 Monday, December 4th meeting of the Waterbury Select Board. First item of the agenda is to approve the agenda. Do I have a motion? I have a motion to approve the agenda with two additions. One under consent agenda of first class commercial catering license for farmhouse flowers, 2007 Guptel Road, and also to add executive session before adjournment. Before we adjourn as the last agenda item. After next meeting agenda. Second. OK, we have a motion to approve the agenda with two additions. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right, the agenda is approved as amended. Next item is the consent agenda as amended. We have got four items. Do I hear a motion? I move to approve the consent agenda as amended. Second. Moving seconded, any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right, consent agenda is approved as amended. Next is the public session. Anyone wishing to address anything that's not on the warned agenda, please come forward. And I ask you to restrict your comments to three minutes. And if you can, anything longer than that will put on the agenda for a following meeting. Hi, everybody. This is Tim Fitzgerald up off a sweet road. I did want to add one thing. I saw in a meeting note in October that the town decided to not use rock salt for the upcoming winter. And I guess my commentary would be, I saw it was on a trial basis. And travel has been really difficult for the first couple weeks of winter. And I have significant concerns about not using rock salt on a hill like Loomis Hill when the notes, excuse me, somebody had some. So Tim, this is Tom Lightson, the town manager. Yes. We are using salt, so the town has about 29 miles of roads. That's all right. Don't quote on that. That's off the cuff. We chose about three miles of roads that we're not using salt on. They are predominantly in the old village of Waterbury. So Loomis Hill road places like that, we are using salt. Oh, OK. And this is no negative commentary about the public works department. I know it's been a challenging couple of weeks with snow that is pretty much the consistency of cement. But I just saw the notes in the town, the saltboard notes that said there would be no salt being used. And so I kind of put one and one together and was concerned that we weren't going to be salting town roads like Loomis Hill, Blush Hill, Greg Hill, and I was just concerned about that. But if those are going to be salted, then I am completely good with that. Yeah, those would be salted. Yeah, it's just the flat roads, mostly residential litter being we're using no salt on a trial basis. If I may, Tim, there's an article in the Waterbury roundabout that it's pretty easy to search and it lists all the streets. If you did want to follow up and look at that, you're welcome to. Yeah, that's fantastic. OK, thanks, Tim. A good message that the notes were a little bit unclear from the saltboard meeting. So I just was concerned about that because my wife is an educator at Harwood. So she has mentioned it's been a little bit challenging the last couple of weeks. So that was my only concern. But thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Tim. Kelly. Do you want me to come up? Please. Just introduce yourself for the record. All right. Kelly Hackett from Waterbury Center. I just wanted to speak on two things this evening. The first is just formally inviting you to come to our Harwood bond committee meetings that we have been hosting. We have one tomorrow night in Warren. We had our bond meeting in Waterbury last week. And I was unfortunate that I didn't see any of our slept board people there. So I would love to see some of you make some of those committee meetings. They will be recorded from here on out. We have one in each of the towns. So you'll be able to watch those meetings. There's a lot of great questions that are coming forward. And it's a hefty sell of $92 million. But it's really not that amount. We're trying to get feedback on what you would support within the buckets. The second thing I wanted to speak about is that my term for a school board is up in March. And I will not be running again. So just putting it out there to the Slack board, I know that you folks have expressed an interest in just knowing who's coming forward. I will be submitting a letter to the Waterbury roundabout as well as reaching out to Brookside principals and sharing my letter to try to recruit some Waterbury folks to fill the seat. Thank you. I probably could have made a conflicting meeting for the Waterbury when I hoped to make one of the other ones. So they're in here. We have all the dates of them. December 19th is the one in. Actually, there's one tomorrow night and more in. And then one on the 14th at Crossup Rope and then the 19th at Hortown. So one pretty much every week until mid-January. Thank you for doing those. It's really important. Yeah. Thanks. And thank you for your service. Yeah. Well, thank you. I'll be running the school board. Thank you, Kelly. Alyssa. I have two, I guess, if they should go on public forum, which is one to say, tomorrow polls are open 7 to 7 in this room for folks to vote on the charter. All eligible voters in Waterbury are eligible to vote. And questions to Town Clark. And second, the Planning Commission is having an open house on Thursday for the upcoming zoning rewrite. I'm checking. But I believe 5.30 to 7, also in this room on Thursday for the next phase of the bylaw update. Great. Thank you. Anything else? Anyone up on the Zoom land? I'm doing my best on the desks. I've been writing the names down. No. OK. Next on the agenda is the Waterbury Skate Park Coalition, which has requested a letter of support from the Select Board. Recording in progress. Late better than never. I'll just repeat, the Waterbury Skate Park Coalition has requested a letter of support from the Select Board for their application for a VOREC grant. They came before us, I think, at our last meeting. And we did approve or gave our conceptual consent to their plans for an expanded cement skate park up at Hope Davy. Comments? Alyssa. I spoke about this at the last meeting. And I guess I would defer to Tom and other municipal staff. I also spoke on the phone with Katerina, a rec