It's the easiest way for us to know immediately what's happening. We're going to encourage you to let Denise know so that we can know, because the next trip out of one of the bruises, they'll be heading that way. Yeah, great. Anything else? Library have any questions? Don't share? You guys have anything else for us that you want to say? I don't know how much of our contract we've used up already with your patrols, but we're trying to weigh it out, and with court costs, we're always trying to lean a little bit to try and cover that, so we don't always use all of it, because you can never do anything. If you have to come out here to respond to an emergency because the state, because I know state police aren't still aren't available for certain hours because of manpower issues, right? And if you, you are their backup, if there's an emergency and they can't get here, is that right? If we are working in an area. But that's, but what about those hours in B? No, we don't, we don't, we're not set up to respond. Now, what we do do, if it's Monday through Friday and something serious happened, you guys came out to a burglary, what just last year. So if we do hear something and we're in the office or we're local, that doesn't cost you anything because we're, you know, Brett and I and Mark, we're getting paid by the state, our civil process guys, we're, we're paying. And that was my question, who pays for that? If we sit down, you're just getting that. If we come out to back up the state, we don't bill you because I'm not billing you every morning when I'm driving through. We don't, if we're coming to assist the state, we're not billing you for that. We bill you when we have a schedule patrol that we come out to that schedule patrol. Okay, good. Very good. Any other questions? And there are times too when Brett will be running a DUI or a sharp detail that will come out, a safe highways patrol or a DUI patrol. That's not a rescue. If they'll come out and spend some time roaming through the areas, you get that extra patrol. Okay, those are those, people have their seatbelts or DUIs or? Yeah, grant funded through the state. So that's extra patrol that you get that you don't even know about because you know about the ones you can bill for, but you spend extra time out here. We appreciate everything else that you spend out here. And also know that there's people that we know that are wanted in the area that are organized to come out and pick up and that's on our time. You always get the extra patrol like if we're one of the Woodbury, depending on what shape it is. And that's something I can speak on behalf of. We've upgraded the way we're dealing with those type of things, different criminal activity, etc. One of the things we do is we gain a lot of information from the public. That information we communicate with the state police on a regular basis, the other law enforcement in the area. So it's not uncommon for us to come out with them on a search warrant or whatever the case may be, working with developing information. So that's increased drastically over the last at least couple of years. I wonder why that, why yourself? Well, for one, I got one real good guy on one of our full-time officers on patrol that- You mean state police? No, but I'm yours. That has really communication points with a lot of the troops. We work very well with them. New communication point with hardwood PD, which helps us out, which, whether you like it or not, these people run all the town. Same people that they're dealing with, we're dealing with, and by their side. Right, right. Yeah, so it makes sense to work together. You saw what happened in Worcester? Yeah, so we're working with, you know, Bret and the guys have a great work in the state police, also with Barry Street crime unit. So we do a lot of work without the search warrant, spying people, working with hardwood back into Woodbury and working this way. And, you know, transport guys pick up a lot of information, transporting prisoners that they're able to share with the local PDs and state police that help with a lot of cases together. Just because they like to tell you all what's going on? You never believe what I'm talking about in the back to you. Oh, I got it. Kind of like riding with a teenager. Yep, yep. Right, when they can't see your face, they talk more. Yeah. Yeah. We're just at the taxi cab again. Right, right. I mean, I don't think we have two, I mean, once in a while you see crime reports on front porch form, but I don't know, I think we're... It does seem diminished. It seems like we're pretty, I feel pretty safe here. Let's put it that way. The last time was at house catch and fire. You mean, when it happens beside your house, there's people are speeding by your house, it affects you when you really feel like this is terrible and I want it fixed, which is understandable. But overall, house is a pretty good place to live. Yeah, I know when I had the issue with the... Mainly because I'm just concerned for kids getting head injuries. I saw Game Warden, Fish and Game Warden was at the boat launch and I stopped and said, have you seen these kids with these dirt bikes with the register? They don't necessarily always have a helmet. They don't necessarily always have a light. And he apparently, because I asked him, I said, can you stop them? And he said yes. Yes, you can. I was, I didn't know that. I didn't know that the Game Warden couldn't make those calls. Fish and Wildlife does snow mill patrol and Fish and Wildlife is passed with ATV enforcement also. Right, but I didn't know that they could do... They have the same certification as the rest of us. I was glad because I see him a lot at number 10 pond fishing access, so. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. So, yeah, keep the emails coming. So, yeah, maybe there'll be some free coffee and breakfast sandwiches at East Cal store. We're going to come anyway. I know. Well, have a good time. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Did you talk about animals at all? I didn't want to bring it up because it would be hard to buy. No, because I think that's a separate kind of topic. Like, we should ticket animals? No. No, the whole livestock running at large, blah, blah, blah. Those animals. So, wasn't that informational? That was wonderful. Yeah. They're so good when they come here. Really, they're really good, easy people to talk to. And he's very responsive when I send him an email. You know, I mean, if somebody complains to me every single day, I'm not going to probably send an email every day. But I know. But he does. They're responsive because I've seen them. You know, in a few days or the next week or something, they'll be right out there. All right. So, Carolyn Brennan. Welcome to Kellogg Hubbard Library. Welcome to Calis. Thank you. Calis is me. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. Sharon wasn't here when we did introductions. That's all right. Calis has overall been supportive of the library over the years. I've seen that. I've been looking back through the history of the towns. So Tom, the co-owner and executive director, he retired, affected June 30. And so Jesse Lynn and I took over. So we actually, it's a co-directorship, but we reduced our overall administration because Jesse and I already worked for the library. I was full-time and Jesse was full-time. So we reduced administrators from 2.75 full-time equivalents down to two. And so the way we split it up, I'm the library director. So I'm in charge of collection development. I'm in charge of all the library personnel, all the library programs. And I'll be the one that is coming to select board meetings. And I'll be the face for you guys when we're asking to be put on the warning for town meeting. And Jesse's the nonprofit manager. So the library's incorporated nonprofit. And so Jesse manages private fundraising. She does all of our HR, all of the anything that has to do with insurance or has to do with keeping track of budget money. She used to be the director of finance and operations. And so she's still doing that, only she's adding on private fundraising as well. And she's the primary liaison to the board of trustees. And you're able to keep up the workload without that extra person? Well, well, it's only about a month. But yeah, but what we did was we increased staffing underneath us. So we looked at the overall work that was being done by the three administrators. And when Jesse and I came up with this plan for co-directorship that we pitched to our board, we said, what's true? What's administrative level work? And where can we increase staffing? And what tasks were we doing that we could then move to library staff? So that it's a lower overall cost, personal cost for the library. I know. So I'm parsimonious. You're what? Parsimonious. I'm cheap. So is Jesse. So yeah, so we increased staffing to offset the administration loss. And so we're moving some things to staffing level. We've increased some fundraising and grant writing at the staff level. We've increased we're going to have a non-profit clerk. So some of the clerical things that Jesse was doing is now being done by a clerk. So yeah. We're going to also get other staff an opportunity to grow in their positions. It does. Yeah, and our staff are really happy to see that their hours were the overall hours were being increased. So yeah, it's a little win. It really is. And we were in the search process to look for a new director, thinking we're going to continue with the same structure. And Caroline and Jesse approached us with their idea. They had well worked out already. And we just put the brakes on and said, tell us more. And without exception, the board was unanimous in its support as was the staff. And they met with each staff member individually. And