 Order at 601. So the first item is meeting to order is you need a motion to appoint a select board chair for the next year. I make a motion that Chris remain as a select board chair. He's done a tremendous job in that position. And if he's interested, I would nominate him to continue. Okay, so you have a motion and a second to make Chris Jarvis the new chair. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. It's like Chris is your chair, continue for a year. All right, I'm excited. All that extra comp time for me. So, what I'm gonna do with all of it. You wait until you have to buy this comp time out trees at some point. That's right. Mo told me today that he bought out all of his comp time and he bought a new truck. Did he? Yeah. Yeah. Well, infinity times zero is still zero. So... So we will, first on the agenda is, well, second on the agenda is to approve the agenda for this evening. Is there anything that we need to add? I have a couple of minutes. Yes. So at 6.15, I promised the equity and inclusion committee, Owen said five minutes for a quick update. Okay. That's at 6.15. He got a hold of me after I'd already done the agenda. Okay. So that will be, I believe, Christie and Jerry. You know that. So I have a couple of items to go which we'll put under at the end of the meeting under other business. I'm gonna purchase a lawn mower and Jan Dietrich sent me and I dropped off an AARP grant application. So, but I'll do those under other business. Okay. And that's it. And you still have Ellie at 6.30 because of her work schedule. So you may have to come back to her when she joins if you're, you may have to pop around a little bit. I wanted to, you know, definitely go with her schedule. So that's it. Those are the, my additions. I don't know if anybody has anything else. I think the only thing that it's not a big deal but I think we, I was just thinking that we would do the just adopt the rules, rules of procedure first. Sure. Whatever you want. I guess we could probably do it either way but it just probably makes more sense to just adopt our policy of how we construct our meetings. And so we'll just move that ahead of the, the Herald as the newspaper of record. Okay. Everybody's over with that. Anything else? If not, I'd entertain a motion to approve the agenda as amended. No more. Okay. All in favor. Aye. Aye. So we, right now, what we'll do is we do have, well, we can just do public comment. So right now with public comments, if there's anything that anybody would like to bring up that's not currently on the agenda. Now's the time to do that. Yeah. I would like to just take a couple of moments to acknowledge the passing of Geneva Geico. She was an extremely active person in the town of Bethel, her and her, her whole family. She was active in municipal government. Her husband had the used furniture store in town there and they, her whole family was very active in the town of Bethel. She, and, you know, and we always saw her at the select board meeting. She was always there in the front row and she would voice her opinion and she would, you know, ask questions. So I just, I just wanted to acknowledge her passing and she will be missed, although I'm sure she's sitting up there with Louie right now looking at us and making sure that we're taking care of business. So thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Paul. And I just, I had forgotten, you had sent me a couple of messages. I just turned the group chat on so I can actually read that now. So as we go, if there's any, it's not familiar to the way we do things. I see, Eleni, hold on one second. It's just, during the Zoom calls, it's much easier to just either raise your hand through the chat and the things or maybe just put in, you can just type into the chat saying, hey, you know, when you get a second, I'd like to say something and then obviously during public comment, you know, we'll kind of take those as they come. And then once we get inside the meeting, if somebody has a potential comment, then just put it in the chat and then as soon as it's most appropriate, I'll make sure that I can call on you, okay? Then Lenny, you had your hand up. Two things. I'd like for the board, for the select board to really think about bringing voting by ballot to the people so that we can vote on that that's something we might want in the future. I think it was a really good turnout this year. I think it gave people more time to get introduced to the candidates, to the people on the select board, people did a lot more research than I've spoken to about the select board. I think it's really helpful if that is something that we could, you could think about and get that on an agenda to discuss maybe and to start bringing it to the people so they can vote on it. And also, I've been thinking about this for a long time where we talk about revitalization a lot. Has there ever been any thought given to a community center in downtown Bethel? So a community, I mean, so that the select board, the town has a community center. So you do. Yeah, we chose for revitalization reasons and I feel like I don't wanna take up a lot of time but we chose to be a for-profit model to intentionally try to help revitalize the town and get more economic flow. We would have done better as a business to be a nonprofit but we made a choice specifically to address some of the community needs that we've been hearing and working with through the revitalization efforts and intentionally also trying not to step on other businesses' toes and that includes the town's rental of the town hall as a community space. So there are things happening, I think maybe not in the most perfect ways but... So maybe we could talk about that at a different time. Okay, that's all I wanted to put out there right now. Thank you. Yeah, I will comment or just wanna let Lenny know about voting by, if residents want to change to Australian ballot, we actually would vote on it at town meeting next year and it wouldn't take effect till the following year. So it's a process but that's how it works. Sure. And Jesse has his hand up. Yeah, hi, good evening everyone. I have a question from the bar actually. We have a meeting with the liquor inspector next week. I just wanted to hear from the select board if there was anything that you all were looking for specifically from us about safety or I'm talking about in reference to some outdoor tables and things out front in the parking lot. And I know it's like a traffic situation also. So any input would be great. Thank you. Thanks, I'm glad you got ahold of them Jesse. That's great. What we need to know is they have to know what the barrier is gonna be made of that has to be part of the application. And then I think it'll be, I know one of the questions was we were kind of unsure about the size and down the side of the building. Whoops, I don't know. Oh, there you went. You moved all of a sudden. I was trying to make eye contact in here but now you're at the bottom. And so I know we are, that was one of the situations was we're trying to be sure narrow down the layout which it sounds like Pat is gonna help you with. And then, but I do know they need to know exactly what the booths are gonna be made of. And I think the other topic may have been for like outside noise right now your current outside consumption permit is like noon to midnight. And is that where you were gonna keep those hours? We just didn't know. And I think, and Jesse with ours, I know we talked about it and it might have been about a month ago. I can't remember, maybe two when it came before us. And like typically inside, inside establishments, it's pretty much cut and dry for us. We kind of rubber stamp the blessing and it's all controlled by the state liquor board. But when you get into the outside consumption is when the town typically will look at it a little more. And I know like Theresa said, I think the main thing that we had talked about was the delineation of not so much the side and back of your establishment, but the front. Cause as we all know that that kind of horseshoe area gets often used for individuals driving through there and people walking through there. And how that would be delineated safely as well as Theresa brought up, even though we don't technically have a noise ordinance, there are always potential noise issues with having an outside establishment. And we had that at the tavern when they were doing their outside stuff we ended up having to go through that process too. They are a couple of years ago. So I think those were the two main questions that we had and Theresa hit it on there. So. Okay, thank you. And just to be sure, like, have you all ever received noise complaints from about the bar before? Has that ever been an issue? From yours, I don't believe so, Jesse. But like we said, the only other one, at least that I can compare it to is Tessie's cavern when we did the, well, I can't remember how that flow went, but they were granted one. And we did have several noise complaints about theirs, which then kind of became troublesome for the board a little bit there for a period of time. But I guess that we would be comparing you to just that one other one that I know of. I don't know, Paul or Dave may have been around longer to know other ones, but, and we did approve your other two liquor licenses. So it was just the outdoor consumption one that we were, that we had more questions on. Yep. Chris, with Tessie's, there were also concerns about lighting. I think they ended up going before the DRB again, maybe, to talk about lighting and noise both. I hadn't thought about that, about lighting. Jesse, is it pretty well out front? I guess I've never really thought too much about lighting as far as you're in the downtown core business area, but is it pretty well let your parking lot? It's fine. There's the, with the street lights and the lights on the outside of the building. It's- Yeah, I thought that's good though. Yeah. But- Those were, it really was just vericonic eyes to make. And then I know, I think you had the same concern as people get in that habit of driving through, even though it is your property. Yeah. They like to drive through that hoop, but it sounds like you pretty much had figured that out with what you're gonna- I did notice that, yes. For barriers, yeah. And when he called me, I told him I said, look, that's their property. People can come in and out on either side, but that's his place. Yeah, if you need me to come in, come down that day that he's gonna be there, just shoot me an email or call me, Jesse. I'm happy to buzz down if I'm there. Thank you. And that might be the easiest thing because if Tress has any other questions, Jesse, maybe you guys can hash it out that time. And then that way it doesn't have to go back and forth the board again, you know? All right, that sounds good. We'll talk. Okay. Yeah. All right. Did we have any other? I can't tell Lenny if you have your hand up or just resting on your chin. Okay. At first I was like, I think his hands up. And then I'm like, no, I think he's resting on his chin. All right. On chin. And then you were moving a little bit. So I didn't know if that was what you had there. So, all right. So hearing no other public comment pieces, Doug doesn't have anything. He's been off of quiet for some time now. Ever since he retired, he got all quiet on us. So we will move forward. I do. I am here if you need me to go now. Well, Ellie, if you are. We got you at 6 30, Ellie. So we, yeah, we have one. I kind of got scheduled in after. Oh, okay. I just see public comment. And then I see appointments. You have another one appointment. Yeah, we have a quick appointment here at 6 15 for 15 minutes. Okay. All right. I can't see you this time because I'm putting on the agenda thing on my computer. It says click here, but it doesn't let me get in there. Yeah. So I'm on by phone, but a lot of times if somebody sends me the link, then I can click on and see you guys. Okay. Okay. All right. I'm ready whenever you want me. Well, you know how we are. We're usually running behind Ellie. So. Oh, okay. I'm gonna try to get as punctual to 6 15 as possible. Oh yeah, whatever. I'm good. I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm good. Okay. So our first appointment is one that Teresa had added to the schedule. So we have 6 15, the equity inclusion committee. And I see both Christy and Jerry are here. And will you expect anybody else or just, just you two? Oh, and it's here too. I think. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's kind of like, it's kind of like the Brady bunch. Keep looking for people on the screen and then they move. And so, all right. We see you all now. Okay. So 6 15, the floor is yours. All right. Thanks. Jerry, you wanna start off and introduce yourself? First off, thanks for having us. My name is Jerry Thomas. I'm the CEO of Keyham and I live in Buffalo, right on tertiary. Hi everybody. I'm Owen. You know me. Keyham Pisces. Hello. And I'm over in the Liliesville area on Brink Hill. And I am Christy Fry. She, her pronouns. I am on Abbott Road. And we're here today. I wanna thank you for this time. We're getting us on the schedule. For many of you, I've never met in person. So this is a treat. Thank you. We're gonna do very briefly. I'm in the interest of time to respect everyone's time. We thought we'd do a little bit of, Jerry's gonna talk to us about the purpose of our committee. And then I'm gonna get into some of the work we've done already. And then we're gonna get to the real thrust of it. Jerry's gonna lead us in some conversation, very brief conversation. So with that, I'll give it to Jerry. Yeah. So yeah, the committee on inclusion equity was established for the understanding, documenting, and remitting issues of inequality that happened in our community at Bethel. You know, we're here to increase civic engagement of marginalized people in our town. Being more inclusive and educating and training select board members, community members, school board members, committee members, ourselves. You never done learning on the, you know, this is a long journey and we are composed of all walks of people, ages, genders, economic backgrounds. And just here to basically make Bethel an amazing place that we know it is and can be. Yeah. Thanks, Jerry. You know, we haven't been hanging out together for very long, but you know, when we reviewed as our subcommittee here, we reviewed some of the things we've done already. It's pretty exciting, the framework that we have. And I think that's where we began, right? If we wanted to create our own committee, like community agreement, so that we understood how we wanted to operate and how to be respectful of one another and demonstrate what we're hoping to share outwardly with the rest of our community. So, you know, a framework, a governance framework, if you will. We did a, pretty early on, we did a year in review for black leaders in our community and particular, Jamison Davis, White River Valley School District, the anti-racist policy work that's being done. Kenya Lizulia for BIPOC land access and Opportunity Act and Ashley LaPorte doing work on police accountability work, just to highlight there a little bit. And the other things that we're doing now, we went in, we just took the approach of subcommittees within our group and, but not death by subcommittee, I promise. We, so I'm gonna just give you an overview of some of those subcommittees. And you know, again, in the interest of time, I'm not gonna go into big detail because what we really want to do here is to open the floor up to hear from you and to collaborate a little bit as our first conversation. So subcommittee on a document review, like town document review forms, things like that. Website committee, I think some of our committee members have already participated in at least one or two of these select board meetings, particularly around and our friend Thomas here as well, who's a regular to our committee, Cianlani. Our town census and survey project, I think that more of like a benchmarking activity for us. Like you need to know your audience and who, you know, what do folks need? And let's not just start charging down the road without understanding, you know, who's with us and what can we do? What are we all looking for? And we also have this committee, this subcommittee, all right, we call ourselves the anti-racism education subcommittee. And so that's who we are, Owen and Jerry and I. And so that's how we've approached the beginning and this is to begin with. Like