director. I have not responded to the kind folks in the Skate Park Coalition who email me. But I would say I would like to support this project. I would say both at this point, my understanding is both the Skate Park application and the Towns application, neither of which have been fully completed. They're both due on the 15th. So my proposal would be that we would authorize a letter of support contingent on final review of both applications with relevant staff just to make sure all ducks are in a row. Personally, I want to support the project. I think it makes sense. I just want to make sure we're being responsible to all involved to make sure we have two strong, viable applications moving forward. Do I have a second? Second. All right, discussion. Tom, from your standpoint, would a letter of support from the select point jeopardize the rec department's application for a new rec application? We don't think so. The applications used to be one application for all the grant funds. Now the funds are subdivided into different buckets. So the buckets that we're competing, funding for, are not the same bucket as they are. So I think two organizations from the same town are not going to compete necessarily, as they would have a few years ago. And then from the town's perspective, we're looking at some of the accessibility pass and then repairs to the soccer field at the ice center to cover the town's 25% share. That would otherwise be field work. So we think that can hopefully be done for free in the end. Is that a plug-in? No. There you go. Put it in a couple of double-eyes. Oh, they killed me. No. Okay, thank you. Further discussion? Mike? I assume based upon our discussion last week that we were going to have a contingency that, in terms of what they're going to raise, a certain amount of money by a certain period of time. Alyssa? Well, I would let the state park folks speak for themselves. But my understanding is this grant application is part of their path to attempt to get there to help secure extra funding to close the gap that was identified between what they think that's going to cost and how much they need. So I don't, again, have not reviewed the grant in detail, but I don't know that this grant requires matching funds. Regardless, they've already raised some funding. So I think the goal of this application is to bolster their overall fundraising. But again, I deferred to the project. But there was still a significant gap. There was. Do we have any members of the coalition that would like to speak to this? Yeah. Hi, my name is Lauren Landy. I live in Waterbury. I'm the secretary on the coalition. And Alyssa's correct. We are using the grant to kind of fill the gap between our fundraising and the spend that we'll need to have. We have, I guess we have roughly $40,000 already raised and we have two events coming in 2024 that are significant on raising events. And we also have an anonymous donor that's donating a large sum of money. So we feel confident in the ability to raise the money in order to build the park. But you are looking to also raise funds through this VORAC grant. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah, okay. All right, any further discussion? Yeah, Bill, come on up. Bill Minter, Waterbury Center. We can't hear you online if you don't come up. Sorry. My name's Bill Minter, I live in Waterbury Center and I'm on the Waterbury Recreation Committee and the Skate Park Coalition has done just a superior job of not only raising funds but raising awareness, getting community involvement. And they've presented plans, they've had feedback from us on the plans and perhaps you guys as well, gone back to the drawing board and presented them again. And it's just been a process of steady improvement and I fully support this request for the letter. Great. Further discussion on this? Yeah, Dave, come on up. So does this letter from the board, they have to come through zoning and planning for this? Sure. Does the funding that they are raising, is that contingent upon permits and approvals from other boards in the town? Like everything else, yeah. Okay. I also think it's an application requirement. So it's a state level application and I believe the question is framed around at what status in permitting and zoning are you, I understand, I think they were warned for a DRB and I assume would give that answer. I've been following it, so I just want to make sure that we're all where, where they are or aren't in their process with us. Right. Yeah, it's just that the deadline for this grant is the 15th of December or so and they are where they are. All right. Okay. Thank you. Further discussion? Okay, the motion has been made and seconded. There's no more discussion. Everyone in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Any abstentions? All right. So we'll have a letter of support contingent on the proposal being completed and approved by the rec committee. Is that right? All right, I would just say like, if you want me to amend the motion, authorize you as select board chair to sign a letter of support contingent on review of the full grant application. I may not be available to sign a letter of support. Then we'll just say letter of support on behalf of the town. Actually, 15th I will be, so yes. Okay. All right, yeah, you're doing the minutes so you can get that exactly as it needs to be. I think it's approved. All right, moving forward. Discussion of short-term rental regulations. Kane has put forth some proposed initial steps. Kane, would you like to address these for us? Yeah. If you roll down to the fifth one on the proposed or possible steps, we have a definition that I was not aware of of short-term rentals and we can strike that. Well, it's not on the books yet, so you're not totally off base. We have a... It's proposed. Yeah, so just, I guess, waiting on a definition from the planning commission. Just on that point, you're saying that you're going to propose to use the same definition that the state is using? For now, I would assume, yeah, yeah, until we have one from the PC. Okay. Yes. So, there are a few things that other municipalities have been doing in regards to short-term rentals and in regards to short-term rentals in