I have all of us on the board have just a lot of faith and confidence in you guys. Great. Caroline has now met the library for three years. It's not like she has a new and getting up to speed. That was one of the biggest benefits, I think, was having the two of them. And Jesse has been like 10 years. She's been 10 years in the library now. So they have a good background. Yeah, definitely. Great. And Caroline has an MLS degree. We now have six at the library, which is there was one when Tom started. So he did a lot of really essential quality hiring. And a lot of thought has gone into the structuring. I really liked Tom. No offense to you guys. No, I didn't. He was really great. Yeah. Yeah, he was. And he was a former select board member. He had a good sense of knowledge and a huge sense about living in this community. So I'm a lifelong remuner. I'm from Barnett and Jesse's from Marshfield. So we're familiar with, I've lived in Vermont my whole life. I went to UVM. And so we're familiar with town government the way towns in Vermont work. Town government works different than other things, right? Than it does in other places. Well, when I told Caroline last week, we had a phone conversation. I said, you should give me a call. I'll tell you how it really works here. And one of the things that was really impressed was from the very beginning was your desire to increase the outreach to the towns, to five supporting towns. And saying, what else can we do? How else can we provide benefits to residents? So it's a no-brainer when it comes to town meeting day. Everybody says, oh my god, look at this and this and this. There are always going to be some people that don't use the library or are fundamentally opposed or not to use the Siri instead. I heard about it just yesterday. Yeah? So anyway. Well, there's a real difference in the way libraries serve communities now than it used to be. And so one of the things that I'm always looking for is suggestions and feedback about ways we can serve better. Because we answer every question under the sun and we try to meet anybody's informational need that gives us a call or comes in or sends us an email. And so if there's ever something that we're not doing where you go, well, hey, could the library do this? At least ask. Because maybe it's something that we haven't thought of yet. Or maybe it's something that we thought about. And hopefully we have a really great response. So I feel like we're an anchor in the community in all of our communities. And that we're everybody's sort of civic living room space. I want everybody to feel like they can come in. And so if there's something that we might be able to offer, I want to hear about it. At least explore it. We're good. That's great. I'm so glad you came. Yeah, thank you. So is the board have any other questions or thoughts? Alfred, Toby? So we'll see you again. Yep. Yeah, by the season. Yeah, Craig said. OK, so a couple of times a year now? Well, we could increase outreach. I wonder what the whole... Increased outreach means. So we've got an outreach librarian right now that she works 14 hours a week. But then we've got an army of volunteers that come out that go to day cares in all of our member towns. And so we're always looking for opportunities for other places where we could have book exchanges, where we could maybe have library events out in the community if there's a good space for that. We'll try to do storytime out in all of our member communities several times a year. So if there's things where we can get our personnel or our resources and get them out here, we want to do that. Well, I think just having maybe some ways for people to take books out or videos or whatever in the general stores. East Calus, Maple Corner, Adamant. I don't know that you have it. I don't know. Would you have it in East Calus now? There's been a shelf in East Calus. If there's not one there currently, then that's a change. Yeah, I would want... There has been a shelf there too. I don't recall seeing it, but you may want to check because you know, that draws people to come into that. You can have a bookmobile that was painted like a sheriff's car. That would be a great idea to me. Which would be flashing blue light. We tried having a bookmobile, but because we had to contract out to get it repaired all the time and we had to staff it. Well, I don't freaking fix it. Sorry, it's gone, sorry. Yeah, we sold it. Sold it too. Yeah. We sold it for what we owed it, for its storage. Yeah, I just want to think, you know, about... I know I've seen it in Maple Corner. Yeah. And Adamant, maybe not Maple Corner. Yeah. So I would maybe check. I will. Yeah, I will. There was a book discussion group in the Adamant Co-op last year. Yeah. And story times have happened this summer again, both in Adamant and Maple Corner. Yeah, there's a shelf thing there, a bookcase there for an Adamant Co-op. The fire department hosts a story time at the fire station. Oh, nice. Just once a year? That's all they call it. We can do it more. Yeah. In Maple Corner Community Center, you could probably use that to do a story time. They did this summer. Yeah, on the 28th of July, I think. You were out there. Do you ever do like a video thing? Like movies? Like movies for the kids. Oh, well, we do. Or even adults. We do in the library, but we haven't done those as outreach events before, but we certainly could be doing that. I bet you could use, because you could probably use the school for that, like during the summer. So we tried that in East Calus when the former outreach director. And Rachel and I tried really hard to control movies and books. And we just didn't get anybody. It was very flat. Oh, that's good. We did it in the rec center. We can always try it again. Yeah, yeah. Sort of ice cream. And popcorn. Yeah, popcorn. It's always popular. I'm curious, Alfred, whether you have thoughts on what the library could do in our town, because you hear some of the same discussions we do about library funding. Right. I think that the books, the books in the stores are definitely worth it. Yeah. Because, you know, people frequent the store often. Right. All the time of the day, so. And it's a benefit to both the store. They know what's there. Adamant is very active. They had poetry readings there, coinciding with Palm City during April. Yeah. But. We have a lot of poets in Calus that maybe you could get to. A story to them that the visitor are reading. Poetry readings, yeah. Yeah. Mary Elder Jacobson comes to mind just because she's my neighbor. Sure, yeah. And Ruth Porter and. Yep. Yeah, I know all of them from coming to the library. But Sharon, us coming here to visit is not outreach. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it doesn't count. Yeah, outreach is what can we do for residents and, you know, if it's stories or lending shelf or readings or things like that, programs. All right, that's what I figured. No, I'm glad because we're not. We're not the audience that you need to be called to me. No, but we will be back to answer questions of what not in the end of January, beginning of February, once it's town meeting season again. Yeah, so you'll see us again. Yeah. I know Tom was really good about communicating. He would oftentimes send an email about something going on and, you know, I would share it with the board. Yep. We have a porch for him too, since I joined the board. That is, of course, everybody knows, it's just blossomed. Yeah. Heather Kralig, our outreach director, sends me text and said, can you post this? Because rather than everything coming, say, from Rachel Sennichal. Right. Who was the programming director, halftime and development director. She's now the full-time development director. So we're aiming, as an organization, to get more robust and more regular giving from businesses and from donors in all six towns. Well, I think, and I think having the local person do the posting up from porch forum is better because that's a name that a lot of people might know. Right? So I think that was a smart one. So that's been a new thing in the last year and a half. So, yes, ideas from many of you, okay, buddy. Katie, as a former schooler, do you have any suggestions or questions or ideas? We're there all the time. I was just going to say, what do you guys do when I came in? Yeah. Yeah, I'm really utilized all the time I love what's happening here. Inside and outside, actually. Excellent. Yeah. All right. Thanks so much for coming. Awesome. Yeah, it's amazing. Thank you, everybody. Yep. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I'm going to scan it. So am I. All right. Thank you. I know Alfie's disappointed to see me leave, but. Okay, so the sheriff showed up and they showed up before you did, so they got to go first. All right, so let's go back to Lease. And you recommended that MLS company, and because that's one that we're currently using. And are they good to work with? I mean, Sander pays the payments, but you don't have any concerns. We're taking care of all of it. We don't have any dealings with the lease company. That's whatever. It's a treasure. It doesn't even go on my work orders. Yeah, it just comes automatically. I was at a party Saturday night and Kevin Clark, who works for Cody's, I know him and he was there. So I was picking on him about the truck that we almost bought. She didn't even buy a fort, did he? I said, I don't know, did you buy a fort? No, that's what we avoided. But what he said to me was, if they had had something in writing about what you wanted, this is what we're looking for, we're kind of like an RFP, that he would have found it easier that she'd be able to get us a truck. If he had had something in writing with what you were looking for, then he wouldn't know what to look for. All right. So I'm just putting that out there. That was very early on in the game. First of all, second of all, we were looking at what they had in stock because it was, it's eight months before they could get one. Apparently they can shop around and they knew what you wanted. We did the same thing. We did the same thing, shopping around. That's why we ended up with these two trucks and now we're down to the one. Right. Well, that was just his suggestion. I thought it was something I would mention. Like I said, just because I was picking on him and said, yeah, he was the one I talked to. Yeah, he was the one you talked to. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've known him for years. Yeah, me too. I've known him when he was little. I know a lot of these people since they were little tonight. Oh. What does that mean? I don't know, what does that mean to you? So anyways, I just thought I'd put that out there that next time we're doing this, maybe we have a discussion up front about what we want. Well, the thing is, the truck that is both the Chevrolet and the international that we bought is the same exact truck. One is a Chevy, one's an international. And they're all brand new. And there's none of them of the specification that are sitting on dealer's lots, except the one we found, or the two that we found. So we're way ahead of the curve and we were lucky to find something that we can get a handle on. So it's not that we didn't try all the avenues. I'm just saying that as a process, especially to help the select board, maybe putting out there what you're looking for might be helpful. Just a suggestion. For some things up for replacement. Right. Develop a spec sheet, right? Right, so we're not kind of rushing because you guys spent a lot of time running around looking for a truck. And we made a lot of motions to approve them again and again. So anyway, so we need to decide folks on a leasing company and they're up there on the screen. MLC is the company that we're currently using with the truck that we are leasing. So we have a relationship with them. We must use them because they were the best interest rate, but they're also local, which we know we like that. Anybody have any thoughts or questions, comments? Is this the only option? No, there's three. Okay, and is there a recommendation? Yes, Toby made the recommendation for MLC because that's the one that we're currently using. Okay, got it. And they're local. John, questions of Ethelies? Nope. Nope. All right, Rose? Okay, 3.39. Yeah. And the other one for Liberty International is, where do I see it? Something about 3.27, and they're in Kansas. New Hampshire. Yeah. I'm gonna test her. Liberty is the truck dealer. Oh, I got to. Okay. Farming out to a state bank. Okay. In Manhattan, Kansas. What about others? Manhattan, Kansas. And community leasing is in, all back to Manhattan, Kansas. We only have two quotes. There's three. And then MLC, yeah, MLC, right? Which is the one. Is there anything state bank of MLC? Yep. All right, does anybody, so I would make a motion that we go with MLC, municipal leasing consultants, AKA MLC, because they are local and their interest rate is 3.39%. And we are currently using them. And this would be for the new leased truck, which is a, what? CV International. CV International, 2019. 2019. Also, does anybody wanna second that? Second. Okay. Questions, discussion? What is a half percent in interest difference? Because this one that we're looking at is lower in interest than the MLC. MLC is 3.39? Yeah, and that was 2. This one, the other one was 3.27? 3.27, okay. And this other one is 3.49. All right, so sorry, bad math. Not half a point, a tenth of a point. Right. So not. And this one is the local company. Right. And it's all women. Seriously? I believe you. It says that right there. And women only know, right? For half a point of interest, that's fine. I don't know what the math is, but I assume it's not useful, not meaningful. Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Just wanna say that not to speak for Sandra, but she says good things about them as far as their communication. That's it. With the last project that we put together. No, that's really useful. You know, we're paying, because somebody somewhere will have a wonder about why we're paying more interest. And I think it's important for us to say out loud why. We have a history with this company. Yeah, history. And we appreciate their good working relationship. And their local. Yeah, she's has said good things that they're really good to deal with. Yeah, that's important. Yeah, I mean they can be local if they're difficult, that's right. That's a problem if they're local and they're difficult. That's right. Big problem. And more expensive. But not what we're talking about, good. Okay. Did you have anything else to update us on? Toby or Alton? Yes, it's a left turn. Yeah. Ah. I sent you a little. Can you come sit here somewhere? Sure, yes, we're not creaking on this. Because I can't see around here. I sent you a little, what I would. To-do list. At least what I would tell my husband on my new list. Yeah. So first of all, I've got some information that you guys need to know about. Okay. Doug Grout is not mowing our second time around. His tractor's broke, he's not thinking, he's not thinking he's gonna get his cart in time, so he just washed his hands off. So we have to do something about that. Now this side thing that we asked you to- Sidearm. Sidearm thing, does that do roadside mowing? Yep, it'll do both. So we wanted you to do that because we were looking at some of these low-hanging things. I think you mentioned it, some low-hanging branches. For sure, they're growing outward. Right, that you could get with the side thing. What do you have here? Sidearm. It's a articulating boom mower. Yeah. So one of the road crew could, are they able to operate something like that to do? Oh, for sure. One of us will be able to figure it out. But we don't have one. No, but we talked about renting one. Oh, renting could. Yeah. And then we can see how it goes and maybe we want to try to buy one like he's not clear did but just not for that amount of money. Right, well I looked at some used ones and brought prices to you guys. I don't remember what they were on. I don't remember what they were on. I think they were early on the year. Yeah. Some used ones that HB Fairfield had because they rent them out and at their salon they sell them outright. Do you remember prices? The one that I was most excited about was like $80,000, $89,000. It wasn't the one that Greg was, yeah. Greg, 65. We did, we really kicked. 65. We really kicked the tires on that one. Yeah, I remember we did. Yeah, we did. Can we borrow these from players or no? No, they were. No, they're going to use it all the time. Okay, so where can you check out renting one? I can go to Pete's repair. He has a three-grain and they have a three-grain amount. They've already priced that part. I talked to them about maybe doing it, well actually in the beginning they didn't want to do it monthly because they were doing it by the week. They just bought it so they were trying to get as many clients out there as they possibly could so they didn't want to do it by the month. Is their website says by the month? Most of their stuff is by the month. But that's when they had a price of $3,000. And I think they will do it now for $3,000 because they feel like they've got their name out with it and so I think that we could probably get it for a month. How much does something like the one you're going to rent cost? Is that the 80 or the 65,000? The 80 was a used one. It was like four or five years old that had been rented out. To buy that machine new is 150, 170,000. The East Palm player bought one just recently so. So 3,000 sounds pretty good. Yeah, yeah. For a month, the problem is manpower. If we take a man off of our road crew, there's going to be less actual road work going on. What about Ed? Ed is part of the road crew. Let me use a fill in. So like this week I've got two guys that one's taking a sick day and one's taking a vacation day. So Ed is filling that slot for those two days. And we've covered this ground before. We covered this last year. Blame you, I'm talking to the select board more than anybody. We covered this ground. I brought this up. We know these guys are booked, overbooked. And I requested that we have a part-time position, possibly a high school kid. And the reason I say that is because this is what I did in high school as a senior. These are not complicated machines. They're easy to learn. Someone's got some level of ability. And that's the kind of thing that a kid can throw on the radio and just drive down the road in his air-conditioned cab. And I'm sorry, John, I have to disagree a little bit. It's a little bit more complicated with that. You've got cars coming at you. You've got the basic species that you have to steer around. You've got guide rails. It's not a job for a teenager. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I disagree. Because that's what I did as a teenager. And I was at the first. It was a different world, that John. It was far much different. Yeah, but wait a minute guys. I'm going to disagree, Alfred. I didn't do it. I, I, these just can't. Impossibility arguments don't move me anymore. I got to tell you, Alfred. But John. The impossibility arguments is why we get, and these things don't move forward. But right now we have to solve what are we going to do right now. Right, right. And what about, what about Doug? Can Doug grow? Doug doesn't have a machine, but is he available? To run the machine if we run it. Yeah. Didn't ask him that. I'm glad to ask him that. And see if he would be willing to run our own vehicle. Because he does have a contract with us too. No, he's fulfilled his contract. He has. No, two moments. He was supposed to do. So he hasn't fulfilled his contract. He only does a contract per mulling. Well smart. Mm-hmm. He gave me a contract for the first, for the first mulling. Okay, I'm thinking, I'm thinking we budgeted for two. We budgeted for two, yes. Right, all right. But we didn't get him to commit to it. He wouldn't commit to the second one? He just told me a week ago that he can't do it. No, no, but in the beginning conversation. Oh, I didn't ask him. I didn't ask him for a committal to that. I told him that. Well, let's ask him. We requested that. Let's ask him now. Well, but he knew that we were gonna do it twice. He just didn't write a contract for the second one. Okay, so I'm trying to get clarification. Well, that's all I know. Doug writes the contract. Doug writes it up saying I will mull your town for so many miles a road for $5,500. Right. So that's an opportunity. So every time he mulls, he writes that contract. Right. He knew he was scheduled to do it twice. He waits till he completes and then he comes back with another one. Right. Sounds us what it sounds like. Well, so my wish list is next year that we take a little more charge of the process and that we have a contract for both mullings and that we lock in dates. But we can talk about that another time. But it seems like that's a reasonable solution right now if he's available. I can ask him. Do you have to have any special license or anything to operate that? So we could. You have to have a driver's license. Right. So we could, you know people, maybe you know somebody who's available to do that. I can certainly pass it around. Yes, I can. That's reliable. I can find somebody. Got a good driving record, but I'm just, when I hear teenager, it scares me because teenagers aren't the same as they were. Oh, that's what you meant. 20 years ago, they're just not the same. I thought you meant the cars drove differently. Well, the cars, there's more cars out there too. That's another thing. Well, I drove in a suburban area. Okay, there was traffic lined up behind me. So I'm going to push back, but I agree that some kids, kids tend to be a little less resourceful. And there's also insurance issues too that we have to think about the insurance that we have to have on these folks. Well, and youth drivers. They beat them fully. Youth drivers, China. Part time, yeah. That's another thing that may have changed. Is the insurance. 18, you're an adult driver. No, I'm talking about the town that would have to have insurance liability. You're going to be a part-time employee. You're going to be a part-time employee? Like, yeah, you're going to be the same thing. Yeah, so we'll ask Doug, and then Doug can't do a little sort of and Doug has a guy that he works with too. That maybe might be available. I don't know his name. Yeah, I don't know his name. He also told me that he is about not. Bill Smith from Plainfield? Yeah, he's 80 something years old. Yeah. His health is not as failing as he just, I don't, I think, the one I was getting, the five I was getting from Doug was that he was done. He didn't think he was going to get his part. He didn't think he was going to rush to get the tractor finished. So is he like done next year too? Is he just done, Doug? I don't know that, I don't know that. He's divorced, his houses, he's sold his house, he's living in his mom's house. I don't know his personal life, but it sounded like he was not going to do this fall. The second mulling, that's what I got. So he's had some life changing things happen and that happens to a lot of people. Right, we've all been through it, trust me. But I can ask him if he's interested in driving our machine that we rent and just see. And if not, I'll search for somebody else. Okay, that would be great. It would put a strain on us if we do take from our road. Now I'm not saying some days one of us can't go some rainy day or if there's a project that fits and it takes three people, the fourth one can go on the right track. You know, I deal with moving targets on a daily basis. So I'm willing to look into that. So we are into a bit of a crunch because we've already decided to middle of August start mulling the second time around. Right, but you are in the middle of August. I mean, I know you were depending on the grout, but it was on the radar that we were gonna do two mullings. Oh, you know, absolutely. I thought it was covered up until a week ago when Doug caught me at the store and said, hey, by the way, the tractor's broke, I'm not fixing it. So I haven't seen you guys to tell you that. Right, yeah, right. Until now. You're better luck for hiring me. Or not hiring me. Yeah, well, no, we did, we apprised him. That's why he came down for it. He knew that we wanted him to do the second cut. So he was being responsible and letting it out. Okay. Okay, so I will research that. Okay. Except the mower, as far as I know, will be available. I haven't checked on it recently, but I'll check again. And... The Pat Finney complaint. The Pat Finney complaint. So that, and I brought that up before Pat Finney, so now we got a resident complaining. I wasn't complaining, it's just making note that the grader was moving the road. No, that wasn't the Pat Finney complaint. Yeah, it is. It's the same location. The Pat Finney is talking about. The Patch of Woods just south of my barn. South of John's Barn. It's throwing out into the road and... Yeah, it takes up a third of the road. If it meets, if you meet somebody there, two vehicles move, you're in trouble. And that's what he's saying. Okay. I didn't realize it was the same situation. Yeah. And the brush also on Tucker Road near that Griffin farm right on the bend. And that is that invasive species bush. But that's been there for several years and it's past their fence. And it's the same thing. Right across from their little gray house. On Tucker Road. Like, like, like one of the... Bush house? You know, isn't that? You know, I'm so used to... I just go slow down there. Oh, no Griffin's house? Oh yeah. But I mean, you could never fit two cars. Oh no, you can't. And those are, they're not leafy bushes. Those are like stick bushes. Like the berberies or... Yeah, yeah. I mean, suckle one of those guys. I don't know what they are, but they're definitely... The stuff on my road is, I don't know what the rush is. It's the tree. It's the trees, yeah. There actually is a tree. I'm glad you mentioned Tucker Road. That's right. Thank you. There's a tree. Oh my God. Just so... There's a tree, there's a tree. Send him an email. Now can we go back to this issue and then we'll send you an email. I will send you an email. It's gonna fall on a car. It's gonna hang in by a thread. Can we go back to what was on this list that we can add this additional item to your, to-do list? So then Pat Finney's thing. What are we gonna do about that? I miss this one. Well, first of all, I gotta get permission from John. Alfred, I asked that that be cut a month ago. That's what we're meeting. It was related to a complaint that the grader is trying to go around the bushes for understandable reason. And then it's not, it needs to be here. And that's when I said, which if we had bought a sidearm mower, it wouldn't be an issue. And you said, I can rent one for $3,000. That was that conversation. Right, but we never finished up with the green light on renting the... No, no. Denise said, you got money in your budget. Go rent it. That's what she said. That's a quote. It is. But anyway. I'll get it tomorrow and it'll sit there because I don't have time for it to do it. Alfred, Alfred, I don't get that. I'm just telling you what my situation is. I'm not breaking your hump. I'm just saying this is the order of events that happened. I'm stating what happened. I'm not breaking your hump. I'm not saying you were derelict at all. I'm just saying the problem remains. And it's all of our problem. Not just your problem. So it's just the branches that need to be trimmed. It's not what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. I mean it. So we can do that by hand. We can come up with a pulse on and take them off in the morning. And it's over and we'll do it. The next step. Okay. It's fun. We'll deal with it. All right. And there's only one spot. Right. But if you get this new thing to use, maybe it'll make things faster. But they don't have the labor force and they're scrambling. Right, I know that. They're going into the road season. This was the exact conversation we had last year. This is not Alfred's problem. This is the select board, you know? This is like, I'm getting frustrated because I've been revisiting these things for years and years and years. And we don't get off the dime, okay? For whatever set of reasons. You need a chipper. What? We need a chipper. We need a chipper. Absolutely. And we put that in the budget. And there was. We put it on the morning. There was a debate that was legitimate. And it was tied to the grant. Whether we had the grant or not. Right. It was contingent on the grant. That's right. And we didn't get the grant. That's right. So next year we can put it on the morning without making a contingent on a grant. Yeah. Live and learn. I think we thought we would get the grant. I mean, my stuff, you can just, you can dump it on my property to brush it. That's, you don't have to worry about it. John, I'll put it in the roads so the cars can go over and keep the seats. That's right. Yeah. We don't want the seats to spread. So we'll take care of that. Well, you've got to check on Lieutenant Harvey. A tree on the priority one, Blispond Road. Yeah. The one that Alfred did, Neil. I can, I was hoping to wait until the fall when it's cooler and my summer projects go down, but I can hire Joe Bain. He'll be