who knows, you know, what we unearthed and what we as a community discover and how we'll move forward from that. But right now, this is how we're approaching what we feel are some activities and some goals that maybe will give us some immediate impact. And that's really important. I think when you're a first, when you're just beginning your existence and your presence and your space in a community. And with that, I'm gonna give it to Jerry for the big stuff here. We're here to hear from you and how we can collaborate with you and work with you and what we can provide you as well. So Jerry, I'll give it right back to you. Yeah, so one of the things that the committee is all about is, you know, having real tangible changes that we can point to. And one of the other things is ask, you know, what as educators, you know, what do you mean, what do you mean from us? Basically, you know, what do you need us to do and what does it look like? Something that we can get our hands in and make real, tangible change to and sort of in terms of like education. Sure. And I'll just say to the members, just feel free to jump in at any time and I know, you know, at least on my end of things and I'm only one fifth of the voice on the board is, you know, I guess what I most would like to see or I'm curious to see is, you know, where are some of the deficiencies in our local community and, you know, and once I guess establishing what those are, you know, how can we go about, you know, making that more positive? So, you know, I don't know exactly, you know, what issues we have in our community. You know, even though we only 2,000 people in our community, it's hard to kind of know all 2,000 people, you know, so it's, you know, you don't know everybody and there's people from all walks of life in our community. So I guess my end, I'm just kind of really, I'm just curious to see what are the issues that our citizens are having and then I guess, you know, and then some recommendations from the committee on, you know, what do you feel would be the right steps to help addressing those deficiencies. So, you know, so I'm thinking baby steps here, getting into the pool, you know, dipping my toes into the pool here. So that's kind of what I can think of off top of my head. So I'm sure the other members have different opinions, but that's mine. Paul? Yeah, Chris, I think that's part of it, but I think that the work that they're doing, just trying to, as you say, get to know your audience, find out what the topics are and establish the research. As an advisory committee, it's the committee's, you know, duty or responsibility to establish the parameters of the situation and then bring the solutions to the select board for consideration. So I think getting to know your audience, getting to know what the situations are, exactly, you know, in some detail and then bringing that back to the board so that we can then look at policies and things like that that may have a positive impact on correcting some of these issues. Yeah, and you hit that right on the head there, Paul. I mean, no matter what our committee is, if you think about the different committees that we have in throughout the town, you know, the select board typically is not directly involved with that committee and telling it what it's doing and what, you know, I'll use an example like, you know, the Recreation Committee, for instance, you know, they meet, you know, there was a plan, kind of a formal informal plan that was kind of voted on years ago of what the citizens of the town want to see there. And now it's kind of up to them to figure out the pieces and the stages and then bring those before the board to get the opinion of the select board of, you know, we think this is the next step. What do you think? And, you know, this is what we might have to budget for, you know, type of thing. And I think Paul hit it right on the head there with, you know, this isn't really gonna be something where the select board is gonna, you know, give you a call and say, Jerry, this is what I want you to be doing. You know, this is more, you know, your committee coming to us and saying, this is what, you know, we've talked to our audience like Paul said, and this is what we feel is what we need to focus on. So, Linley. So I first off appreciate that you guys are kind of coming to us and starting the conversation. I think that this is going to be an ongoing conversation and obviously won't be solidified in just this meeting. You know, some of it, especially given the broad scope of what you're asking. Like I personally would have liked to have had a little bit of time to think about it before just being put on the spot to know, oh, here's what I wanna ask the equity and inclusion committee. I will say that I agree with what both Paul and Chris were saying. I also think that this is a slightly different scenario than the rec committee where that sort of more infrastructure-based and what you guys are looking at is a little bit more culture-based and culture is a lot harder to make decisions around and shift and understand. And so I think that it's a bigger and a different beast. And I think that it's not just one that we can, even the five of us as a board could individually answer and could answer even for a broader scope of community. What I would personally love to see, and these are just like my off the top of my head thoughts with only a few minutes to think was, I'd like to see the sort of the background education that, and I wanna clarify what I mean in a second, but like the background education that will put us as a board in a better spot to have more productive conversations with your group. And so what I'm trying to get at is, there's a really big shift and it's happening within our country and it's happening at different places in different ways and everybody sort of at their own place with it. And in order to have a productive conversation as a group, as a bigger group and then as a town, we all need to be coming in with at least some semblance of common knowledge, common terminology, common understanding. And Therese, I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit here, but Therese and I had a great conversation a couple months ago that really kind of got to the point of Therese realizing at the end of the conversation that she needed to do a little bit more of her own research and it couldn't really even be driven by me or what I was recommending, she had to go and kind of figure it out on her own. And so I think maybe that's a starting place for how the EIC can help this board is kind of giving some reference material to read or giving some basis that we can start to come to a common place of knowledge. So then we can start having the conversations and actually give you a little more input as to like, here's the direction as a board, we feel like our knowledge is, we're missing this area or we need a little bit more understanding, this piece of it just didn't make any sense or how does this affect our lives? I think we're kind of, sorry to throw all five of us under the bus, but we're at a little bit of a deficit maybe from where the rest of the EIC is coming from of knowledge and common foundation and that we'll have more productive conversations if we kind of all get to that same place and then try to figure out what our next steps are. Is that, that was a lot of thoughts. Well, Lindley definitely thought a lot more in her couple of minutes and I had, so. And Jean has his hand up. Yeah. And it's a, there is a question I have. It's in part of a personnel policy question but I'd like to extend it not just to personnel paid staff but all of the volunteers, committee members and so on. What if any quote, and this may be kind of what Lindy was saying to awareness training is there related to a whole range of inclusion questions, not the least of which are sexual harassment and how we deal with one another culturally as well. I just, is there anything, should there be anything? And maybe the question for EIC to look into, what is there and what resources could be available, not, well, especially to employees but also to people like ourselves who are volunteers and serving on boards and committees of the community. I think that, I mean, so far, Jean, there's not, I mean, obviously we address several things, sexual harassment, different things in our personnel policy, yes. And I've been looking to see, I've kind of been waiting, assuming that maybe VLCT, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns might come out with some sort of employee-based training. And so, and I haven't seen it yet, but I'm waiting, but Lindy is right and he didn't throw me under the bus. So that's fine, is certainly having my own questions. And I think I've had this conversation with Owen via email is just reading, I certainly don't understand all the issues and the terminology. And so I started reading this great book and then I have questions, like I don't, reading about intersectionality was just like, what an amazing concept. And I'm trying to understand, but who do I ask questions? I need someone that I can say, okay, well, you can talk to someone about back and forth and truly understanding it. And I think I'd said to Owen once and Owen kind of laughed because I said, well, I think of everybody as a group, everybody's a resident. And so, I think of any decision or a thing that I'm gonna make or ask the select board to make, if you think about the residents as a group and one of the things that had come out during town plan that Lenny had, are we making sure that we're disseminating information? And I'm using every source available to me, but is there something that I'm missing? Is there a better way? Should we be, should some of the information be in different languages? Should there, I mean, there's so many questions that I have about certain things to make sure that we're doing the best job that we can do. And I look forward to seeing from the education standpoint, talking about some of these topics or certainly putting them in, I wanna say bite-sized pieces, but an understandable, making these big terms in a more smaller understandable way. The other thing I look forward to and I haven't seen yet is there was one of the subcommittees was gonna be working on like an outline or just some ideas, maybe more of a list of ideas for things about policies and forms that I'm constantly updating and writing policies. So it handy for me to have maybe just a little toolkit of things to kind of keep in mind when I'm writing and taking it to the board. So I think it's gonna be you guys coming and us being able to ask questions and sound stupid and just say, hey, I don't know, can you help me? I'm not above that saying I mean. And I think really, just kind of the sum it all up. I mean, we're really, as a board, we're really leaving it up to the committee's expertise and along with like Lindley and others were saying, like who is our audience? Taking our audience, learning from them and then applying your expertise to how do we make things better? What do we do differently? How can you educate us and others? And it's really the balls in your court really to kind of go with it and check in with the board. Usually our committees, they check in with the board a couple of times a year. We get to go back and forth on what are you working on? Do you need any help? Or sometimes we set deadlines if there's something that needs a deadline, but usually it's just that flow of information back and forth and hitting some special dates. Therese could probably keep you up to speed on some of the important dates of the year, like if something's gonna go before voting, we have to have it in by a certain date or those types of things. But the most important thing is that we want to do better. We want to understand, we want to know more. So I think this is kind of a great conversation because we just wanna make sure we're doing right by everybody. And I think that it's good that we're open to it. And I think that's the most important takeaway. I know I hope for you as a way that you realize is we want to be partners. One idea that comes to mind as a person who comes to different meetings is that the select board occasionally comes and sits in on a meeting of the EIC. Attend a meeting, ask questions in one of those meetings, be a part of those meetings. It is equity and inclusion, so it also includes you. It includes anybody can come to that forum. I think if you're talking about education, I think it's a good way to get some information as well. Yeah, for the select board, they could, obviously we'd have to warn it as a board meeting. But if an individual wanted to go, we're certainly like right now, we are gonna talk about later tonight about liaisons maybe, select board not taking a committee. I think Lindley certainly, I know Lindley's been attending yours and so, but that's something to think about too, Thomas. And I'm gonna make a note of that too, is maybe doing another meeting, but outside the select board scheduled to a joint meeting. And I think too, once you have the education thing, what even just as a way do you wanna start it or try it out, that certainly is, you know, we to make you, to have them come back and do something together so they can do it as an exercise would be good. So I'll make a note of that. Just to follow up on something Teresa was saying earlier, I also have been a little bit shocked that nothing has come down from the LCT. And that's, so for those that don't know, that's kind of our municipal oversight and they kind of help guide us and give us information and do informational trainings and all sorts of different things. And I've sort of been surprised and I wonder, you know, while Teresa was saying that what went through my head is like, what if this group put together or put together a panel of experts who could do that kind of training and almost preempt the bigger statewide thing, but do it for Bethel and, you know, see how it goes. I think that it's exactly, this is such a process. It's not like you can give us one reference or one thing and it's gonna, we're all gonna understand and have whole new practices of existence. It's such a process that, you know, we just have to take this into it and like we're doing it constantly with the school and it's just, you know, it's such a learning. You've got to do this deep dive and then implement practice within your own life in the ways that make sense for you. And so getting us started on that learning process, I think is really pretty key. And maybe that's where like, like Chris was saying, you know, it's come to us with something, come to us with here are some starting places, even if it's a handful of different starting places and we just go from there on our own. I will reach out to BLCT though to see if they are working on something and I can send that information to Christie and Jerry and Owen and say, hey, I found, you know, this is what they're working on. So I will send them an email and see if they have anything in the works or not. Maybe just, you know, and see if they do, I'll send you guys the information if that's okay. I just think, can I say a thing? Sure, yep. I know we have, I know time. We got to, we got to wrap this up and I apologize. I personally apologize, Linley. That was my bad. I emailed Therese late in the game about us being on the agenda, but we actually decided as a team that we wanted to be on the agenda at our last EIC meetings. That's 100% my bad for not giving more warning. I just want to own that. Spend a busy couple of days, but one of the things that we've just started talking about is to kind of bring in maybe guest speakers to our EIC and that could be folks like Susanna Davis who's the racial and equity director at the state level for Vermont. We've talked about bringing in some of the leaders of the various NAACPs in our state just to really like 20 minutes at our meetings be like, this is who I am. This is what I do. This is what I can offer to your town professionally, right? And also then we can say, you know, here's some questions that our town has. Maybe they could do a training for us. So it's not all just our labor or doing that kind of stuff, right? Because we all have other jobs and things as well. And so really thinking about tapping into the wealth of resources that already are here and lifting some of those folks up and bringing them into our town so that they are also aware like, oh, Bethel's doing some cool stuff, right? Cause I think this is whether we know