the subject of their housing markets. Everyone, not just Waterbury, our housing markets are desperate. Not enough housing, not enough affordable housing. Other towns, especially in Vermont, have rolled out registries for short-term rentals. That includes Airbnb, Verbo, all the sites. Essentially, you create a master list of who is renting on these sites and if they're renting for what extended period of time, all it does is it gets you more info and more accurate information the state can provide. The state can give you a number, but it doesn't tell you how long they're renting. It doesn't tell you if someone went on vacation for a week and rented out their house for that week, but it also doesn't tell you if someone's doing a year round. And that's the information we need to gather to have an accurate picture of how many short-term rentals are in the town of Waterbury. The state's info is just it doesn't go deep enough. Stowe recently rolled out a registry. I don't know how. Did they pass up? I'm unsure. I know that it was proposed. I don't know of its passage, but I know. I know they've got, they're working on something. Anyway, there are other towns that have done this. I'm not talking about taking the extreme action that Burlington took. We're just rolling out the registry. I wanna get an accurate number. I know that that would help the housing task force with trying to get an accurate picture of housing in Waterbury. Okay. Along these proposed outlines, there are other ones, not just the registry. There are proposals that are akin to or akin to Burlington's or parts of Burlington's proposed or ordinance at this point where landowners who already reside on the residents may operate short-term rentals on that property but not outside. That would hopefully prevent large companies from buying property and renting it out for short-term rentals instead of long-term. Other towns have rolled out permitting systems that allow for caps on the amount of short-term rentals to limit their impact on the housing market. And then in the extreme, these are all possible. In the extreme, a moratorium on any new short-term rentals until we can establish an economic impact on the town. Have you determined if we have the legal authority to do that? I know we have the legal authority to create a registry. Yeah. That one I get. Tom. I had some conversations with our council about this. I guess I would say it's an evolving question. At the same time, I think we have fairly broad legal authority to regulate short-term rentals. If it would please the board, if you feel like we're at that stage related to this, it's from a staff perspective, we can do a few things. The first is we can get that question answered and get you a pretty clear opinion about what we can and cannot exactly do. And the second could be, again, if it would please the board, is I can work with Neil and Mike in planning and zoning and we can present to you offhand I can't promise exactly when, not likely the next meeting, but we can present to you the draft registry what information that we would be collecting and then some strategy for how we actually go about collecting the information. So those are all I should staff can take if desired. Yeah, that would be great. Mike. Tom, thanks for that information. I think that's really critical. But in regards to number two, where in ordinance that only allows land owners who already reside on the rented property to operate short-term rentals, I agree with that 100%. The question is, what do you do with properties that have already been bought for short-term rentals? Are those grandfathered? You know, I would assume they would be because they're already there. And I assume as much as I'm in a green that I think out of state and management company owned short-term rentals have become a real problem. All the others, you know, Stowe is an example. I've had long conversations with Harry Sanderson from Stowe about it. And you know, I was shocked at the number. He said there's 700 short-term rentals in Stowe. Which just blew my mind, you know. And I know Waterbury, we don't have that amount, but it's gonna become more and more of a problem because people are gonna see the ability to create income off of these properties. I know my, you know, some of my family just stated a Airbnb in Stowe over the Thanksgiving holiday. And it was exactly what we're looking at. It was owned by a management company, not owned by, you know, a person. And that's where I think, you know, I'm for, because a lot of people are gonna be struggling for income that I think short-term rentals are a way for a homeowner to create some additional income, which I think, you know, yes, it needs to be regulated, but I do think I would hate to deny people that that chance to do something with their property to create some additional income to support their families. Alyssa. Forgive the phone use, just because I got texted definitions before this, but I guess I would say a couple of pieces in terms of context. Our development review board chair is here and correct me if I'm wrong, but our current regulations do not define short-term rental. So the planning commission, as we've all mentioned, per the open house this Thursday, is working on updating regulations. They're meeting right now. Shout out, thank you. Thanks for the planning commission over in the other room, but their proposal understanding is that moving forward for the proposed update of the regulations, which again is covering just a portion of water, not all water, but that they create a definition of short-term rental. So that's what Kane was saying at the beginning, just to say that that's a process that's ongoing right now. There's an opportunity for public input Thursday and we're hoping to have those regulations adopted in the spring when our interim regulations zone out. That will at least give us a definition. So right now there's no definition on the book. There's work in progress to define them. The planning commission is not proposing any sort of regulations about where you would or wouldn't have these things. And I guess I would just say from my former time as economic development director, there is a plethora of types of short-term