there tomorrow, if that's what we want to do. You know, that's not a bad idea. Why not ask Joe Bain to do the mowing? With our mower that we run. He's got a tree stove. Yeah, but he might. It's an option. I don't know if he doesn't want to get numb here. But he's not going to work for $18 an hour when he can make $200 an hour cutting trees down. Oh, maybe he knows somebody. I'll talk to him. Like I said, I'm just thinking out loud. I'm just thinking out loud. I can find somebody around that mower. That won't be a problem. Yeah, okay. Good news. That's great news. We won't worry about that. So is this tree on Blispond? We're worried about it. Something you want to do immediately. Because I mean, I realize it's been there. It's a problem for a long time. I've wanted to cut the thing for years. Yeah. I'm concerned because it's massive. It's got a heavy lean. It's a very heavy tree. Actually, I don't know if you guys can do it. My family says so. I think it is a joe bane job. I think it's someone who's going to have to scale and... Cut it in pieces. And lower. This thing, the limbs up top are like that. This thing is a massive old tree. And the tree warden said it's rotted. So that makes me even more worried. And my greatest concern is that falls on somebody like happened in Merrill-Laguer's property. While they're driving her. Because Merrill was warned about that. She was in the same situation and it fell and that woman was permanently injured. I don't want to see that on my watch. No. So hire it out. That's one we'll see you how to do. Next. Do you have the trees on Collar Hill? For Dot Nailer. I talked to Dot Nailer years ago about those trees and the logger and I were going to tag team it. The logger finished up and left and we never... Hired Joe Bain. So right, I'll put Joe Joe on both of them. Yeah, I mean why not? He's a local resident. I just assume paying a local guy. Yeah, okay. So that takes care of three of those trees. Yeah. Well, I figured what else is on the list, anything? What else? I think there were... I thought it was the appointment. Oh, well, we're saving that for last. Fuck. Can you hand me that on yours? Over here. All right. Can you add the tree limb on Tucker Road? Yes, please. I'll get that. I will get that. I'm not gonna have to show you that. It's hanging and it's new. But you know, why not see you as somebody like Joe is available to do some of these things. He's a local guy. We don't have to. I think I was trying to keep the budget in mind that it's a different monetary thing. Right, but we don't have to be insurances. Also some of this comes to our road standard that we have. Right. We have to explain that standard to whomever we hire to cut. That's right. So that's a bit of a challenge. I know the standard. I know what you guys have set in place. Right. So I like to be there when it's happening. That's why I haven't hired anybody. It's just another challenge for me to explain to them and to kind of watch them, oversee them. These big trees that have been cleared by the tree warden, they're not an issue. Not anymore. Just stick him on them and they'll be gone. Yep. But that's some of the reason why we're getting behind on the brush. That plus we don't have a chipper. We don't have a means of getting rid of the debris. Can we also rent a chipper from this place? We used to treat them. You don't have that anymore. Right. Can you rent a chipper from this, what's it's name? Peach. Peach. You can, you can. But again, it comes back to the same with the mower. You've got to have time to do it. Right, right. I mean, we're still looking at a bunch of work over here at the town hall. That's on our plate. We've still got some projects that, you know, we're still trying to keep, I mean, we're putting in culverts right now, the best we can. We just did resurfacing on Long Meadow and Wheeler Road. So that was two weeks that I took to do that. We're not sitting still. I don't think you're in. But we're, you know, it's better to cut brush, my opinion, in the fall when it's cooler, it's just safer. So I usually try to save the brush for the fall. These nuisance trees will go away right away. Yeah, great. But the brush, I'll, and we can go do a little bit by your house just to shade it down, just to calm it down some, and then we can clear it up when we get the machine. Yeah, for me, I didn't care, you know, it's like people want to go slower past my ass, that's fine with me, but it's an issue when the grader starts avoiding that and moving the road. So I'd like to see the road, I'd like to see the road stay where it is. Now I see we can't go like this because there's so much brush. It's like a third of the road. Yeah, so the grader's doing that. So now I see what you mean by the arm getting wider. But now I get it. Now I get it. Well, the brush is pushing the road away. Right, right. Because he's got to maintain an open road or he's trying to be responsible, but, you know, it's because of trees are. And you saw the other thing on the list. About the raises, that was approved back when we did the budget. Yeah. So, and Sandra somehow didn't get a copy of Toby's spreadsheet and come to find out. I was never asked to send it to her. It was up to you guys to take care of that. Well, whatever. So she has it, it'll, it's gonna happen. It'll be back to July one. I thought, I thought she was aware of that. I don't know why I didn't know that she didn't have a copy of it. Well, in previous years, it's been approved after July one. Right. We're trying to get on. The budget goes in, it's budgeted, but it's not always the gospel what you budgeted. Well, that's what I remember over the last 20 years that I've been here. It's still not the gospel. It's still not the gospel. Exactly. But that's what we. Now I'm hearing that it is. That's what it is. That's what we agreed to this past time around. That's what we agreed to. I reconfirmed it with the board. But I just go with what has happened in the past years. So I was assuming that it hadn't been decided yet. Yeah. Now I'm hearing it is. That's great. So it's all set to go. Check. Right. But that means, I mean, should we say out loud? I think, should we say out loud, you got, you understand and the crew understands that means they're going to get a slightly bigger paycheck for ketchup. Right. And then they'll settle back down. Separate check for the retro. Is that how it works? Yeah. That's usually what standard does for retro stuff. It's not atypical. No, it's not retro often. Right. Okay. Right. We might have approved the amount after July one, but we're trying to, we're doing budgeting, we're trying to do, think ahead. Right. Also, if I could finish my sentence, this season when we do budgeting, it's going to be somewhat different. So we're going to be asking for things ahead of time. We're going to be reviewing things in a little different way. So just to put it you and Toby on notice. That's, we're going to do things a little bit differently. I want the jacuzzi, I want the sardine every week. Well, that's what I was going to say too. And that's part. I want the health club benefit. What you're raising around timing is part of what we're going to work on in the personnel policy updates. Right. You know, having something that everybody understands that's a predictable timeline for all the cases to come together. All right. Anything else or do we want to? Well, so we received notice that there was a card submitted earlier you were in there. Can we? I did not sign one. No, no, I'm saying, I'm just saying asking if you were aware of that. I was on vacation that week. I happened to come in to check on the guys in the afternoon and there was a meeting going on. Okay. Well, I have no problem with it. I just, it just worked out. Well, I was telling you on my side, I didn't know about it until I walked in the room with the meeting and they asked me if I wanted to sign. I said, no, I can't. You're a manager. You're a management. You can't. I can't sign it until I can join, I think. So not a management. I was management at the state and I couldn't go on to the union. Okay. I don't have a big interest in it. I just assumed not pay somebody to fight my battles. I'll do it myself. Thank you. And you know I will. You have? Right. So I did not know anything about it until the meeting took place and all the guys signed their cards and sent them to the Senate. I appreciate knowing that. Right. From your perspective. Yeah, and no judgment if you did or did not. But yeah, you can't because of your management. But I appreciate knowing that we didn't have that you didn't know. Yeah. That's good to know. Thank you. For your honesty. So I don't know how much you know how that's gonna work. It's generally when it does happen, they apparently have the percentages that they need. You're gonna be on a management side. You're gonna be with us negotiating contracts. It would be a very different situation. We had to yet to discuss this. But so FYI. Whether you like it or not. Your world as a manager is about to change. Yeah. But I'm sure that I'll be involved in it. Yes. But yeah. So with that said, anything else? On road story? No? All right. Yeah. So I would make a motion to reappoint Alfred Lairby as road commissioner. Second. The next year. All right. You wanna second it? Oh, I think we fell second it. Second it. Second it. We all second it. You have to third and fourth it. All those in favor can say aye. Aye. Thank you all. Thank you. We don't always agree. But we appreciate the job that you do and the amount of hours it takes and then all the holidays missed and all that. We just would like you once in a while, hopefully you look at it from our perspective. As we try to look at it, we do. We really do try to look at it from your perspective. We do. So we would