it or not, we're doing something that other towns are sized. And I know Bethel gets thought of as sort of like a classic Vermont town, you know? Like has been through all these things and you know, has kind of up and down sort of like economically. And there's many towns that fit our demographic. And so I think it could be really cool for some of these statewide leaders to see that our town is taking these initiatives even though we're such a small town. You know what I mean? So our hope is that we can uplift the town on a statewide level as well. So it'd be great to do that in partnership, more close partnership. Well, and to sort of go off of what Owen was just saying because I really like that you're thinking of having some of these maybe bigger leaders coming to your meetings, but maybe it's then, you know, from there, the town could sponsor something at the town hall or a discussion group or things that then or even a training for town employees and municipal members, not just the select board but, you know, commit other committee members but like really sort of think outside of how do we just get it from your group, our group, these little pockets and maybe do something that's a little more substantial. And I know those are lofty goals and it's all, you know, in parts and pieces and part of the process. But I think what you're saying of like bringing those leaders in, if we're already bringing them in with some next steps of like, hey, we'd love to have you come back. We'd love to hire you to do a training and it would be for municipal employees or some, you know, but coming into it with some of those ideas at the ready I think would be really helpful. And maybe it's chatting more directly with Terese about what that would look like, you know, that kind of thing. So unless we have any other like major questions that need to get ironed out because we do have, unfortunately, you know we do have the agenda to stay on track with and for Ellie's on the phone. But what I'd like to do and typically we, like I was saying, typically our committee come in, well, I don't know, a couple of times a year to meet with us, not all committees, but some of them. So why don't we try to set up like a quarterly meeting where, you know, that gives, because you guys, you know, that gives the committee a couple of meetings to go through information before coming to the select board. So like I was thinking the next quarter would be like June, is that about timeframe, Terese? So why don't we make sure that we get you on the select board agenda for June and that will give the committee some time to start working on some of these items and just, you know, we'll have a conversation in June on, you know, where you're at or what you might need from us or, you know. I'll email Christy and Owen and Jerry with the select board meeting dates in June and then you guys can pick whatever works best for you, if that's okay. Because if we did June and you could do again, like, you know, September and then the end of the year, you know, so that kind of hits all the quarters pretty good. Yeah, and obviously if you have something in between you can just let me know and we'll get you on the agenda, so. As the new kid on the block, there will be occasions when I will ask a question of what it means to be a select board member as, you know, before I've had all that training and understand all the ins and outs. One of the questions that I have is how the open meeting laws impact if three of us show up at an EIC meeting because the, we're not supposed to, we're not permitted to engage in town business where there is more than a majority present. So it's a question and at some point put a tickler on it or however we want to deal with it, but that's something to think about for me. I'll try to, Gene, and I know we, just the way the appointments ran tonight and stuff, and I know we'll do the kind of motion to read up the rules and procedures of select board, but we can also do a little education in regards to the open meeting laws at that time. But, you know, rule of thumb usually is, you know, that you can't have a quorum. So that for our board would mean no more than two of us. It's safe to say. I mean, not to say that we're going to push an agenda, but that's just the perception. So usually two or less board members to attend any type of formal event. And then, you know, when speaking as a group, typically it's, you know, replying to the individual. So let's say an email, you know, that has 10 attachments to it, you know, we can't reply all, but we can have a discussion individually with somebody, because if we do reply all, or let's say it was a Facebook post and we all decided to comment on a Facebook post, then that becomes a perception of us having some sort of quorum into a decision of a discussion. So usually it's, you know, one, you know, reach out individually, or two, you know, if, you know, if somebody wanted to go to the EIC meeting, you know, I would recommend it either be, you know, individually, you know, either pick different times to go or just have, you know, two or less people. But we'll definitely, it's part of the education process, Jean, and we've all been through it. So, you know, wait until we get big functions like Ford Festival and those ones to get around. Yeah, I just want to make sure that three of us don't show up by accident at the same time when we're, yeah, that's all. I love that you're talking about showing up to our committee. This is awesome. We love it. Hey, and I just want to say thank you. It's great to have the space with you. Nice to meet you. Even if it's in Zoom boxes, I appreciate it. And I don't know, Jerry or Owen would like to say anything else, but I just want to say thank you, congrats to Jean and Chris. I guess you've had some favorable election results. So, just want to name that as well. Yeah, my opponent carried out a pretty vicious campaign. He was a tough, he, she was a tough one. So, I almost pulled off to school to be on the school board over in Royalton. I had a couple of votes from Royalton. So thank you for joining us. You guys more, you know, everybody's more than welcome to stick around. You know, usually it's a ball of fire going through all these different agenda items, especially the first couple after town meeting day because there's lots of just formality, you know, motions to, you know, re-adopt, you know, something from last year, but more and more and welcome to stay on board. And if Ellie is still there. I am, I am here. We will go to Ellie, Ellie's, Ellie's on the Recreation Committee for anybody who doesn't know Ellie. Okay. So when Ellie is here this evening to request a hold coin draw, which I believe Memorial Day weekend, does that sound right? Yeah. So I have to report that we are feeling really good that we have a wonderful increase in people using the Recreation Center, but we have found that there are some issues concerning use of the Recreation Center that we need new signage. We need something put up a new signage is needed because we have some issues like a lot of dog waste being there at the center, people not taking care of it, animals not on their leash, people lottering like sitting in cars, smoking cigarettes, and then putting their ends of their cigarettes out the window, so trashing up the place. So we feel that we need a really good signage that will address these issues and state the rules and welcome to our Recreation Center, but these are the rules we'd really like people to adhere to it so that we all can enjoy the Recreation Center. And Deidre has nicely been talking to rules of signage in Randolph and coming up with an approximate cost. And we feel that doing a coin drop May, Saturday, May 29th will be so that we can be able to to have a wonderful sign stating a welcome and stating procedures or rules that people can make it so everybody's enjoying the center. Sure, yeah. And I think that's kind of actually kind of a, it's good to have talks about that lots of people were using the Recreation area. I mean, years ago, we were kind of figuring out how would we get more people there? And these are gonna, it's kind of like gonna be one of those ongoing conversations, like where do we come up with more parking? And those are the type of discussions that are exciting because we know that we're getting high usage out of something. So even though we don't wanna see trash and things like that, but at least we know people are using it. So now we just have to deal with the not so nice piece of it, which is people being responsible and cleaning up after themselves. So, do you have any estimated costs, Ellie, on? Yes, we have an estimated cost of $1,000. So $1,000, okay. Yes, and our coin drop last year that we did in July, we took in 900. So we feel that if we do, that we can, it's approximate, it's something that we feel that we can do this fundraiser and do this fundraiser and be able to do this signage soon. Okay. We were putting up Petway signs over there, which people were on tearing down and things. So I did have Dietary talk to Oscar. So we were gonna, if we get names or even without Oscar, if we get names, Ellie, we're going to send people a letter along with a copy of the dog ordinance that tells people they're responsible for cleaning up after their waste. Which would be good. So my question is really, Chris, is the recreation committee has about $8,000 that they need to pay back to the capital fund. So if the coin drop is going to the sign, I just want to let you guys know it's not going to pay back that. So, and also too, there's a Ellie dropped off a signed copy of the application. I know there's not a signed one in your packet, but there is a signed one now at the office. So I'm just so you guys know that. But I also wanted to be clear about that. So if people thought the money for the coin drop was going to pay back that, it's not. They're obviously earmarking it for a sign. Would there be any possibility of maybe getting either the whole thing or pieces of it donated by different individuals that do a craft like that, like printing or a woodworker that, you know. We do have someone, we do have someone on the committee that has volunteered. They have stone posts that they're donating to the committee, to the Bethel for the sign. And we do have, we do have a piece of grant, some granite from some steps near the river that we want to use for stones and a design with that stone, that granite stone, and the stone posts that we were, this committee members donating to us. The other thing too is once we see, you know, get the estimate for the sign, for the rule sign, and we look at what the final budget is for parks and rec and the pool for the end of June. You know, we may be able to, there may, I'm not saying there will be, there may be some money in the budget that would help reduce the thousand out of, you know, so maybe any money for the coin drop didn't all have to go to the sign. So we can kind of certainly be open-minded about that. I did see the signage and I thought that the rec committee did a great job with their wording and it's very inclusive, you know, definitely lays it all out. So I thought it was great. Oh, and just so you also know that we are planning a major letter donation campaign. And we are planning a big silent auction instead of a raffle. We might not do a raffle, but we'll, we want to do a major with some prizes that are big prizes. And those two major fundraisers, the silent auction and the donation letter, those are specifically that we are planning that we'll go for the, for the 8,000. That's, yeah. I know I talked to DeTree about that. You guys mentioned that about a letter writing campaign to, for donations. I think that's a great idea. And then, you know, you could probably, once we get a headcount, we'll be able to do postage and envelopes and stuff, maybe out of that fund, but we can, then we can put the money back in once you do it. But I think the letter writing campaign is a great idea. Certainly was profitable for the conservation commission when they were looking for donations for the Biladu property. So I think that's a great idea, Ellie. Thank you. And on a second note there, Ellie, when a good time to have the recreation committee come formally before the board, just to catch up with us in regards to, you know, where we're at with the recreation plan, what our next steps are there and what, you know, what that proposed map looks like. Yeah, well, I would say the end of April, or the end of April would be good because then we'd be, have more of our plan together. Well, maybe just let, just let Terese know what date would, I mean, it's nothing rushier next month. We're just, just so that we can keep the conversation going on where we're at. Or maybe the May 10th, May 10th flood board meeting. So maybe in May, we can get Ellie and the committee, okay. Would be good, yeah, because it's been, I think the last time we kind of checked in together, it was. In the fall. Formally, yeah, as we say, September or something. Yeah, or maybe, yeah. So some of the information that's not on the coin drop request is that obviously it's on May 29th, it's from 8 a.m. to noon because the recreation committee is a committee for the town of Bethel. Our insurance is in play here. And Ellie said that they get their signage from the fire department. And I did reach out to the state of Vermont just to make sure that the governor is approving coin drops. And he said coin drops are okay. Obviously, you know, we still, depending on the situation in the May, the coin drop, you know, whoever's at the coin drop may be having to, you know, wear masks and no one under age of 16 can be out there. But Ellie received all the rules and she's aware of them. She's done it before, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we did, we wore a mask and shields and stuff and more gloves and did all that last July. Excellent. Well, hopefully, you know, things relax a little bit more by then, but we'll find out. So, but I just want to let you know that's the timeframe and between the white church and the brick church and the standard process for that people usually do coin drops. Sounds good. So I guess all I would need is a motion to approve the recreation committee's coin drop for May 29th, 2021. All moved. Okay. Okay, all in favor. Aye. Just remember, Lindley, now that Moe's not here, I'm leaning on you on these motions, so. I'm in motion, but it didn't pick me up. No. There is a little moment of silence there. Yeah. That's uncomfortable. Perfect. So we're all good there. Thank you, Ellie. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Have a good evening. Okay. All right. So now we will circle back to, so once a year we adopt the rules and procedures for the select board here. So in kind of looking through that, I know often we do a motion, we make a second and we'll vote on it. I mean, reading through our own procedures, we don't necessarily have to second items. That's not necessary, but typically that's kind of been the way we've done it in the past. I know as chair, what I like to do typically is to run the meeting, and but not vote in the meeting unless it's casting a tie. So usually as long as we get a motion and a second and one of the other two board members raises their hand in favor of the item, then it passes. And at any time if we are going through an item, a select board member can always request a roll call vote if they feel it was needed. And just for Jean, pretty much everything that we do when it comes to making a motion, sometimes the motions can be lengthy. Sometimes they can very be small. Probably I would say 50% of the time I read the motion off ahead of time. And then it's just a matter of you could just say, I wanna move the motion and then it is carried through. Sometimes we just have to make sure that Lisa has all the information because we talk very fast, but she often has it on the agenda so she can kind of in some way, she has it ahead of time. And then just as far as the meeting goes, we just have to remember that a select board meeting is a meeting of the select board. And the public is more than welcome to attend the meeting, but we have to kind of think of it as it's really a meeting of the five board members and Teresa and we do allow the public members to comment at times that are right. But sometimes we just have to remember that, you don't have to wait for, I know on the Zoom it's kind of difficult, but in normal we don't have to wait for whatever. Lindley doesn't have to raise her hand to talk. I know on Zoom call it's kind of like we're all back at school, but everybody on this board carries equal weight. And you'll feel fine often that I'm not, typically I won't talk on an item until at least a couple of people have talked. Don't really wanna interject my thoughts into it too much. And then like we had talked about when Jean, when you were a candidate and Wayne there that it's really, it's about, what do we feel the citizens of Bethel as a whole into our decisions and try to leave our biases out of it and go from there. But definitely I think in order to have a good constructive discussion that, don't be afraid to raise your opinions at any time or maybe not so much opinions, but opinions of other citizens that have talked to you about a piece. I will say that this board, I can't remember a time where we have not been able to move forward with an item. We often find common ground quickly. So it's about trying to find that common ground on these issues as fast as we can. And the other thing Jean that we typically do, if you see it on the agenda, then be prepared to act on the agenda items. Some boards in the past, I know when I started on with Mo, there was like this leftover graveyard of things that have been brought into the select board that just never went anywhere. So often we like to, I mean, we don't wanna just make motions and act on things just to act on them, but normally if Teresa has something on here, like I'll use for example, the social media policy, we've had a couple of discussions about this policy already, that's gone back and forth. And we're not ready to make a motion on that tonight, but we're continuing to have that discussion point on that item. But my guess is probably at the next select board meeting or the one after that, we'll have it on there as a motion to do something with it. And we just hope that everybody has done their homework and is prepared to make a vote on it. So, and then I was new at 1.2. So at any time, Jean, if you don't understand something, just ask us, you know, and then you get unlimited comp time like the rest of us, Jean. So just think of it that way. So if anybody has any issues or about the Bethel Select Board Rules and Procedures, you know, I would assume that everybody has read through it by now. There's 13 bullet points. If nobody has any questions in regards to it, I would be open to hear a motion to re-adopt the rules and procedures for the Bethel Select Board. We'll move. Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Okay. And we have, and then usually the first couple of meetings after town meeting day we'll spend, you know, a fair amount of our board meetings going through kind of read adoptions for the yearly, you know, things like tonight, we have the town herald as the newspaper of record. You probably saw on there that, you know, some of the other positions were not ready to go forward tonight, because we're still probably waiting to hear back from those individuals if they're good or not, which trees will get those on the next meeting or two. So the next one tonight is to make a motion to name the herald as the newspaper of record. I know the herald has been the newspaper of record here for as long as I've been on the board. So unless anybody has a difference of opinion on that, I would just entertain a motion to name the herald as the newspaper of record. So I'll move. Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Lisa, you're safe for one more year, but Paul's not done with you yet. So. All right. And the next is to, typically whenever we're doing any type of posting for our meeting notices, we have to designate three areas for the public. So what we have been doing is the town clerk's office, the town manager's office, and the Bethel library as the physical locations. We often will put it on social media platforms and things like that, but you have to have at least three physical locations where an individual can come and look and see the agenda items. And the clerk's office and the manager's office are at the same physical location. But they're technically two offices though. Well, I understand. It's weird. That's the way to do it. It is weird. And the fun thing is too, I actually had this conversation with the office the other day is we don't really have a lot of options as other places to post it. We do, you do a bond vote, you have to post it in five places. So when we've done it in five places, we've done these three. And then I think we got it at the central market. We asked the post office or if this office won't allow us, we'll do the bank, but it's hard. There's not that many spots in Bethel for us to physically post. So we obviously, we also do our website and any other, if we have some outreach in particular, we might do Facebook, Chrome, Quorum and stuff. But yeah, it's funny, Jean. I was surprised too, I guess. I was like, why? But I had a whole conversation about where could we make another spot? And we could come up with one. So I think the post office is a good, a good place to have to get permission every time. And so yeah, guaranteed. And we need, they require us to pick three spots. So we could do it as a fourth, but we have to be able to say we can put it there every time. And if she's got something else posted there, we can't guarantee that. But we do do it for bond votes, of course. And of course, I mean, anybody knows, if they want to just call us, we'll tell you whatever you want to know. And on the website and everything else. But that's how they've been there. And then Zach came conversation last week, Jean. A public kiosk type thing outside the town hall might also be a place where we could do that. So you don't have to physically go into the town hall in order to see. But that's another. Yeah, and now we just post the dates there because there's not enough the letters kind of move around. If there was a back side to it, maybe you could, if people would get out and go look at it, you could. Well, I'm thinking a Randolph where they had that three-sided bulletin board kind of thing. So if there were that kind of a, at the post office or at the town hall, that might serve as that kind of thing. Anyway, I'm thinking out loud. No, good thought. Just thinking of it, does the bulletin board at the town hall, would that be able to, if you put the agenda item in that, would that be able to hold that? Is it waterproof? I can't remember if that. Well, you can't because no, I don't think it is completely. And I don't have space because if you read it when you know. All those letters. So currently, I think that thing is aging. So I think that's a great point that if we ever redid it, then we could put maybe one side where we changed the letters, but another where we post up, I think it's a great, you know, it's a good idea. And I'm, I know we, I know we list that, don't say the meeting time and date, but it won't give you the agenda items though. Right, right now it just says, you know, you can call the office, but and we can't post on a bulletin board at the town hall because it's not unlocked. So it's not like it's, you know, you have access to it. So, so for now this is what we're stuck with, but we, we overcome it by putting stuff in the, you know, Facebook front porch forum and website. So, but I agree with you. I think in the future, when we go to replace that thing, we got to, we can definitely make it better. So unless I hear different, I would just entertain a motion to designate the town clerk's office, the town manager's office in the Bethel public library as the physical locations to post meeting notices. Is your microphone not working, Lindley? Oh, it's working half the time. We're going to have to go to hand signals. It doesn't like me when I try to make a motion. It's Moe, he's Moe, he's in your computer. Of course he would. You have to cough first to get Zoom's attention. Oh, I would second it if nobody else did. So who made the motion? I had Dave and Lindley. I Dave motioned it, Lindley seconded. Got it. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. All right. And then another thing that we do when it comes to AP and payroll gene is Paul usually goes in ahead of time and goes through, when we meet in person, we often have the AP and payroll signatures to do. We have been doing, Paul goes in ahead of time and kind of looks through it to make sure that it's kosher. And then we put our signatures on it at board meeting time. So the next one is just to authorize the board members to authorize a board member, which I'm assuming is that going to be Paul? Are you willing to? Works for me. Does anybody else want to beat Paul to the AP and payroll pieces? Okay, so the motion would be to authorize Paul to sign the AP and payroll on behalf of the town. And the other piece why we do that gene is, often we can't wait two weeks to sign certain documents. It might be for paychecks or whatnot. So we have to get those out. And the board will go through, you have the opportunity to go through and look at it before each board meeting and sign off. So the motion is for Paul to sign on behalf of the town. Dave has made the motion. Second. We'll give it to Gene, put Gene in the record. Gene, second debt, all in favor? Dave, is that your attempt to be in solidarity with my inability to be caught on board? And then as we know, there was a Lister position that was not filled on town meeting day. And we had pretty much anticipated that happening. So the procedure now is to go and advertise for the position. And it's kind of just like hiring somebody. So we'll get applications, hopefully. And then they come, usually the Listers will look at those. And then we will make a decision on the board to appoint somebody. But the appointment would only be for this season. So it's a three year, it's a three year Lister position. So what would happen is if we do find a candidate that's qualified, we would make an appointment for just this year until next town meeting day. And then on town meeting day, that position would open up. So somebody would run to fulfill the end two years of that position. And I think we should do that one first and hold off on the assessor. We all know that Louise got elected and that Louise is going to retire before in June, I think before her term expires. So then I think if we just, we should do this Lister position now, then, and I think that's gonna give us an idea of what we're, you know, because they have to be a Bethel resident. And of course the Listers would like to see them, maybe with some sort of insurance, construction, computer, some sort of background that would help them with the position. And then, so I think we should do that now. And then if we can get that one filled, that'd be great. Then you know Louise is going to retire, I think in June. So we would be looking for a third Lister again then. And if that doesn't, you know, we still have the money in the budget for an assessor. So I think we should just basically take this one step at a time and see what we can find, you know, if we can find a candidate. And before we have to do anything about the assessor position because that's still money in the budget that, you know, if we can't find Lister, we're gonna have to move with the assessor option. So we're maybe both, frankly, we may end up having to hire someone else for that. But I think we do this in baby steps. Let's see what we can get for, if we get a bunch of applicants, then you know that when Louise retires, you may have somebody who could fill that position, you know, when I think it's June. So let's throw it out there and see what we can. So just need a motion to approve it. Well, I don't think, yeah, sorry. I shouldn't have made that. We don't need a motion. I'm sorry. I just wanted, I got carried away typing motion, I think. You don't need one. We'll advertise for it. We'll see what we can do. Okay, so we're good to go with it then. Yeah, that was the only position that did not get filled on meeting day. Because Paul got the right in for, trustee of public funds. So you had no other open seats. So yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put motion there, just to let you know as an FYI, I'll put the advertisement out and then fill a point later. We can make this quick tonight. We could just make a motion in a second. We'll have Doug fulfill that for three years at the time. Wait a minute. I have a spot for that. Maybe next year. I wanted to plant the seed that we, at some point in time need to look at advertising for an emergency shelter coordinator. We've been going without one for quite a long time and this is going to come around to be an issue at some point in time. So I just want to plant that seed. I'll put together a job. We have a job description, I believe, but that's something we need to think about down the road here. Yeah, absolutely. Tepin moved, right? So because Tepin was the last one, I think, right? Yeah. So I'll put it at this, I can put out two ads and I'll do the emergency. I think Doug would be in a good one in that spot. You would be excellent. Yeah. We'll do emergency shelter coordinator, the Lister, and I'm still looking for planning commission members because I just lost Jean. So. I mean, can Jean still participate but as a non-voting member? Exactly, yep. Being non-voting, yeah. He could be the select board liaison, is it worth? Yeah, he's an ex-officio now, but so anyways, but yeah, so, okay, I'll make sure I get those ads out then. The problem there, Paul, is the voting members. There's not enough voting members. So. And don't forget, I'm trying to get one. That's the problem there. So right now we're down to myself and Kyle Cartwright who has basically Zoe's his own alternate, right? So it's like they're one position and then Rick Benson for a year. So we're at three and we're going to maybe, or maybe you'll appoint Adam tonight. So just when I think I'm making ground, I'm like back to four. Yeah. I was somewhat surprised when you said that I had to become a non-voting member. Yeah. It's that. Yeah. I read that as carefully as I could in the green or the voter or the select board guide book thing. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't read it that way, but that doesn't mean there isn't something that's not in the book that I didn't read. Right. It's one of those things. There's only, there's a few incompatible offices and that's basically what happens. But you know what, Jean, you can still come. You still participate. We, you know, everything which is great. And, you know, it's right now, you know, we're not really voting on much anyways. We're just amending the bylaws. So it's also, there's a red book that's also for zoning and planning, but I'll double check the rule, but I'm pretty sure what I had was that you had to become, that you had to become an ex-officio. That's fine. I just want to make sure we get the work done. Oh, yeah. It was a list of views. With the resignation coming up here. Yeah, exact. And you can, like I said, you're going to participate anyways. And, you know, so it's fine. I think it's good. If you want to continue, that would be lovely. And we'll get through it, you know, but yeah, it would be nice if we could. I talked to somebody today who I was hoping to convince, but then it came out that he had once been on the planning commission and wasn't looking to rejoin. So I tried. So that's when you say, have you thought about being a Lister? Yeah, right. Well, yeah. It was Rick Wright, the farmer. So I think he's, Oh, there you go. More than qualified. Yeah. All right. So we will get that going. Next, we had, we had a resignation from the planning commission. So there was a, one thing that we do ask for gene is when somebody either wants to get on to a committee or off a committee that we have some sort of written documentation. Cause years ago, we would get people that would, you know, be motioned on to a committee that didn't know they were on a committee or, you know, you know, leave and never give you any type of formal information to, to get them off the committee. So they'd be on there forever. So, so there was in our packet, brief email by Wayne Townsend for his resignation from the planning commission. I'm assuming it was effective Wednesday, the third from the email. So unfortunately, cause we've tried this in the past gene too is we thought at one point, if we just, if we just disapprove the person trying to resign and they would have to stay on, but unfortunately that doesn't work that way. So, so we just have to accept, I just need a motion to accept Wayne Townsend's resignation from the planning commission. Lindley move Dave second, all in favor? Hi. Okay. I do want to share my disappointment. And then just when Therese thought she was gaining ground, she's just barely treading water. So, then the next was an appointment to the planning commission for a three-year term. And that is Adam Saffron. And we did attend our last planning commission meeting and had some, you know, good insight. He was concerned because he and the cart rights and at the time Wayne lived near each other in Lilliesville, but I assured him that beggars could not be choosers and that they could, that was fine with us. But he was interested. He was, you know, willing to do the homework. And so I thought, you know, hey, he's interested. He's, and he participated. So it's all good signs. And I think, you know, people that have never done the plan, I mean, you're not, when you're getting on the planning commission, you're not like reinventing the wheel, right? I mean, you're taking a living document and, you know, making adjustments to it and to the town and working on your, is it every five years, the plan? Well, we have a year deal for the town plan, but we had decided after Rick and I attended a training from Two Rivers, up hall was there too, which, you know, was wonderful and horrifying all at the same time. So we decided that we're going to do the updates, just the amendments of stuff. We, of things that we know are wrong or need to be clarified. And then I spoke to Peter Gregory at Two Rivers and they're going to write a planning grant and then we'll get some assistance to help us with a major rewrite of the town regulations because so many things came out in that training that were really interesting about bonus densities, you know, how to develop instead of maybe doing the setbacks, but doing other things, spaghetti lots and how to encourage development, maybe even some redistricting because I know Rick Benson was interested. So it's going to be a process, but so we'll move forward with the amendment to fix the things we know are really big and but that's bigger rewrite. That's the bylaws. Yes. But yes, the town plan is on a five year cycle for renewal. Yep, every five. And I think it's maybe five to eight. I think you have a little bit of, I think you can walk through the five year to say we're working on it and you know, kind of, and gives you a little bit more time, but yeah, and it was such a great job. I mean, they did a wonderful job with the recent town plan. So hopefully the next time you're not looking at such a major, major rewrite, but zoning regs haven't been done since I think 2016 or 2017. But we have a meeting this Thursday. Thursday. So if anybody wants to come, we're there via Zoom. I'll send me the link. So Adam, I think will be a good addition. Yes. Move to a point, Adam Saper into the planning commission. Second. Hey, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Had to mute for a second but he was running some hot laps through the house here. I hit a cabin fever. He's like going nuts. He just wants all the snow to be gone at this point. He hadn't met everybody else. Yeah. It's hard to run out on ice, you know. All right. And then we have our annual financial plan for town highways. So this here gene is where we make sure that we identify the proper mileage for the classification codes for the town highways that we have and based upon the estimated assessment value that they will contribute revenue-wise for the year. So we adopt this once a year. So it's basically us just documenting that this is how many miles of class one, two, and three roads we have. If you don't adopt your annual financial plan for town highways or your annual town road and bridge standards, you won't get any of the VTrans. Zero. And I've written. So. You'll get zero dollars. We have to get it done. Yeah. Motion to approve. Second by Dave. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Some of these are gonna go by fast gene, but most of these are kind of... That's good. You know, I understand. I read them. Just pencil, whip, and rubber stamping things. Next one, pretty similar. We have the town road and bridge standards. I do have a question. This one has a signature. This thing, when this is adopted, do we all need to go to the town hall or the town offices to sign? Yep. I already have a clipboard at the back door. Okay. You can actually enter the handicap ramp to my office. And there's a clipboard. There's several things that require your signature. You can tell you've been through the whole packet. So I have a pen and a clipboard right at the back door. So even if I'm not there, I'm on the phone, just come in and you can find all your tabs. We do eventually, what we will do here at some point, and we did it a little while ago, Jean, was we took all the warrants. It was a stack. And everybody, I put them in one of the tables in my office. Everybody came in one at a time and signed them. So yes, the bad thing about Zoom. Right, okay. Good. So this again is the town road and bridge standards. So that's our inventory. Move to adopt. Okay. So moved by Paul, second by Lindley on favor. Hi. This next one, maybe I just missed it, but I don't remember ever being asked for hazardous waste day. Did we in the past? Like maybe. We did one last year. Yeah. Cause it was a year ago. So this one, Chris, either you can authorize me to sign or you got, you can sign. Yeah. This says when you do whatever you want and just do it in the motion. And, but yeah, we do sign one every year. Yeah. So this one, there's, there's two hazardous waste days, Jean. Right. That we have to do by law. But one of them has to be held at another alliance town. So the last, the other one that was held was in Rochester. Yeah. So this one, they're going to hold that right at our facility. Yes. 7th of April, 17th. No move. On this one here. So I would request a motion to hold the hazardous waste day for April 17th, 2021 at the transfer station and to allow our account manager to reach Kirby to sign on behalf of the board. No move. Okay, second by Linley. All in favor? Aye. Good. Close one, barely got that one done. Guys of brutal time. Hey, does anybody know if Rochester voted to remove themselves from the alliance out there? Um, it wasn't Rochester, it was Pittsburgh. Pittsfield. Oh, Pittsfield, I'm sorry. Yes. And they did. Overwhelmingly. Okay. With that, it takes, we get less money for our solid waste implementation plan and we get less money, obviously our alliance fees in July. So I think they were six, I want to say 61 or 6,200. So the alliance fees will drop by that much and the sweep drops from by like 12, I think if the sweep maybe drops by 1,000 or 1,200. So yeah, it's a bummer. I guess I heard they're going to go to Rotland. Rotland. Rotland, yeah. So yeah, unfortunately they did pass and hopefully, well, good thing is the town meeting's over. So hopefully nobody runs out and holds another town meeting to get out. And then we have a class one liquor license renewal for cocker doodles. These will, the license will have to be signed and just make sure, if you do approve it, make sure that you sign in the approval area. Stop it. And Jean, one thing you learn, don't be very careful because you'll never hear the end of it if you have a senior moment. I remember we get to joke about this with you until somebody does that themselves. Signs on the other column, huh? Yeah. If it makes you feel better, Paul, my first thing I ever signed, I signed in Carl's spot. There you go. They're spot us. So excited to talk to you. Oh, I'd forgotten about that. What's? Carl didn't let me move it down either, luckily. Thank you for bringing that back up, Linley. Yeah. Make sure we use it again. It's on video now too. Question, Jean, about the liquor license. Not about the liquor license. I want to go back to the Pittsfield thing. Oh, yeah. That changed the budget because the budget was approved by the town based on their being in. So they're just going to have to underspend, you know, hopefully that because the tipping fees are based, basically in my rough math, I believe that the tipping fees are about 56 points, something percent of what the fee, you know, what they collect for revenue. So hopefully, since they're going to go somewhere else, they'll be less trash coming in. So yes, the revenue is down, but the expenses will be down and the manager at the facility is just going to have to keep in mind that she's going to be collecting, you know, six grand. She's collecting, all right. Yeah. Yeah, it's a bummer for sure. And of course, because that budget is actually adopted in October, which is right when we're kind of starting ours. No, you had no idea. You're so far out from town meeting that it really caught us all off guard. You know, the likelihood is that it will negatively affect their budget this year. Heck yeah. So the class one liquor license. So, you know, typically these liquor licenses, Jean, are like we had talked about when we were talking with Owen earlier, or I'm sorry, it was Jesse, that. You know, usually the indoor ones for the most part are, you know, they're the governed by Vermont liquor board. And we we approve them and it goes to the liquor board. Yes, because you're the local commissioners. So local liquor commissioners, you can, if you want to disapprove a license for some reason, you can. You have, you know, and you have a little, you have some authority there. But yes, in the end, once you approve it, it becomes it goes to liquor control. They obviously usually approve it. But if there's any issues with it, with the liquor license, that certainly falls under their jurisdiction. So usually these go through relatively easily, unless there's some sort of major issue, you know, with the establishment at hand, or, you know, they're standing with the town or something like that. The only one that we had a lot of conversation on was when we had an outside permit through Babe's Bar there. So that, you know, at that time, it kind of, you know, the town will interject more things than to. Yeah, I remember that conversation. Yeah. So, but usually inside, you know, anything that's kind of inside is, you know, they have the, you know, the liquor commission that they have to make happy. So. Right. Okay. And so this one, so I just need a motion to accept the renewal of the class one liquor license for cockatoo gold. Second, Dave. Oh, we got a motion from Dave, second, or I'm sorry. Did someone else motion, make a motion? So Dave motion that we get a second. Second, Linley. Okay, got it. All in favor. All right. And then next we had a policy regarding road postings. So we had been talking about posting some roads. We've been talking about this for a while. This was something Moe had mentioned before. So obviously you get this letter from the state every year. We just got 60 of the road postings. I had told Alan that, you know, you were going to want some of the fourth class roads posted thing about posting is you have to do both ends. So. Yeah. And I know our fourth class road committee had made the recommendation about posting roads to help with the condition of them. How does, I think I know the answer to this, but how does posting these roads affect agriculture transportation? They are exempt. They're municipal firefighting construction, machinery, agriculture vehicles. I did speak with Derek Wright today and asked him about the milk truck. And he said that the milk truck comes out about noon, but he can't affect that delivery because of just, you know, there's other farms and to make it more effective, but he does have grain and fuel and other things. And he said they certainly try to, you know, come earlier in the morning, but and obviously the right farms been out there for many, many years, but nope. They're exempt. Logging. Logging, I would have to, I don't think they are, but we could, I can look for sure under the agriculture services. It didn't say logging. So I don't, as I know a lot of times they do winter, we'll haul in the winter because of that. So they would have to get an overweight permit. And then sometimes what happens is even though people get overweight permits, they'll make a phone call to the town officer to the road foreman Jean and say, hey, I've got this oversized load and Alan will look at the weather and say, hey, look, it's going to be cold. Do it on X day, but try to get here before, you know, 10 a.m. or whatever, while the road still held together. So. And they're posted on each end. What about intersections? They're supposed to be posted on each end. That's the rule. Okay. So again, yeah. So this, so the seasonal limitations that you have here, November 15th of December 31st and January 1st of May 15th, is that consistent with what other towns are doing or? I assume so. And when I looked at Paulette, that's exactly what they're doing. If you look at the letter from the office of the secretary for VTrans, that's exactly what they say too. That's the same town frame it town. Excuse me, timeframe, sorry. And, but yeah, I looked at, I think it was Paulette and they had the same timeframe as well. I mean, the only reason why I bring that up is like, you know, I often see, you know, being in the business and, you know, I often see that, you know, towns, poster roads, you know, end of March through, you know, mid May or end of May due to the spring thought, but doesn't always mean that, you know, like usually in the fall, a lot of it's a good time of year in the fall to do, you know, loggers getting into woods and stuff because they have a minimal impact at that time because the, you know, the roads are frozen and, you know, so I just, I guess the question I had was, you know, why would we have to post the roads in the middle of winter when they're frozen, you know, or, you know, or should this really just be a true mud season talking, you know, maybe March 15th or May 15th or something like that. I don't think that those dates are cut in stone. I think there are recommendations. I mean, I've been in this town for 60 years and I don't think we've ever posted in January. Yep. Well, I guess that was like- They don't now, now through May. But I mean, unless I'm reading it wrong, I mean, the way I read this is that- Yeah, nope. I think there's a couple of reasons I think is maybe that there, you know, could be that the state's trying to have a little more, give you a little more authority over, you want people to file overweight permits. And even in November, I mean, you know that we could have had, you know, for the fall depending on the road, but also just give you a heads up. It doesn't mean you're not going to, they're going to have to get an overweight permit, which is $10, $5 for individuals and $10 for a fleet, you know? So I think the other thing too, is it gives you a little bit of accountability to someone if somebody comes in and really tears up the road. So- Because we know how far, you know, we know how far $10 gets us. I know, that's, that's set by state statute. So I think it just gives you a little flexibility. Certainly too, if you have log trucks coming in in the fall, you know, so they have to get an overweight permit and you know they're around, that's not always the end of the world. But I'm happy to change the date that you would like. Well, I guess I'm just, you know, it's like the dates you have here are kind of locking us in that, well, that doesn't mean they can't do that. It just means they have to have an overweight permit. Yep. It says excess weight permanency who precede posted road mud season weight limits. But like I said, for the most part, people when they're doing something big, they call and call the town office and talk to or call the garage doctor, Allen or whoever's up there. Well, I think to what Jean was just saying, if you have, if I'm a truck driver and I have an overweight permit for my truck, during these, during this calendar portion of the year, I cannot be on those roads. Right. Even if I have a weight. And I think that was what Jean was saying. Yeah, I don't want to tell our loggers that they can't go take care of the logging in the public property that we just talked, that you talked about last month. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that, so we could have changed it. I just gave you the standard state language because it says excess weight permits do not supersede. Like I said, most people usually call and Allen will work out a timeframe that works for them. But what would you rather see? Say, cause you had an early spring, you want to see like February 15th to May 15th or? Ready. Yeah, I think that makes more sense. I mean. Yeah, cause plain reading says otherwise they wouldn't be able to log. You know, I think, you know, the true meaning of this is, you know, that we don't want to have damage to our roads during the thought season, right? Yeah. And I would say a majority of the time thought which we're seeing this week takes, you know, well, sometimes it happens in January too, but you know, typically it's mid March through the end of May, you know. Yeah, you could also, we could say, whereas as excess weight permits, we could say, whereas they may not supersede or say do not supersede, you know, without permission of the road foreman. I mean, you could put the language in there to allow it to happen and give you a little control. But so what's your time? You would like me to change this too. I don't know what he... You want to do February 15th, Dave, or you think that's too early in the year? I think that, I mean, it might, I think it's a little early. I think March 1st. March 1st to May 15th? Yep, I think that's a good average time in this town. Okay. So what about this statement that excess weight permits do not supersede? We could take that out and... I think you can give it to yourself. No, we want to leave that in for that timeframe. Never you mind, forget it. You do want to leave it in for that timeframe for March. Right. Okay, forget it. And I think anybody who's studying business in this town knows that they have to, if they've talked to either right now, either you or Alan, you can work out something either yes or no. I mean, like... Yeah, depending on the situation. Right, yeah. Well, what I can do is you can adopt the, the amended, I can make the changes or we can... But you may want to just that note there, excess weight permits do not supersede posted road mud season weight limits, or as authorized by the town manager or the road foreman or something. I want to leave the statement in there, especially if we're going to change it to March 1st. So we're going to say March 1st to May 15th. And then, yeah, I could just put excess weight limits, not supersede posted road mud season weight limits. And then... Doug's done a lot of work for us. Doug, what's your thoughts on the time of year when the roads are at its most critical there in the spring? It would be, I would remind like around February, late February into April. Because that's, because as you've seen, whether already it does start pretty good, you put a heavy truck on some of those roads, it's going to, they break in portions, the whole road don't go at one time. And the only thing is they have been calling for permission to get on the roads before they, you know, before they do get on it before they throw out. And the road foreman has always tell them what time to come in. But only thing with this that is, if they violate that, something needs to be done because otherwise they're going to run it. They will be on that road same time without permission at all. But somewhere down the line, they have to be, I think we need to find some way of finding them to make sure that they stay within that portion. Yeah, that's... It says operation of a vehicle in excess of the posted weight limit of a town highway is a statutory traffic violation for which the operator may be issued a state traffic ticket from a law enforcement officer. And the town may also sue the operator for the cost of repairing the road. Yes. So is February, so you think February 15th is too early? No, I think February 15th is good and just stretch it a little bit longer and into maybe end of mid-April, somewhere in there. Okay, maybe February 15th to like, well, April 30th, maybe, because you always, we always get snow in April, at least once, right, so. Yeah, well, okay, well, yeah, yes. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'll tell you, I was slip sliding around last month of going up that hill on Main Street. Oh, yeah. A friendly bridge to Maine. It was pretty muddy and pretty bad. So I would go with an earlier date. Okay, so we have February 15th to April 30th. That sounds good. I like it. All right, Doug, I like it, he's decisive. Okay, and we're gonna leave in the comment about excess weight permits. Do not supersede because, and I'll make a little asterisk. Basically someone can call the road foreman. That's good. So I'll make a note to call the road foreman for permission, okay. So since Allen needs to get these things posted, do you wanna just approve it with the amended dates? Yeah, we can. So I just entertain a motion to approve the policy regarding road postings as amended. Oh, moved. So moved by Paul. Second by Linley. All in favor? Aye. Right. Okay. Thank you. See how fast we found common ground on that. Some boards that probably would have taken a couple of months with the work there. Doug brought us all together. That was really a good one. Whoo! I think she did that intentionally. Slipped those dates by us. She's pretty clever, get a watcher. That's it. We got John, her eyes on you now. What else did she slide in here? I don't know. Fundraising policy. So this is on our ever-ending quest to update policies. And as you can see, when the last one this was done was February 22nd, 1999. So this is one of the older ones we're trying to catch up. So I gave you two things. I gave you the copy where I, you can see exactly where I made the changes and then I copied the clean copy. So I thought that would be helpful to you. And I also corrected my spelling error at the top, which was subdivision. Division? She got ya. I know, Paul would have found it. Or Jean, Jean's quick, he catches these things. So anyway, so you can see the changes that I made. Like I said, we have a list of policies and we also have committees fundraising and things like that. And now it's the season that they're gonna start fundraising, so hence I saw the 1999. More than one reason to put it to the forefront. Great. But he has any changes, questions? This kind of goes into the rec committee and talking about fundraising events and those types of activities. Is that the part of this policy that we need to be right on top of those fundraising activities? Well, I think it goes along with the grant writing policy that I wrote three years ago. You should know what's going on with people. What are you gonna do with the money? You drive by and all of a sudden, a coin drop should not be a surprise to you. Or all of a sudden someone's having a, somebody's doing a silent auction, somebody, we have a lot of people raising grant, doing grant writing. We also have people doing fundraiser. So for me, you need to know what they are because it needs to go within what you believe the parameters of that committee are for. And maybe you also have the right to know what's going on in the town. So like I said, this was written in 99. I also think it's good, like I said, I think that they should have to get prior approval from the select board. Maybe you're not happy. Maybe I'll tell you another town they did, they were gonna do a calendar that some people felt was inappropriate. And there was a big discussion about that, let me tell you. So I think it's important that you have a handle on what's going on in town for fundraising. It allows you to speak to everybody and let people know what's going on, but it also gives you the say, yes, you can do that. And maybe you also wanna know what they're gonna do with the money. So like I said, I just looked through the list of policies that we're trying to kick out at least one policy every meeting. So this one was one of the older ones. Yeah, I didn't have any real comments on it after reading it. And I do appreciate that, especially with policies and things, it's always nice to see what exactly the change is, rather than try to figure out what the change was. So that was helpful to follow through with. There's also, we are not a 501C3 and people get confused about that. So we have political subdivision by different IRS regulation, but people, if you're gonna make a contribution, it's only deductible if it's used exclusively for public purposes. And that's a question we actually get a lot. We assume that because we're a town that we're not 501C3, we're not. Great. So, Teresa, last item on the list about the board should not engage in fundraising activities. So all the funds that are collected, for example, in the coin collection that the rec committee wants to do are payable to the town treasurer. All those funds have to be payable to the town treasurer as opposed to a different account of some kind. Well, it could go. I mean, anything that's, you know, if they're gonna put it in their capital account, it obviously is paid to the town treasurer because it, you know, basically anything due to the town, it comes to the town of Bethel. So even any of the capital funds are all in your names. But private groups that have coin drops, for example, that this would not apply. Right. Yep. Exactly, yeah, because I actually, you're gonna have one from the Bethel Youth Sports and they have, you know, they wanted to do one in March and I told the lady, yeah, you gotta pick a better date. I don't think the select boards, you know, if we get a snow storm, you can't be out on the road. So, but that would go to them here, right? Because they are not, they're not affiliated with the town. Sorry, the girls are getting restless. They also running in circles like Brady? Abby's not running fast. She had quite a bit of running earlier at basketball. So she's kind of beat. They're ready for bedtime. Motion to accept the fundraising policy. Second by Dave, it looks like. So we have a motion by Paul. Was there a second? Dave. Dave. Okay, Paul in favor? Aye. So another policy has been brought up into the 2000s. So I just want to say before we attach this, the social media policy draft number two, we do not need to go through this thing tonight. I sent it to you and I think I made a note in my town manager's report that, because the thing is huge, obviously. It's a little bit, I think it's a page thinner than it was last time. So any feedback you have, you could send me, Paul sent me an email about it, or you can just mark up this, your copy and give it to me. I had taken all the, I've got feedback from a bunch of people last time and I've sent the same draft to the same people who helped me with amendments for the first time. Lisa was one, so I appreciate that. So I try to take everybody's feedback into consideration to try to make it more specific and in certain areas and do some clarification. So again, I don't need to, you don't have to go through all 10 pages tonight, but if you could, in another week or so, week or two, give me your feedback, it would be super. Nellie's got her hand up. I do. So I have two things that I think are worth discussing as a group and then I'll send the rest of my comments. Okay, excellent. Is it okay for me to dive in? So first on the first page, so the second to last paragraph is the policy applies to the three select board approved platforms, Facebook, from Porch Forum and the official town website. And this is a two-fold thing. So one is is there a reason Instagram is not included and or do we know if any groups use Instagram? Because I know that it is sort of on par at this point with Facebook and if not maybe even sort of surpassing Facebook for usage. And so just kind of getting ahead of adding that later. Do we want to consider having that now? So that's point one, which we can discuss. And the other of that is and I can't remember if my note is specifically from this or if it's from a separate section as well, but there was a part because of just the town website, does that prevent the EIC from having a website which I think we sort of started approving them for and sort of where did we land on that discussion that were we saying, no, they can't have their own website so just kind of wanting to go back to that conversation. And then I have a second one but I think we should discuss this first. All right, so Instagram, if anybody has an Instagram account, I am completely unaware of it. This was actually a suggestion that I received from more than one person who went through the first draft which was I think the select board needs to limit to Facebook. I say from Port Form even though you know we don't have control of that platform and websites and actually I thought about equity and inclusion after. So that's a good amendment to add in it because you did approve it. You did say three of you said they could move forward with a website. So the reason that there's no other form of social media in here is because that was a suggestion as I said for more than one person. You know, I mean obviously their policies they could be amended. If the times change and all of a sudden Instagram, it's just hard to keep track of everything and all the rules. So that's how it went in there but I'm actually gonna write down equity and inclusion because I kind of on my, I don't know, fourth read through I realized that I thought I was missing. And that. Related to that, I have a question about being that specific in the policy or whether the policy should just simply talk about approved platforms. And then as time and need evolved, an enabling motion would be to approve the following pro platforms to be subject to the policy rather than having to go back and amend the policy every time somebody wants to consider right now. The other place where that comes up is in the listing, there's a, the listing of committees with their Facebook pages. Again, is that appropriate for the policy or is that more appropriate as the policy governs all of them wherever they are? But at some point we're gonna have to say these are the things that the policy covers. Well, this originally started with just a slightly larger version from Vermont League of Cities and Towns. And that actually is their suggestion that you list those specific ones in there. We don't have to. But again, it was from people who went through the first draft and were on draft number two. Their feeling was because the policy is so huge, because social media is such a big deal now and we don't have the staff, we readily admit we don't have the staff to monitor everybody's posting. Hence why we said in this, you either have to have your department head or your committee approve the postings. Some people felt like, since this is the first time we're stepping in with these waters and people start tight. And, but you know what? I don't know. We certainly will, we can... I'm not arguing we shouldn't say that only approved platforms. I think that's a good policy. But to then go the next step and specify in the overall generic policy itself, these are the specific ones that are approved. I would prefer, but that's my own understanding of constitution's bylaws, et cetera, et cetera, that they should be more general and then more specific, the specificity should come where there is less. It's just a, it's a... I get what you're saying. And you know what? Just cross my mind is something that we do with like the water department. When we approve, when you guys approve those ordinances, we, you often say, hey, that, you know, we approve the schedule, whatever, right? Exhibit B is the rates. We could do that here if it's gonna make everybody feel more comfortable or we could say in the beginning, just like you say, only approved platforms. And then at some point we could say C exhibit A and an exhibit A could list the current ones. And then the only thing you'd be updating is exhibit A. So there's kind of a meet options for people if we, you know, to make everybody more comfortable. It's gonna be my suggestion because in section four you state, the select board and town manager will be responsible for maintaining a list of all social media platforms and use the names of all administrators. So that could be exhibit A and you just reference it there and then you reference it again in the limited public forums of like these people. I do think Dean's point is like, you're gonna have to update that and to have to update the full policy as opposed to, you know, a section. Yeah, and I think too. And we all know, Trice doesn't use social, I don't use Facebook. So I had to have Kelly, Kelly and I are trying to figure out the other day because there was already a Facebook page but then your colleague got there. So somehow they attached her name