rentals in water braid, including but not limited to like ones in the downtown and commercial districts and ones way up in the hills in single-family homes. So I think moving towards something that gives us more information would be really positive. I would support Tom's recommendation around getting staff feedback. One in that one, our planning director used to work in Woodstock and has done this. And two, just their capacity. I guess my concern is we just need to figure out how to make it happen. Like regardless of what we put on paper, how are we enforcing it? And then the other pieces I, Joe, I think is on, who's the chair of our housing task force and I was not able to make the last meeting but he did send us all that as homework. A list of potential goals for a policy regarding short-term rental. So again, the housing task force has been looking at this. And part of it is if we were to propose a policy, what would we want the goals of that policy to be? So reading from their minutes from the last meeting, the three that I'm seeing and Joe, you can hop in. I see you. Is that based on the poll of the group on the housing task force, the objectives were, one, maximize the availability of housing options by ensuring that no long-term rental properties are converted into short-term rentals. Two, reduce the likelihood of investors from out of the area from purchasing homes for short-term rentals that would otherwise be critical elements of the local housing market. Three, ensure that short-term rentals are taxed in the same way as traditional lodging providers to ensure a level playing field. This was from a menu. And again, Joe can give the source. And also just to bullet below that saying, give residents the option to utilize their properties to generate extra income, as you were saying, Mike. So I believe that group is working towards a more formal recommendation. And again, I would welcome Joe if you have more updates or input. But just to say, personally, I think that's a great set of objectives to be aimed towards in terms of recognizing flexibility about wanting to ensure we're protecting our local rental housing market. All right, I recognize that Dave had his hand up. I want to just get clarification from Joe if he's available on what the intentions of the housing task force are. Yes, thank you. As Alyssa said, we've been looking at this topic. One is really kind of to measure it, right? To understand the impact that it's having in Waterbury and also around the community. Just to begin to compare how Waterbury compares to, for example, Maristown and some other communities in the area. So we have that data that we pull together. We're also pulling together what other townships are doing about this. And there's a lot, as Kenny said, there's a lot that's going on around the state. So we're trying to bring that all together in one place so that we can have a good feeling for how all their towns are approaching it. At our last meeting, we listed, we came up with about eight or nine objectives, which are just general objectives that you find about short-term rentals. And I asked the group to vote on their kind of highest and lowest priority or three highest priority things, say it that way. And we came up with the four objectives that Alyssa just just talked about. At our meeting in December, what we're going to do is think about possible regulations then that could meet those objectives. And then based on that, come to the select board with a recommendation around how to appeal, how to go forward. And Quentin, would you expect to be able to come before the select board with your recommendations? The January. Our second meeting in January. Yeah. We're gonna have four, so. Yeah. Right, we will be meeting probably every week. David. Just to speak on the definition. If you wouldn't mind coming up just so that everybody can hear you. Speak on our definition and our current zoning rules. The closest thing to a short-term rental we have is a boarding house. The other definition is an ADU, an auxiliary dwelling unit, which, given the new state law, is essentially used by right. Right, so right. You gotta be careful when trying to regulate short-term units when you have people who want to put in apartments, but then may later convert it to a short-term building because they don't come to us for that stuff. And you're gonna hear this from the development of view board. These are all great ideas. How are you gonna enforce them? That's. Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, there. No point in regulation that can't put anything behind. I did listen to a recent Vermont edition special on short-term rentals. And they had the head of the select board from Killington and Chester. Both of which have instituted registries. And they felt that although they don't have very strong compliance enforcement, they felt as though they were getting pretty good compliance with it just by reviewing what's being advertised and people talking and just the town's influence on its neighbors. But that still requires someone to do the work, to find those units and then enforce the rules on them. Right. And I've got another question for Tom, which is what is the cost going to be for implementing a registry and perhaps some of these other? Potential regulations that we're discussing. So I can somewhat answer that. Okay. So the 2024 draft budget, which we've got at your first weekend in a couple of weeks, we'll really hope, we'll include funding for some, for a software package for planning and zoning, which we haven't had before. That's a transition away from paper, that's a process. So in my mind, I was thinking 2024 is the year to modernize on that front to begin some, some better enforcement. Now that I think we've got a good, good stable staff, but we have now and then the 2025 budget would probably include assuming there's a registry or perhaps a registry and some additional steps beyond that. The 2025 budget could feature a funding request for the enforcement piece. I'm not sure what that would entail at this stage. Presumably it's staff driven. And sometimes are proposing a fee to accompany a registration. So that would be create a new revenue source. It's