really appreciate it if sometimes you would look at it from our perspective as representatives having to explain things to the town and the money and we really appreciate your support. In my opinion, as one member is, and I think the board probably shares my opinion, is that the workload for the road crew exceeds what your ability is to accomplish. Right. We recommend that. And so we understand why everything can't get done because. Just don't have the mail out. And I am frustrated by that. Not frustrated with your performance, or the road crew's performance, but I'm frustrated that we're not able to attend to everything. And I'm frustrated by the long plow shifts. So I'm hoping that we're going to have a conversation going forward about how to address that. Yeah, I want to make it better. My personal need is that this needs to be addressed. Yeah, yeah. In a real way. Now, we've been talking about some of these things and we really want to try to make some improvements. So at some point, we'll invite you into an executive session to discuss some of this. Yeah. Because that's the appropriate place for it to take place. Absolutely. Because it's a personnel. Right. Yeah. Personnel policy related, not performance, just to say that out loud. Right, right. Yeah. So thank you. Yes. Do you accept? I do accept. That's good. Yeah. Were you holding your breath? No, no, well, I was like, oh. I'm going to tell you guys to, if there's an issue out there, call me. Don't bring it to the board in front of all the people. Call me on the phone. Tell me. If there's a tree or there's a mad tax payer or something, something that I need to address. We just got the email. I just saw the email. No, no, I was saying in general, not anything we talked about tonight, but. I think I usually do. I usually address you like I did with the issue I had. Right, I was saying more often, because there's been many times that I've come to the meeting and I'm in front of all these people and I feel like I'm getting bombarded by all this work that's not being done. OK, but. Call me, give me a heads up before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or even sometimes it can be done before it even turns into an issue. OK, from our perspective, somebody calls us, raises an issue, sends us an email, then they expect us, because they addressed it to us, to get back to them. So when we have an issue like that and I ask you or I send you the email, I need a response back from you or Toby to be able to tell the person that even if you call them and everything's worked out, I still want to know. So I can circle back, circle back and back, close the loop, so that they know that I took what they said seriously and addressed it. That's from my perspective. Do they, if you get an email from Denise and you do an outreach, I mean, another way is to, and it would demonstrate how well we're working together, is for you to say, and you probably do, but I want to hear you say you do, Denise, let me know you have a concern about blah, blah, blah, blah. Use our names. Right, and then people know that that relay works and it's okay for you to make the invitation to tax people, like tax fairs, sorry, or tax fairs or not, residents. Here's my number. Feel free to call me directly, Denise is a busy lady. Well, I do, I tell people, they don't help me any time they have, you know. No, I've heard that. I'm not always near the phone. Yeah, but he's very good about it. But I will call people back and now I've got the cell phone, so it's even easier. Except for the, my smell's full of talent around you. It is around, yes. I'm no doubt, because you're out on the road. I'm trying to get back in. But I think it's good for people to know that we're communicating. I mean, I think it means a lot to people and they're not gonna, they're gonna respect that. So just from my perspective, your perspective, if you want to know about it from my perspective, I want to know that it's taken care of. Make sense? Absolutely. Okay, thank you. Just know that I'm taking care of a lot of problems that you know what you know about. Right, yeah. Right now, I'm sure it didn't matter to me. But once in a while, there's... And some people just call my shop, call the shop, call me, and I go and deal with it. You guys don't need to know about that. Well, unless it's something that you know is gonna eventually, somebody who's gonna be pretty vocal and it's gonna get back to us, I'd rather be, say, oh, Alfred already told me about that. It happens every day. No, you know a serious issue that you might want to know. Yes, well, I came to you the other day, when I thought I was gonna be a big thing with Doug Bill. Right, yeah. Didn't turn out to be a big thing because I was able to go and sort of deal with it. Absolutely. But I didn't know because we've had issues with him before and I just... So that's what I mean, you know. And I appreciate you letting me know so that I can say, oh, well, Alfred already told me. Right, yep, okay. Thank you, thanks. Communication key. And by the way, on this Sunday, I think it was, Toby came out a couple weeks ago, the tree that was across the road walking, traffic totally on Singleton Road. Why? Like, Elgram, so. Thank you. And he doesn't even get paid over time. With his own chainsaw and his own truck. I just sent the town of Bill for renting the chainsaw and stuff. Thank you for doing that. We bring him to dinner every once in a while. It's my personal equipment, it's not town equipment. Oh, I gotcha. I was gonna say, you can borrow my chainsaw. All right, thank you guys. We got more stuff we gotta do. Thank you. All right. Thank you, appreciate it. Thank you. Can we skip to the ambulance so I can get out of here? Yes, we can. You didn't even have to come, I had to all word it right here. But go ahead and take it away. I'm glad you came. Well, thanks, Alfred. Rose and I, come over here. So why don't you tell me a story? Let's see if you got it straight. Okay, so we went to the East Not Clear Fire Department meeting on the 8th. It was by far way better than the meeting we attended in April, so I appreciated you played a bigger role in communicating, which was much better and more well-received. We reviewed all of the budget stuff, which I actually brought in a separate five, but maybe I don't need it. And the fire department was looking in their capital plan to purchase a new, should put the revised capital plan up there. They were looking to purchase a new rescue, too. Rescue four. Rescue four. Thank you. Oh, no, they were looking to purchase a new rescue, too. No, that's the updated one, that's not the original one. Okay, the updated one, the original one. Anyways, the long and the short of it is that they found a used rescue instead of budget, instead of taking it out of the capital plan to make payments on a new vehicle next year. Beginning next year. Right. They would purchase a used rescue from Williston. It has, I forget how many miles on it, but. It's 78,000. 78,000. What year is it? 2010. They've looked at it. They said it's a very good vehicle. Is it a Ford? Yep. No, we asked the question that you would have asked. That was not the year for those problems. Well, I'm saying that those things are rust, they rust, you know? I know what a 2010 Ford will do after nine years on the road. They rust. Look under it, did you guys crawl underneath that? We did, it's in great shape. They take care of their road. They wash them off when they're done. And they don't have the back roads. It's will and test. Well, it's worse. I know, it's salt and dirt. They put chloride, liquid chloride on the interstates. I didn't bring my picture of it. Do you have your picture? I didn't have a picture. Yeah, pictures. It's not a rust bucket. Because we bought one from Montpelier, that was about that. That was a Ford. It was a disaster. And that had that one from Montpelier, how many miles around that one? Is that the 99? It was a 1999 originally. I don't know what the mileage on it was when we got it, but it was. But what you're saying, Toby, is that you looked under it, it doesn't have the problems. You have confirmed it doesn't have the problems that John's worked on. We'd driven it and been up there and examined it. And it's in terrific shape. Right, because somebody did ask the question about the year of it based on the experience that we've had. And it's a diesel, I'm assuming. So the idea is that they would not take out a loan for it. We would pay out of the capital plan or out of the fire department reserve fund, $20,000 for this rescue for with an additional amount of money, I think $10,000 for fit up. It's costing $20,000. For the fit up, and well that's why we thought it was a bit good. I'm not used to that number. Troubles I don't get to finish my sentence. You want the extra zero John, I can throw it in there. So this we would hope would take us for how many years, three or four years? Oh, at least, yeah. And at some point they may want to put on a package and I forget what it's costing. We had a lift thing that helps the EMTs lift people so they're not doing it by hand. Right, we're looking at that and we would come back to you if we decide that that's the step we want to do. There are some, not problems, but there are some concerns because we don't always get a level surface that we bring patients out in. Those auto power loads are sometimes very difficult if they're not on a flat level ground and you're trying to get the cot in and they jam up. So we are considering it because it saves a lot of back injuries because the power cot actually lifts the cot instead of your back. We're still not sure if that's the way we want to go if it's worth that investment. You can't shim the low side, can't bring the blocks to shim the low side. So it doesn't. Every time