to it and her personal Facebook page. And then, so we had to go through this whole exercise the other day of figuring out how to create of like a Bethel Vermont as a person so that we could have administrative power alone. We don't have people to do this, but I like those ideas. I can do that. And you said you had something else, Linley? Yeah, and it was a little bit more of a clarification. So my recollection from our last conversation was each committee would have somebody who was designated as their, yeah, thank you. But then, and I did see that language in there but then I guess I wanted clarification on section five on page three, the municipal social media moderator. I had been under the impression when we had our first round of this was that you were feeling like we didn't have the resources, the human resources to have a singular person who went through all the posts or kind of approved them beforehand. But this read to me like that's exactly what that was. And I just wanted to know I was misunderstanding one side or another or the whole thing. Well, I think that the hope, and after you read these for a while or you rewrite, it gets a little tricky. I think that the whole, I thought was, yes, I still agree, we don't have the people to do it. I thought you were going to pick, like you were going to appoint someone. Maybe it's the chair of that committee or, you know, if say, oh, God, no. I don't know, I don't know. Whoever, I try and remember who has one. I think, okay, the conservation commission. Maybe, you know, you tell the conservation commission, they have to pick every new one of somebody. So maybe I need to fix the language. Yeah, I think because the way it read to me was like, there'll be one moderator of the whole system and every designated administrator from the committee reports to the moderator and the moderator approves a post as opposed to what I heard you just saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you were just saying each committee would have a moderator that's responsible for their committee's post, not a singular town employee. But here's the problem with that. That's what I think. I think that because we don't have the staff time that we make each committee, you want a website, you want a this or that, then you get approval, but you are responsible for it. But that's not the way all the feedback that I received went. Some of the feedback that I received was, yeah, no, we think that somebody from the town should do it. My thought was if we, and it may not, so it's hard when you're combining several people's thoughts here. If you have the committee has to approve every post, then the social media moderator for that committee is can't post anything without the full committee approval. So maybe when you just make your notes, Lindley, I can catch up. By the time I combined, I received comments from a bunch of people, you're trying to include them all, but sort them all out. So what my opinion was, some of it was the other people's thoughts on it because they're afraid by giving away all your authority to committees, then the town who's liable loses control. So we gotta find a happy medium. And I think, piggybacking on what Lindley said, I guess the way I had to interpret how the board wanted to do it was, I'll just throw out an example. Let's say if Lenny is going to be in charge of the web page for his committee, that you, so the town manager would sit down with Lenny and give him the policy and procedures for operating the web page successfully. And then it would be up to Lenny to take that initiative of being the overall administrator for his page and be responsible for everything that goes on that page. And then if something did happen, if there was a complaint or whatever it might be, that would come to you, Therese, and then you would just go and talk to that one individual that's in charge to make that work. I guess that's kind of the way I had saw it being drawn up. But I mean, again, I don't see, I mean, we just don't have enough resources at the office to be, you know, checking up on all this. But so let's clear the select board. I didn't hear from every member. So not everybody gave feedback. We didn't have a big like entire hour long discussion about this policy, but a couple of people did do go through. And, but there was some concern. And I think Paul may, maybe. Yeah, I want to speak on that when we get to it. Kind of say. Oh, okay. I think we're jumping ahead a little bit. I think I still have a lot of reservations about having allowing committees to have websites. I think websites are a different animal than Facebook, front parts form, et cetera. At the last meeting, we did tell the equity committee to proceed with, you know, doing some basic construction of a website, but we didn't say, we said pending, you know, the completion of this policy. And I, I'm still not thinking that websites are should fall. It should be allowed at this point. I don't, I think it needs a lot more structure. It's a lot less controllable. And again, I'll just go back to liability, town liability for things that may occur on websites that I think don't necessarily happen the same and more controllable on Facebook and other social media platforms. So I just want to throw that out there. I'm, I don't think we're at that point yet. So you don't, just out of curiosity, cause since websites are pretty static or can be, I actually, Facebook scares the bejeepers out of me, whereas a website for me is a little more static so that they, maybe you actually as a slideboard have or the committee has more control over it because they're not really getting any feedback from anybody, but Facebook scares me. But I just want to be clear, but that I have- You're using control commenting on Facebook, right? I know, it's awful. I know we turned it up really high. So basically if anybody wants, you can't shut it off, but you can turn the setting so high that if somebody wants to post a comment on your Facebook, it comes like, in our case, it goes to Kelly first so she has to read it so she can approve it or not. So basically she just doesn't approve it. But it's a, that's definitely a pain. But I mean, whatever you guys decide, I can do whatever you want, but you're right. I thought we were leaning towards- That is what you said, Paul, is you did tell them pending the social media. So thank you for clarifying that, you're right. And I thought the majority of the board at that time was leaning towards having information flowing one direction only. So there wouldn't be any feedback coming back. So even if you were a Facebook or a webpage, it would be operated very similar where certain content would be on that page. We talked about some examples and I think one thing, maybe we could spell out what some of that content might be structured wise a little better of, like we talked about who the board members are and when your meetings are and you can put your next agenda on there or your meeting minutes or what are your projects you're working on or maybe your schedule, that kind of stuff. Well, I have a question or a suggestion possibly because this policy is such a bear. Frankly, I wonder if maybe we just could get, Paul obviously has read through it more than once and answered some questions for me and Lindley's looking at it. Lindley said she'd ask Lylee to read it. I wonder if we should just basically get a couple select board members together to help me go around it again. Either way, it's otherwise, I think the next time we put it on the agenda we're gonna have just like an entire hour to focus just on this policy whereas maybe you can hamper out a little more specificity between a couple of board members with myself. I don't know, kind of looks like a little subcommittee. I mean, I don't carry, it's just a suggestion or a thought because it is so big or we could just set a meeting for it and this is the only topic on the agenda or I just set aside, we do another agenda and there's no appointments and we just try to focus on this thing. It's definitely not an easy policy just right. I mean, it's with some of the current events that are going on and just we spelled it out in there or you did that the ever evolving communications that are happening out there. These platforms are always being created and taken down and changed and it's challenging, there's no doubt about it. And the town takes on the liability for the content that's out there, right? So whatever that might be. Yeah, maybe everybody just takes a couple of weeks and gives me their feedback again and I give you kickback out draft three to the full board. I have it out to let's see DTRI went through it last time of the fine tooth comb, which was super helpful. And I have feedback from several other people that read it, Lisa, Kelly, Kim, DTRI, you guys had it. I sent it to the Equity and Inclusion Committee. I didn't hear anything back, but I sent it to them. So maybe we just try with this exhibit. So we kind of that and I need to obviously tighten up for the whole section five. So I'll go through that again and, but I think it's a big animal. And you see the larger municipalities have, maybe not a full-time position, but somebody that their job description is part of media and website. And I mean, obviously we can't afford that position in our little town, but somehow I think that we can construct it in a way that we can keep the ownership, you know, there's responsibility for that lays on somebody's plate and that the town office doesn't have to micromanage it every, you know, every day. Well, the idea that we got what I took it from when you remember Nicole Sear was here from the energy committee. What I thought he was the one who said, sometimes they have meetings just to approve their posts. So I really loved that idea. So the entire committee is looking at it before it goes out there. So that's fine. You know, we don't have to pass this tomorrow. You know, we're working on it and I feel like we're getting closer. So, but I appreciate all the comments and the questions, but if, and if you can put them in writing, it helps me because then I put Lindley's next to Paul's or jeans or de-trees and I can, I'm trying to pull to make sure either clarify the questions or take everybody's suggestions and put them in here. So. And, you know, in the times that we live in right now, I mean, we're in a rural town, COVID time. So you're not really out meeting everybody all the time. And, you know, how do we get the information out to people? I guess is what these committees are really at the end of the day, you know, how do we get the information out to people that, you know, might need it? You know, social media just so happens to be the hot spot of communication. So. Yeah. Do we want to, I mean, for anybody on the board, do we want to have a, one or two board members work together and iron out some of these details or do we want to just, you know, we might get more out of it if we had two people kind of work on it rather than five of us through comments to Trees. And then, you know, I don't know. I mean, just run out there. I know we all have an abundance of free time. So. Well, the other thing too is if everybody reads it and gives me their feedback, maybe in certain sections where there's dissenting viewpoints, I could just put in there, here's option A, here's option B, you know, so that that way you can be okay, you know, Chris thinks this, Lindley thinks this and Dave thinks this. So what's your common ground here? So maybe, maybe just by me putting a little more detail in there of opposing issues might or not opposing issues, opposing thoughts might make it easier than everybody can kind of talk about, oh, I see why they think that. And then when you read over the third draft, you might come to some consensus or compromise. That makes much more sense. Okay, let's do that then. I'm happy to do that. And then you can see in the secret to compromise, nobody's happy. Is there any guidance from the town office, you know, between you and Kelly and, you know, any guidance that you can give on it saying, you know, we might have this amount of time that we could help out do something, but we can't do, you know, all of that, you know. Frankly, we have our own hands full. We have our hands full maintaining the website, the Facebook page, and then posting specific things out on front porch form, because like I said, you can't shut off comments. So Kelly's, you know, getting emails or notifications from Facebook that somebody wants to post something and you know, that way we don't, because we have had some nasty things. I'm sure it surprises you posted on our website or our Facebook page. I mean, we took us a minute to find or hear about. So I wouldn't mind every time, if somebody wants to do this, I'm happy to go to every committee meeting if I have to or each one of us, or all of us can split them up and say, okay, here's the rules. You guys pick somebody and then I can happy to sit down and with them and go through the policy with them. I still wanna come up with, once we're done, a little checklist so that everybody has the same verbiage on their Facebook page or website or whatever. And it's in this policy, but I'd like to flush it out into a little checklist for everybody. I feel like because the thing is, you know, 10 pages long, that might make it a little bit more user-friendly. I think definitely having like a cheat sheet for parties when they're making the posts of like, oh, we can't say that or we can. Yeah. Just to play devil's advocate to Paul's earlier comment about the liability piece. I really think that a website puts the town at less of a risk than Facebook. I think the comments that Teresa was referring to are exactly what that liability with Facebook, I think is higher than with a website. And it's just, you know, some of it is what you're comfortable with or not comfortable with, but I think when we're looking at it from the liability point of view, because a website is so static and you can't comment, public can't comment directly on it, it actually makes it a little safer in a way. So just a thought I wanted to throw in there. So we'll just collect everybody's opinion. So just either scan it to me, drop it off, send me an email, whatever's easier, or if you just wanna mark up your copy, you can certainly drop it off when you're coming in to sign everything or just, I'm not there, just drop it in the slot in the door, I don't care, I'll get it. And then I can compile everything, so. And there's a new kid on the block. There are all kinds of corporations and businesses and so on and so forth who are moving away from their own website to social media as their primary way of communicating both ways with the public. And I just think that it's part of modern life and we as a town need to be open to listening and receiving comments as much as we are about posting from ourselves. Now, does that mean we throw open the doors and let anybody put on the public bulletin board whatever they want? I don't think so. Well, I don't believe that, but I do think we need to figure out how to be involved to be involved with the community where the community is already engaged in a meaningful, real, responsible way that is protecting the town, but not building such a fortress around us that people can't get into it. And at the end of the day, it might require some staff designation in terms of receiving community commentary. However, that comes to us and communicating. Well, enough said at this point, somewhere there needs to be a balance between concern for liability and building such a, well, surrounding the capital with the National Guard so that the public can't even get in. That's not what we want either. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good point. I'm gonna have to read a little bit more about too about the open meeting a lot because that's in the end what there's this whole thing about us engaging outside of a public meeting. So I'll have to read a little bit more about the open meeting law in terms of it's definitely addressed in the policy and I'll have to go back to VLCT's first draft and do a little more reading too about that. So no, it'd be right, Jean. I mean, unfortunately for us, if we were gonna add staff time or people, that's definitely, that's not our first priority, but times change and maybe it becomes, if we ever have to add a position to the town, maybe some of it is social media, not just my planning, zoning and forcing person that I want. So we'll see. I mean, you definitely make a good point, Jean. Yeah, I just don't wanna close the door entirely. I mean, if it is necessary, then we need to figure out a way to make it happen rather than whatever. I, yeah, that's my, the least amount that we'll really do, but it's gotta be able to do the job. Absolutely, I can understand. So we'll take a look at it, we'll see what we can get everybody reads it and gives me some feedback and we'll compile it and see where we end up. Okay, we have town managers report. I think we went over most of it. Yeah, I think so. Just a reminder that anybody interested in attending the 2021 Virtual Select Board Institute, you can sign up on VLCT's website. We are at the VLCT passive insurance member, so we'll be billed, but it's at a reduced rate. So that's always good deal. So my report just told you about that. I have the architectural services. I have taking appointments right now to have the walkthrough on Wednesday. So I'm getting that done. So, so far I have, I think I have three or four architectural firms coming on Wednesday at different times to go through the town garage. So that's good news. We received grants in aid and I think that's about all the town report. Please quick question on the RFP for the town garage. I didn't see anything in there about exterior work. Is it buried in there some way that I didn't see it? Like lighting and road work and things that the DRB is going to be looking at. I think it'll have to go to the DRB at some point, won't it? Road work? What did you say, road work? I'm sorry. Yeah, like surrounding access points, exterior lighting, you know, it's kind of things that the DRB will look at with site, construction site approval. Yeah, so do I, I don't even know if it has to go to the DRB, frankly. I'll have to take a look, but none of that's really changing since we're not, I mean, yes, we're expanding the footprint, but the access remains the same. And I don't, you know, the only lighting that I think will change is going to be inside, obviously just to make it more energy efficient. The access is still the same where they're going to enter and everything. So, but as you thought about, I'll double check my, I just made a note about that, stop to go to the DRB. Okay. But it doesn't change. The S of size is going to increase a little bit, but no height or anything like that and no, no new lighting or anything. So, but thank you for that good reminder to me. I like to think we're exempt from all those things, Paul. We got an in with the permit lady. Now, you know, I like to think so, but. Did anything else come out of the Sugar Hill property? Remember last we talked that there was some excess revenue generated from that purchase that may have to go back. Yeah, yeah, it's still going to have to go back. I have not, since I hadn't had the closing yet, I haven't sat down and calculated all the numbers yet, but now that I've heard from their attorney, I'm going to have to go back through. I did speak to the lawyers and they sent me all their bills and, but yeah, I'm still going to be cutting the check to somebody. But we do get to keep obviously there was a whole list from the lawyer that we could keep. So, okay. No, I just saw that on there. Okay. Yeah, the select board minutes from the 22nd of February. So I just, since we did the informational meeting, you can see I just basically used the agenda and went through and added the minutes there. And then not as nice as Lisa does. A couple of times I forgot I was taking the minutes. I had to go back and look at my notes. Did anyone have any amendments to the meeting minutes or are we good to approve as written? Motion to approve or second, whatever. Motion, Paul, second Dave. Okay, all in favor? Aye. All right. Other communications. There was a fourth class road committee that was in there. We had some conservation committee and the solid waste board meeting minutes were in there and planning commission. Anybody have any comments in regards to any of those? Last but not least, Teresa's dream list I'd written down. Yeah, right. So I have a couple of these, but one of them is Dave Eddie. Actually, Dave, I didn't get your email until just a little while ago. So I responded to you, but Dave had sent an email about trying to keep meetings as a bad meeting to choose. Probably when you saw the agenda, you went and searching for the article about, and I think the synopsis of the article or the points were basically after about an hour, you lose about 50% participation in a meeting. So I don't shoot to make them super long and for sure. And I knew this one was gonna be longer because of all the appointments and some stuff we had to take care of that cropped up at the last minute. So you're trying to say you want us done by 7 p.m.? No, no, but three, four hours is a little much. It is. I lean more towards two. Okay. We've done pretty well with that, just obviously the budget informational meetings, we didn't really have as much control over. And then this one, I, you know, I think a lot of it was just motions, but then obviously we're gonna, we kind of stop and explain things as we go. But so I knew this one was gonna be a big one. So I will do better. I'm not really complaining to you. I just want to put it out there for everybody to think about, you know, that it's more, we're definitely be more effective. We stay on task. All right. And move along as that, you know, once we cover something, move on. Okay. So I just have one, so I have two quick things here then. One is you knew that I, we'd sold the, the, oh God, now I'm drawing. Ventrax. Thank you. Ventrax and had put that money, sold it for $14,250. We knew we were gonna buy a zero turn with it. So I said that money aside. So I, and so that's what I'm gonna be doing is moving forward with purchasing. And it's a John Deere. And we're gonna get it locally. It used it from in Royalton and now it's in the drive-in turf. And we got a municipal discount and it's gonna be the zero turn a bag or it'll go on the trailer we have and all that, which was our goal all along was to sell the Ventrax and get another mower. So I have a price of 12,914.87. So that still leaves us some money left over to go towards the sweeper that we know we need to buy because since the Ventrax was gone. So, you know, John Deere's or John Deere's, I can call 12 different people but I'm gonna get the same price because they're all- Oh, I don't mind the people with names. So that's my plan for the mower. So I, because it's over, because of the purchasing policy, I need select board approval to purchase it because it's over $5,000. So that's that item. Was there a decision made to purchase John Deere specifically because there is an equipment thing? Who is it up on Camp Brook? Oh yeah, Farron or somebody. Honestly, we were just trying to look for something that we felt that would need to do and we've had a bad habit in the past of purchasing equipment that wasn't right for the job or just- No, I understand that, I'm not saying, yeah. We'd made no decision about exactly what we were gonna purchase. I had, you know, Richard, I had Richard and Tim and I were talking about it and there just happened to be a dealer in Royalton. So we figured this would be, give us something that, you know, is a good quality and would like- I agree that John Deere's great quality. I just don't know. Yeah, that's all. Yeah. So no, there was no decision made about what type. We just went looking and kind of had an idea of Moer Deck, this and that and that's where we ended up. So do you have, do you know what the dimensions on, like how big this thing is or? I have the information right here. It is, let's see, a 60-inch deck with a side discharge Moer Deck. And it has a light, beacon light. It has a trash receptacle kit, which is $147, but which is nice. So if there's garbage, you have a place to put it. We have, it has the, call that thing, let me call it a bagger, but more than a bagger, it's a little bit nicer. Okay, it's a new dump-from-seat material collection system. So it gives you a more efficient way for dealing with collecting grass clippings. So I have the information on that. What else is in the price? You know, a seat with armrest, that's it. The beacon light, the trash receptacle kit. So the base Moer is $9,329. What it makes me laugh is they charge you $500 with this first setup, then they charge you another $65 for the environmental crate, plus another $200 for setup. And then we did get a, the total for the machine was $15,787.66. And we did get a discount of over $2,800. My only question is 60 inch, what was the mowing deck on the bentracks? I don't know. My question is five foot Moer deck and Paul does a lot of mowing. That's a big deck. So if you don't have all perfectly flat land, you're going to be damaging the mower or the ground. Yeah, because what we have for mowing is obviously now in the fire station, we have the rec center, we have the Pevine Park, trying to think of his whole list of mowing. So all the parks and stuff. So the thought was, as we had discussed prior when we were selling the bentracks was we were also looking for something that would gain us obviously a little time, which would be nice because with a larger mower deck, he can obviously raise it up, but he can get things faster, which would be nice. So we wouldn't be spending eight days a week mowing. We'd be able to do some other stuff too. So the problem with the zero turn of that size deck is if you have any kind of side hill type mowing, when you get to the bottom of the hill where it joins, you end up with uneven cuts. And especially on side hills, very difficult to deal with the mower unless it's any kind of angle, it's not as effective. That's exactly what I was saying. And getting in around trees and smaller areas, a five foot deck is really, you can't get into those smaller areas like you could with a 50 inch deck. Okay. You're thinking more like a 48 inch deck thing? Well, I mean, I've got a 48 and it gets around fine. I mean, you'd go to a 50 or 52, but... Okay. Well, why don't we do this? So that then I can get some more information and instead of, I didn't get all of this until today. So we'll be able to, I'll put this on our next agenda. Then you will get the information in your packet and you'll have a little more information. You can look at what I'm looking at. And it looks like, Theresa, I mean, just doing a quick little shopping here. At those 48 inch ones, I mean, you can get a good one for like 3,500 bucks for a grand. And John, dear. Yeah. All right. So we will do that. So then we'll just take a look at it and let's see. Maybe we'll end up with a couple of different options or something. And I can hash these questions down with the Jordan and we will put it in your next packet. We still have time before. We still have time. Not gonna be more than any time soon. No, I think there's a back. It's one of those things just like everything else because of COVID there's a little bit of a delay. So that... But if you order it, quick, before my boys go back to pipe, they can put it together for you. There you go. Mechanically. That will save me 500 or 200, depending on what you're putting together. I bet you if you dropped that off in front of Dave's yard, you'd have that thing put together in a week. And Mo and his own lawn now. The other thing is the, I'm not sure what kind of clipping collection you're looking at, but I know most of the ones with the John Deere and you get any kind of wet clippings in there. That thing plugs up so fast. You spend half your time getting off and unplugging it. So unless it has its own motor to move clippings up through, if it just comes off the side chute, very ineffective if it's wet clippings. Okay, good to know. I'm making a note if it comes off side deck. All right, excellent. Thank you. So we'll look at it all and then give you some options in a couple of weeks. The other thing is D-Tree. I would like, I just, I would ask how necessary it is to do the collection. Returning those clippings to the ground is also sound. I know in some areas he has a couple of areas where it just gets really thick and then he ends up having to rake it. So I think that was his, was the whole conversation about it. Not everywhere he has that issue in a couple of places where anybody mows is no matter, seems like where he gets there, it doesn't. But I'll make a note is bagging necessary question. I remember that being a specific part of the discussion. Early on, I think it was maybe when Greg was still here that not having a bagging system was a real issue. One of the initial things that started us looking and then it's been a couldn't tell the ventrack so we didn't do it. That thing. Yeah, so all right, that's fine. We will sort all these things out and then put it on the next agenda, but that's no big deal. We got time. The other thing was D-Tree had given me an AARP opportunity came out, the AARP community challenge grant. And so she, it's a $5,000 is the max. And we don't have to have a match, but it looks better if you have a little something. And we felt within the budget we could come up with the 10%, which is $500. And D-Tree is looking to get a bike rack that would hold eight bikes to put down at the rec field, along with an adaptive swing set, which would be an adaptive swing seat for the swing set, which would be another step towards getting us at a more inclusive rec facility. And also looking at, if we have enough money to get some bench seedings, because right now there's no place for people to sit, whether they're maybe somebody there with their grandkids or no mom with a kid, we don't have as much seating there out near the play structure. So this is a, again, it's a grant to AARP for $5,000. And we were saying to them that we could have some matching funds of $500 that we would take out of the budget, some savings within the park budget and the rec facility budget. Sounds good. I'm sure you'll make it work in the budget somehow. Yeah. And then my question was, normally our meetings are obviously every, you know, the second and fourth Mondays. I am not going to be here for the fourth Monday in April. So I was wondering if we could do back-to-back meetings in April, the 12th and the 19th. Am I allowed to vote against the 19th since it's my birthday? No. You just don't come. No, Linley, no. Make it fast. You just get extra comp time. That's right. I'm second getting extra. You guys got to come up with better birthday presents for me. It's always the same. Hey, we had one on January 11th, which was mine, so. So is that one month? Is it, can we just do them back-to-back? Does anybody have a problem with that? And then we'll go back to our normal schedule in May. Besides Linley, does anybody else have a problem with that? I was, I appreciate it. I'm going to be on vacation and I, could I do a meeting? Yes. Am I on vacation? Yes. Yeah. I'm fine with it. Linley is. I'm good. I'm good. Linley apparently won't be here. Maybe we can make it a short one. That's right. I'm told to. Five minutes. That's my birthday present. There you go. Yep. Before we have to pay Dave overtime here. That's all I'm all done. That's it. All right. Anything else to come to the board to see them? Did I read somewhere about making assignments of select board members to be liaisons to various committees, et cetera. Yeah, it's an idea. And I think I put in a manager's report and we could talk about it at the next meeting if you want. That's fine. I was just, it came up with regard to me and the. Planning commission. Planning commission and Linley and Paul, isn't it to the dump or the transfer station? Yeah. Yeah, her and Dave are going to take on that. Is she and Dave? Okay. Until we find somebody, which reminds me, I need to put that ad in the paper as well. Thank you very much. All right. So I just want to make sure that hits the agenda standpoint. Yeah. And Paul does two rivers. So Paul's in. I'll put it on for next week or two weeks agenda discussion. Okay. I'll make sure I put that on. Thanks, Jean. And as the chair, you get everything else. So one week, it might be deputy health commissioner. Next week it might be. Yeah. For what you asked for. Yeah. I know. Paul, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Christian. Shelter. Yeah. Oh boy. I'm telling you, my, my time's really getting filled. So speaking of that, I'm going to get some kids in the showers and get to bed. So. Hope she'll do a job. Second. Okay. Thank you all. Have a good evening. Good evening. Thank you. Good night, guys.