also gonna have to be condition driven and it's also gonna have to be some sort of deed or record driven because if I put an apartment on my house now and rented out as an apartment, but then sell it in five years, how's the new buyer gonna know that there's something that they need to do if they wanna change the status of that ADU? Yeah, Ken. I'll say the quiet part out loud. Last meeting and a few meetings before we had the state police sitting here asking us to write ordinances so that they could enforce them. We have enforcement, we just have to write the ordinance. I guess I question if I see our state police contract doing zoning compliance, that was part of the public. That's something like you would have a town enforcement official. Yeah, that'd be like the building inspector. Right, a building inspector, exactly. That's not state police. That's criminal, this is civil. Right. Yeah. It needs to be some teeth in the town staff person that's following up on this, as well as the conditions and stuff that the Development Review Board puts on permits. That's not state police to come up on that. That's zoning administrator town staff that used to follow up on that and make sure those are being followed. But I think to take your point, like enforcement is a policy and a funding choice. Like we can make that choice to create a staff of position as Tom proposes if we need to do that. I think my question is like to what extent, I mean, it sounds like I think I'm encouraged to hear this timeline for January, just in terms of we talked about the zoning rewrite is already in process. I think this is a question we can anticipate getting in public hearing during that question. And I think us having an answer about where we are, I wanna thank Cain for pushing this because I will say after one I'm on the housing task force and I've been like, well, keep gathering the data. So I appreciate you bringing it to this forum. And I think and moving it forward and highlighting this issue, I guess to me, what do we see around that steps? I think Tom and staff's input around what is legal and practical short and long term for municipal staff to implement would be great. I think the housing task force is discussing this in December. We'll both be there. And then we could plan for January to look at a more formal. I guess I would also think like thinking ahead of Tom meeting to in terms of public messaging, but... Well, then the other thing is Waterbury is not going to count based on this issue. Others, I think it's a very much larger degree including Burlington, Stowe, Killington, others. And I think we have a lot to learn for how they're addressing it and what's effective and what's not. I think it's a little too early with some of these towns to see what's effective and what's not because all these rollouts have been in the past 365 days. Everyone's rolling it out as fast as they can because it's a growing industry. No one knows what the end of the road looks like. So as the towns start rolling it out, hopefully eventually the state will step in a little bit. But until that happens, we need to, it's my view that we should at least shield ourselves a little bit and see what's going on on the ground because if we don't, we just have an industry in a lot of areas that we don't know anything about. So Tom, would you be able to let us know whether we could implement a registry and include that in the budget for 2024? Yeah. I guess I am reading the chat, which I would normally and Amy, do you have a hand up? I do, yes. Sorry, Amy, I didn't see it. I didn't put it up. Sorry. Yeah, so I was just gonna offer to that conversation something that the Waterbury Conservation Commission is considering are things more of a short term, I guess, approach to governance. So following on that conversation around thinking about, okay, you've got budgets that are gonna support hiring resources and then you've got to think through processes and how you're gonna do that. Something that we're looking at as an interim to how we fulfill longer range goals like that are putting in place like checklists. So when projects are being reviewed, they're reviewed with like some screening questions in mind and perhaps there might be something at the development review board level or the planning commission level that could adopt something of that practice that might help kind of get a handle on Airbnb permitting requests or things like that as they're coming in. There's currently no requirement to request a permit. I'm sorry, Dave, could you repeat that? There's currently no mechanism for a requirement to request a permit for a short term rental. Yeah, there is no permitting process, right? Right. Okay, so we have some work to do. Tom is gonna get back to us with some answers that came up during this discussion. The development of the housing task force is going to be addressing us in January. Anything further that you would like to be done? Is somebody else got their hand up? CG, is there a hand up? CG, I think that was Lauren. Looks like civil. Okay. Well, civil, oh, civil's iPhone. Oh yeah, civil, civil's iPhone. You have your hand up? I think that's the cursor. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Every year. Every year now. All right. Dude, just testing you, Roger. Danny, we didn't hear any of that. At least I did. Sorry, go ahead. They came down. So they might have gotten my question answered or needed to walk away, so it's all good. Okay. All right. Any decisions that need to be taken tonight other than what we've already discussed? Oh. I think we can. I think we need to authorize. Well, Tom, go ahead. To begin. Think I've got that. Yeah, you've got the author. Okay. And I would say there will just be a zoom for the next housing task force meeting. Sorry, Joe, in advance, but if folks do want to weigh in on a more nuanced level around specific policies that will be an agenda conversation, just thinking about that's going to be one form ahead of our next meeting in January. So for folks with whatever interests that want to get more into the weeds of what policy, that's another forum that's available. Yeah. You know, I read the few minutes in preparation for this meeting of the housing