you back into somebody's driveway, I have no idea where the ambulance is going to end up, whether it's downhill, tipped over or whatever. So when we come out and the surface is not, we're dealing with cots that are this way, this way and those power cuts, if you don't line them up correctly, they jam up and they don't work. So it's fine in the city if you're in pavement and sidewalks. Only working with those then it works. So we have not made a final decision on that, but that purchase would be $40,000 to $50,000 for the power cot and the power loads. And that can be relocated to a new vehicle. Yeah, it can be moved to a new vehicle. So what they're asking is to use $30,000 from the Capital Reserve Fund or not to C30 to purchase this used 2010 F-450 four by four ambulance from the Williston Fire Department. Why 30 if it's 20? Because there's other things that they need to do to it. They need to have it repainted with, to say, radiators, callas, radios, those kinds of things. And snow tires, because they're in each tires as well. So normally we run into anywhere from $8,000 to $10,000 on fitting up a vehicle. Is that a four wheel drive? Yeah, it's four by four. And what it really solves is essentially the ambulance we have now that's on the Ford chassis is a 1999 body. And the body is just causing trouble all the time. It's a 20 year old body and that's beat up. And it's in the shop more often than it's in the station. And what caught my attention was a lot of times that ambulance because it's in the shop it's unavailable to go out on a call. And that's a problem. Well, we have a second ambulance that covers that. Right. But if we had a two ambulance call that we could staff we would not have the second ambulance. And so how it works is we approve, we approve it and the East Montpelier select board also approves and is that the last step? They come together and you guys are fully authorized? Right. So the inter-local agreement says that we can spend up to $20,000 for that select board approval. And if we want more than that then we have to come to you guys and if you don't feel like approving it on your own you can ask the voters to approve it. So. Right. So essentially. So this one they didn't really have to if they were just going to get the 20. Right. But I think as a good faith effort they were wanting it by the boards to help build trust. That's true. Yeah. Good point. All right. I'll make the motion that we approve the use of the East Montpelier fire department capital reserve funds not to exceed 30,000 for the purchase of reviews 2010 F-454 by four ambulance from the Wilson fire department. Okay. Okay. Any more questions about the motors or bodies or I mean that stuff? All right. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Thank you, Toby. That is a 7.2 motor. It's a 6.7 or whatever it is. It's a good diesel. That's a question about it. I hope it's not a 6.7. Okay. Yeah. I think it's good. I'm sure. I think it wins. Those are problem motor. Can't fight a battle tonight, man. Don't worry, that's your share. I've done my share. Yeah, you've done your share. I've hit my limit. I'm fat only. Toby, hopefully there's nothing left to battle about. Um, town office roof. What do you have any update on that? After Andy, Andy's done his don't-your-roof. Don't? Is Andy done with your roof and ready to start on this roof? Oh, no, he isn't. He's mine. For eternity? It might be with that house. I might actually work out a deal where he marries my wife for five years or something so we can get done. Done for free? And then you're gonna, okay. And you're gonna take care of feeding his kids and sending them to college for five years. Yeah, something like that would probably be cheaper. Okay, so, have you, do you have any update or has he talked to Greenline? I informed him that he is, I mean, I'm officially designated as a manager, that he's been allowed the ability to contract with a contractor or contractors, not specifically Greenline. Greenline has been directed to strip that back. The contract would be to strip it back so we could eyeball it. And then based on his appraisal of the situation, that he could then contract another contractor or contractors to address whatever failures are there and make whatever repairs are necessary. And hopefully if the mines come together on an improvement over that current design which has caused the problem, maybe, that they incorporate that in their thinking and their repair. Did you talk about the $5,000? I told him up to $5,000. I said, tear it back. This is what I articulated it to you. Right, that's how he goes. I'm all right because we have a, and I said, and he goes, well, so I'm part of the contracts. I said, no, no, you're an employee. Your time and effort is separate. So you could work with them and that would be billed separate as your pay, your normal pay here as an employee. So if you were to assist the two guys for whatever company, possibly Greenline, if they had the ability and the interest in the time that they could work hand side by side with him and they could peel it back and they could evaluate what was wrong, what is wrong and what needs to be done to make the repairs. So does he think he's gonna have time? Well, he's one guy. I know. And I need to get my repairs done. So hopefully it'll get done. Hopefully it'll be done with my place within the week. So I don't know what other projects he has. I just put that on his radar. And I know he wants to do it and he then wanted to go up in the attic and just take a look when we were talking about how he's gonna do it. He goes, oh, here's that end. It's like a hay door or something. Well, I'm wondering. We could go in there and we'll look at the structure underneath and see if we can see anything. So I'm wondering when he's done with yours project, if you could ask him, if it's at the office room, if it's next. And it's not next when my meeting. Yep, yep, yep, I can do that. Okay, that'd be great. So we're making progress. I've been wanting, this has been needing to be done for what? Three years, two years? Are we confident it will be? It's a mic. I think so. I think he's a reliable guy. And he's seemed really good. And he has, and we're confident that somehow or other he's gonna have, that's my concern is. Well, he's gonna contract it out. I mean, that's the first interest I'm not doing. That's what I understand. Right, right. And that's what we said. $5,000 to do that piece of it. You can do that too. I mean, he's done a lot of work here that I thought would give him options or he could, so this could happen. He's done work here. I think he should have built us more separately. Yeah. And he hasn't. Yeah, no, he needs to do that. So that's kind of his contribution to the town, basically. So it might be a simple thing as repairing all the rotted. The thinking is that the water's getting up above and then getting it down into the Eve, because the Eve is definitely rotted. And the facial board and all that. Right. It may be the ice and water shield higher up. I don't know, I mean, a real quality fix may require insulation approaches. And we discussed that in a little time, if you want to. Yeah. But there's the Hutchins Roofing, I think it was, or Burrell, whoever bid on that. And they said, well, you know, really, you might want to do a cold roof. You guys know what that is. So when you have a building, I gotta say I'm a little troubled by, this is to me a new building. Isn't it? I remember it being built. I remember it in all the techniques pretty much that are employed today are what were being employed then. And it appears, and Andy still needs to look upstairs and verify that there's a lot of heat loss, that there's an insulation issue. And I don't know where that heat loss is coming from. And so when you get that heat loss, you've had some of the problems we're seeing. So if you have a cold roof, it's basically a double roof, and you're allowing, you have the current roof basically, and then you build, I guess they call them cats, you put two by fours on end, and then you build a roof over that. And then have ventilation, and then so air, cold air in the winter can get between those two double roofs. So it doesn't melt in. And then, so it doesn't melt the snow. Right, that makes sense. Ice build up, and then the backing up, and then the water problems getting underneath the roofing. That makes sense. That's one technique. Another technique is, you insulate your building properly, and, or if Andy's hoping that maybe you can go up there and find out where this heat loss is occurring, what is the result of. And it may be, it may be just one little spot that just, or maybe the eaves or something, it's just some place that's not insulated at all or inadequately, quickly insulated, and that if they can put spray foam in there, for instance, that they may, that may alleviate the heat loss. It will save us money down here, and it will save us a lot of costs up there. Double roof, just so you know, it puts down your radar, that were to be the solution that is decided upon. Let's hope not. It would require, because until we have, well it's like an L structure, there's a valley there, it would require it to the roof, not only on that side being double roof, but you can't have a higher roof here and then the other roof, and there you have the double roof, both sides just mean stripping all the standing seam up that back hill, and then on the back of the building, how we'd finish that, I don't know. So it's a complicated situation if it's. But if it's that, and we decide that's the best option, we would have to put it out for that. That's gonna be a big one. FYI. And that's why we just, we need to, for him to get on it and let us know what needs to happen, basically. And also on the conversation. So