task force. And noted the skip flanders. One of the issues is that we're not only trying to control short-term rentals, we're also just trying to expand the availability of long-term rentals. And Skip was looking into what incentives could be devised to expand the availability of long-term rentals. And he talked with Joel Baker, who's one of the developers in town, who was talking about reducing the permitting fees. And we could have some hearings on to what extent that would really be effective in expanding the availability of long-term rentals. I also talked with Aaron Flint, who's also a developer in town. And he was looking for just a more even playing field. He feels that as a developer of long-term rental units, he gets a lot of regulation, whereas people put up short-term rentals with apparently very little regulation. And he feels like just to even out that playing field from a permitting standpoint would make sense. He also suggested that we look at lot sizes and parking requirements, which I believe are being reviewed by the Planning Commission at this moment. So all of those are still in play, as far as I understand it. Okay, any further comment on this? Hearing none, let's move forward. The FEMA buyout conversation. We have our first application for the FEMA buyout at, is it 36 Union Strait? 36 Union Strait, potentially one other Union Strait coming into the whole list. Right, and possibly North Main Strait as well. All right, Tom, would you like to talk to this? In the deep restriction, it's really the bottom of the first page and the second page. And the long and short of it is that state emergency management through FEMA the buyout is ultimately approved, has to be approved by the select board first. Normally there's a 25% local share. As of right now, the state is covering that share. I don't know if that 25% share is gonna be in place forever. So I encourage property owners who are interested to start the process. Property owners will get a, eventually get an appraisal from FEMA that is based on the pre-flood value if they accept that number. Essentially the process can go forward. State emergency management paid for by FEMA essentially levels the property and gives us a clean site. FEMA covers the cost of deconstruction? Correct. In the end, that property has really substantial de-restrictions, could not be developed. We could use it for recreation and we could put some very minor structures associated with that. We could put, in theory, public bathrooms. So when I say minor structures think concrete footers for playgrounds but essentially no impervious surface, no major developments. I've inquired about a parking ride and the answer is yes, that's possible. You cannot put gravel or shot rock or anything down. It's a dirt parking ride. We can convey it to a third party but those same de-restrictions apply. If the third party is a private sector or not, conservation organization, some other local nonprofit, it's gotta be approved by the federal government and it's a little bit of a higher standard, if you will. So the simplest and best way to think of it is it's ours forever. We don't have to maintain it. We can have, we can simply let it grow and become flourished and we can mow the lawn if we want. In terms of our grand list, the property has a pretty low value as of today. So in terms of tax revenue, it's five, 600 bucks a year, not a meaningful amount. Same would apply to the property that's being looked at. So from a revenue perspective, it's really mostly a non-issue, I think. And I think the, and just to de-restrictions, I just want to reiterate that the 25%, now that's not our cost. That would normally be our cost. It is not the cost today. The other piece is this property is on the market as of today. And so the owner, nothing here binds the owner at this stage to anything. So if the owner gets a favorable number and wants to sell the property, they can sell the property. And then the new owner could also apply for a? I don't believe so. I believe there's an ownership requirement that lasts a period of time. I don't know offhand what that is. And I have an inquiry from another property owner who was commercial. And the answer is if it's for a primary residence owner. I do recommend that we go forward with this. The property was pretty badly damaged during Irene, pretty badly damaged again. I was inside of it after a post-flood and it's not great. Yeah. The pictures are up on Zillow. And I just think in the end this would be a property that we'd have to get them a fair amount of assistance for any future floods, which is we all know. Right. That would be my concern is that are we going to be facing this again? Mike. Your only question, much as for this, it's very similar to what our USDA restrictions were, so I'm pretty familiar. Nothing raised. The only thing I'm concerned about, and it's probably a non-concern, are there any hazardous waste issues that we have to be concerned about where this could be underlying, where this could be a brown field or something like that if we take ownership? Not to my knowledge. That is in the second part of the packet. So that's part of the review. Right, I saw that. Done by the federal government. But it's a little check off or something. I don't have all the details at this point and this just came in late last night. But the long and short of it is from conversations is the federal government does their own testing as part of the process. So we should get a clean site. Well, FEMA would not move forward if it was at brown fields consequences. That I'm not 100% sure of. I haven't gotten that far with the hazard mitigation officer at the state. Okay. I think that you would be correct on that assumption. Well, well, Roger lives pocket parks. I really do. It's not a bad indication for one. We have some abutting land owners in the audience tonight. Would you care to comment on this? Tamatha, come on up. Tossy, Waterbury. I would just hate to see another person go through what we keep going through down there. So I think that a little park, anything that the town would own and then keep the town from having to continue to bear the burden of continued flooding would be ideal. All right, thank you. All right. CG, sorry. Yeah, CG. And could you identify yourself, please for the minute? The meeting is going to be shown before we have a summary of the instruments. Well, where are the softwares located? 36 units. All right. 36 units. Okay, thank you. Yeah, it's right down where the Armory. The Armory Ave. Armory Ave comes in and tees into Union Street, close to the bridge. With a turn to the FEMA Disaster Center. Well, how convenient. That's the best way to describe it. I don't think it's there any longer. No, but it was there long enough. Do we have a motion? Tom, do we need a specific motion as it mandated by the federal government? You need a motion. You'll need to sign this. We'll need to work with Karen to get it motorized and the counterparty will need to do the same. Do we need a motion to authorize the select board to approve and sign it? And at this stage, not the binding course? But it's the first step. I make a motion for the select board to approve the FEMA buyout for 36, 36? Yeah. 36 Union Street. That was second. Second. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Karen. Well, I just wanted to say, well, it breaks my heart that we lose a house. In this big discussion about housing we've been having over the last year, I would feel terrible if another family went through flooding on that street and I would prefer it be a pocket park than have another family. I have to suffer through that. Yeah. And you already mentioned that it's not a great spot. It's gonna happen on I-3.0. No, don't even. Okay. Any further discussion? You can go ahead. Taylor, come on up. Yes, to your point, Kane, I just wanna say, I think it's important that we focus on nice housing for people, but just because people don't have the money to live in places that, that's something I think of consideration. And so, yes, a pocket park rather than a family who maybe can't afford to live in other places in the town have access to places that are not in the flood plain. Right. Thank you. Okay. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. We have approved the buyout, first stage of the buyout for 36 Union. Next thing on the agenda is the appraisal and ARPA updates. Tom? Sure. In July, there was a resolution approved to transfer some ARPA funds. We still have some time to spend the ARPA funds or we're gonna select board head made a decision to allocate some of those towards our reappraisal costs. We're likely to be ordered to reappraise next summer. And there's a fairly long time to rise up with that. So there's some chance we wouldn't be able to spend the ARPA on the reappraisal by the deadline. What we can do is reimburse ourselves for general government expenses with the ARPA funds. So what this resolution does is it simply moves funds from the ARPA bucket to the town's, what's called the undesignated fund balance. Think of it as moving funds from a special savings account to your checking account. They're still there. We're not actually spending it, it's an accounting entry, but from that perspective, from a reporting perspective as far as the federal government is concerned, the ARPA funds would be fully allocated if this is approved. The state is studying the reappraisal issue. I'm really hopeful they'll take it over at some point relatively soon, but we may have to go forward with their own effort. We do think at this point about $200,000 would be the cost. And your recommendation is that we move all the remaining ARPA funding? Yes, because just the $200,000 is what remains. Okay. King. Did we just discuss this in July? I thought we had a motion to move it. It was moved except for the reappraisal. Except for the reappraisal. One of the time to see what our status would be. And see what our status would be. What happened is the old rule was there was an 80% rule. Once the state believed your praise values were 80% of the market, they made you reappraise. There's a second data point within that that they call the coefficient of dispersion, which is sort of your confidence around their number. And they've now said 80% where the coefficient's gotta hit a certain point. So we met the test for the coefficient. Since reappraisal is a big effort, on no point in doing it until you're ordered to do it. And as you say, the state may decide to take it on themselves. They may at some point. And hopefully they will. So does that mean that property valuation in Montpelier is gonna do all count reappraisals? Yes. With significant consulting help, I'm sure some local in- Right, they'll have to give us, they don't have the staff to do it for good. What the proposal that was discussed last year, which didn't go forth, they determined that we need some more study. But what was discussed was, in essence, dividing the state into regions, I think counties, and simply doing them all one time. You get some economies of scale. Town boundaries are not necessarily real estate market boundaries. So there's, I think, an efficient little better way to do it on a regional basis and probably to save costs for everyone. So that's why I think the proposal made a lot of sense. Do I have a motion on the reclassification of the remaining $200,000 in park of funding? I make a motion to reclassify the designated $200,000 for town reappraisal and back to where we're gonna. These four lines in the bottom. Right. To general government regular pay, Lister regular pay, Planning Director pay and Zoning Administrator pay. Do I hear a second? Second. Okay, further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Denny, are opposed? I think she was delayed. No, there's a delay. Oh, I think that was the A. Just clarifying. Okay. Now any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. It is approved as moved to reclassify. Right. Next item on the agenda is the Armory Ave, High Street land use. Tom, can you address this? Short conversation, Town Hall, when your zoning administrator was a real estate agent and thinks of land a little differently sometimes. But we own 3.3 acres of lawn armory right across from the school, essentially from High Street to Hope Rest Terrace to Hope Harcelle. A piece of the land is permanently preserved and that was part of an agreement that my predecessor negotiated