we need to strip it back to evaluate, and that's why the roof-freeing companies that we're bidding were very tentative. That makes sense. Because they're not carpenters. And they don't know what's underneath. They can patch, but they also know enough about roofing, why things rot and keep lost and all that stuff. So that's just good. Okay, well thank you. Yep. Good job on the being out here. Oh yeah. That's Kim Bulldock. A lot, the price was way better. Oh, the crew is just. I don't remember now the cost, but it was a lot less expensive than. I thought it was going on the side of the building. It couldn't. So they had Alfred came out, looked at the spot, said it wasn't really that bad, but then we had the issue with. It's not coming off the roof. Yeah, for plowing, they had the issue with the plowing. They had, I don't know if you noticed, but Alfred moved to move the mailbox. I mean, he's doing a lot of these things that really aren't. Yeah, that's great. He moved it, which Cassie likes the placement better. Anyways, one of the former. One of the former town clerks is the one who wanted the mailbox, where it's at Cassie never wanted it there. So she was thrilled that it was being moved. Alfred came out, said, oh, if you put it there, it's going to cause a real problem for plowing. So he suggested putting it there. So aesthetically, it looks terrible. It looks terrible. It's fine. But it's tough. Well, it's in the handicaps, but still. Well, we'll just have to move the sign over or something. But it's not there forever. It's temporary. So, you know, whatever, it's there. The people don't like the aesthetic level. It does what we need it to do. It's an interim measure. And I guess the one it's delivered, I don't know if you saw it when you came in, there's some grease spills and stuff like that on the floor, Alfred and the crew are going to clean up the, up in the lot. No, inside the container. Oh, did it just arrive? Yeah, just arrived today. Okay. No, that's great. Who cares how it looks? So they're going to take care of that. So, you know what? Right. Oh, that's a sure. But it's sticky. They put dishwasher on the porch. Yeah. They put speedy during the operation. And then plant flowers at them. Or no, wash it down with dawn. No, we ran it. We ran it dishwasher on the porch. Oh, oh, you did? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, good. That sounds great. Yeah. That's California. You can't do that anymore. Oh yeah, don't tell anybody. All right. Let's see, what else? Oh, did you just, I think I sent around an email from Bonnie Wagoner, Winniger, W-A-N-N-I-G-E-R. From CBRPC. From CBRPC. I know I sent it around to everybody. She would like us to plan a time to meet with CBRPC, RCT, and Green Mountain Transit. That's how that came. That's great. She's meeting with East Montpelier Select Board on September 9th. I don't know if we wanna try to do a joint with them or ask them to come here first or go there first. Why do we have to meet? Well, it wasn't clear to me entirely that email string is why we have to meet with them. Are we there in the planning stages? It's a grant. Well, they wanna get our input as to where to stop. Where to stop, so... Don't have a good idea. It'd be better to stop at the post office than out there on 14. So that's kind of our call is where... Well, it's our input, our best suggestions. I got it. But the thing about the post office is, will people be allowed to leave their vehicles there? Right. And not take them? That's another approach. That's another approach. Well, it has to get dropped off. Probably not. That's private property, isn't it? Yes, it's by the rec center. And we've often talked about where can we put a parking ride in East Calus? And that, like I worked on that with some one group in the make a corner. Well, those East Calus don't. Well, how about the East... Well, not at the rec field. Yeah, the rec fields, couldn't you just park that? We talked about that. We've talked about that in the past and there was a reason why that wouldn't work. I can't remember if the rec association people don't, they don't want it there. So anyways, I think that's an issue that we should bring up when we talk to them is off-site parking. Where are the people gonna park their cars? If they're gonna take the bus, that's great. But where are they gonna park the cars? Well, and I brought up, I mentioned for those, my lady emails for the meeting. Didn't you saw my, South Woodbury really is the north end of our town. I saw you. I didn't see you at all. I saw it too. Okay, so I just think it's good that we coordinate with South with the Woodbury select board on finding what works for our and their residents too. So that's why I suggested the clerk select church. Well, in terms of meeting with Eastmont Pillar, it's, I mean, normally that's great, but they're gonna be focused on where in Eastmont Pillar and we're focused on where in Calis and we don't need to sit through them talking about where and sit through us, exactly. So I'm gonna suggest that maybe we could do it on September 9th, but different times and locations. Yeah. Well, that's a regular meeting then. Right. No, that's good. That's why I'm suggesting September 9th. Yes. I like that. Yeah, me too. Sometimes for us, we talk about things during a regular meeting. No, but it means if that, if those people are gonna, you know, first they're gonna go to Eastmont Pillar, then they're gonna come to Calis. Maybe we might have to start at 630s, go from 630 to 730 or maybe 730 to 830 and or whatever. But I just wanna get back to her with, we could potentially do this date, what time slot were you thinking and how long? Yeah. It's basically for them to give us a spiel of what they're doing. And they're really excited about it, by the sounds. That's great. Yep. So that's that. And by the way, there are some people that are handicapped in town that I think would wanna be part of that conversation. We might wanna invite them and they've brought us up. Yeah, I have someone that will be with me. So, with that, I would like to us to go into the second session. Before we go into the second session, I have a couple of issues I wanna raise. One is, and I don't know if we need to warn us or not. I think it's just a disclosure, isn't it? It's a disclosure. Yeah, I wanted to disclose to the board and the town that I am representing Drew Lam in his leasing of a sugar bush in town. And I mean, normally I wouldn't bring that to you, but Drew also has a lease with, or a license from the town. A lease, yeah. So I wanna be. Transparent? Yeah, okay. Transparent and make sure you guys are okay from a conflict of interest standpoint that you don't see me representing Drew in a private landowner as a conflict people. I don't have a problem there at all. It does mean that when Drew comes back to renew, I will recuse myself just to be really. Yep, well, that's fine. Above board. The other thing is, this is, well, actually two other things I wanted to raise. One is, I would love to have Stephanie come and talk about Rhodes Committee, so we keep that conversation alive because for sure the winter Rhodes issue isn't put to bed, even though right now it's hard to get people to step up and be on the committee. Is she back in the country? No, I thought we were gonna have to wait until she comes back. I would like us to have, and I didn't put it on this agenda, but I want us to get our ducks in a row. Yeah. About what our expectation is from this committee. I think that we could add invasive species issues to our Rhodes standards. Absolutely. Katie's husband is willing to participate and there was somebody else that I ran into that I asked them about the Rhodes Committee and the name will come back to me. And I thought, oh, they'd be really great. And they sounded like they would be interested. Oh, good. So it's a couple of new, yeah. Thanks, Katie. JC, although we complain to you in the grocery store, doesn't want any part of it. I want to be fair, he's done a couple of stints here. Not everyone's like us. Right. And he's done a couple of stints. He has. He was on the dam committee and he really held it together. He was on Rhodes. And he was on Rhodes. And he said at that time, my life is taking me in a different direction. I can't be doing this at this point. And that has not changed. Someone rumored that, oh, JC will do it. And that was never something he offered. No, no, no. I want to be really clear. JC talked to me in the grocery store. I can't quite remember whether even complained is a fair characterization. And knowing of his interest, I suggested that we reach out to him. That's really, he didn't offer it. Yeah. I can't remember. It was a while ago. So anyway, yes. We need to keep after this. I'd like us to see, make some progress with what we want, what the new charge of this committee might be. And then ask Stephanie and whoever has shown an interest like Rick, Katie's husband, to come in and meet with the board. And the third thing I wanted to raise is, and Denise and I had an email exchange about it. But did we get, are we gonna come to participate in the VLCT salary survey this year? Yes, I asked Sandra about it. Excellent. And she's gonna fill it out. Okay. I think that deadline was today, so. I'm sure they'll take it. Yeah, I might, if I think of it, I'll reach out to whoever it was and just say, hey, we are gonna do it. Yeah, the timing of them expecting. It was a really quick turnaround. It was a quick turnaround during the summer. During the summer. It's tax season. It's summertime when people are on vacation. It wasn't at the timing of it, it was not great. I will just pick up that email and let Katie remember her name, Heather, maybe. Yeah, I will. We're gonna do it. Okay, with that, I'd like to go on executive session.