to build this building. That this land, Dak Rowe, was bought using Glendham Water Conservation Fund hours, which is a federal source. This land had to be permanently preserved for recreational purposes. Since there was a chunk of it used for that, a chunk was added off of Armory Drive. It was a trade. It was a trade. Took some time in it for that to happen. The school has, so that is preserved in the deed. So that is there forever. There's a building which is not in great shape. There's an engineering report the town has that's a few decades old that essentially says that a heavy wet snow storm is gonna make the roof collapse. Well, that'll never happen. It's still standing for now, but we share storage space in that building with the school. Right now we have one of our new public works trucks that we had three months ago. And you know, we've got a chassis but nobody. We're waiting for that. We keep the sidewalk plow there. A few other minor things. You know, some of the mowers for the winter are stored there. The mowers we use down here. The school has all sorts of stuff there. And there's an agreement related to parking. It's not a deeded right, but it's an old agreement related to parking. We're gonna meet with the school soon enough to discuss that, but you know, anecdotally, we think the school needs 15 or 20 spaces. And so there's likely a way to move the line a little bit and perhaps rearrange the parking to get them that room. But the long and short of what we think from a staff perspective is despite the encumbrances on the lot, despite the parking needs up, the other piece I didn't mention is on the far side of the lot, there's a walking path from the school back to the preserved land that's pretty actively used during the school year. So we'd wanna preserve that. Despite all that, it appears to us that there's some land on both sides on both High Street and Hillcrest that could in theory be developed. I've talked to Public Works, Bill Woodruff and other staff, and part of my message was that it's really hard for a town to buy property. It's really hard for the town to negotiate and get a reasonable market price anytime the town wants to buy property. Work gets out pretty quick, you're perceived to be a rich buyer. So I said, I don't wanna be short-sighted and give up land that we might regret in 20 years. And the answer is no one could come up with a plausible idea that anybody would use this. Bill Woodruff has said he needs the storage. So he really wants to maintain the storage, which the school also needs a two presumably. So we wanna maintain that, but they've been very amenable to carving out some pieces of land and kicking around a little bit of ideas internally. And so the thought is, if the select board has an interest in us investigating this further, we could, I think a logical second step is to work with legal counsel, make sure we have 100% clarity on the encompasses of the land, talk with the school, and make sure that they're not vehemently opposed and hopefully amenable to some of the changes and potential development here, and then talk to the housing task force about maybe some of the options that from a staff perspective could work. After that, if we pass those hurdles, which are not insubstantial, so we may not, we would come back to you presumably for some public input process. And then obviously any sort of permitting, any of that would go before the relevant boards. So you discussed what parts you're not looking to develop, how much land are you looking to develop potentially? Off the cuff, if the goal was to maximize development there, and I'm not sure it is, and that's why there's, this is the start of a conversation, but if the goal was to maximize development, I think you could in theory, on the high street side, perhaps have somewhere between three tenths and a half of an acre to be used for development, and that could accommodate fair amount of housing. And similarly on the Hillcrest Terrace side, I think a similar sized block could fit. Isn't that Armory Street? It depends who you talk to. It's on half the maps it's Armory Street and half it's Armory Drive, Armory Ave. Okay, but where's Hillcrest? Hillcrest is the top, the top cross street. So if you're behind the elementary school here? Oh, Hillcrest is past the storage shed. Past the storage shed, right? Okay, the other side. So there's encumbrances on the land, I'm sure the neighbors will be highly interested. The school's got a vested interest here, too. And you're not going to mess with the light pole. Correct. Correct, you want to leave that alone and be careful that anything proposed would not necessarily impact the view of that. So it's not an easy block to develop or say, no. But our thinking is it doesn't cost us any money to pursue these ideas and it could result in potentially some new housing being built that could result in a town selling a lot, which would be a cash infusion to the town. The main focus is just thinking about the housing crisis and I think everyone seems to use that and agree on that word crisis. And if there's a lot or perhaps a few lots that can be developed, it would be, I think, worth their interest in exploring that. So all we're asking at this stage is some blessing to go forth and try to explore this and see if it can be advanced. All right, Alyssa. I'm just noting it looks like our internet connection is unstable, so apologies to the friend at home. It's been a rough internet day in Lauderdale for those who've been here. Tom, could you just repeat the two streets that potentially would be developed on? Sure, so the bottom of the parcel at the intersection with High Street and then the top of the parcel near Hill Press Terrace. Thank you. So on each side of the garage? Yes. Yeah. So you're just looking at that skinny strip? No. Pretty good size chunks on the. Are they looking at this whole white area? Yes, but I think the town is going to maintain the old armor shielding, which is now a storage shed, as well as a certain amount of parking directly east of or west of there. And then, so the develop areas would be. So all that hatched area can't be touched. To not be demolished. Right, that's conserved. And we would want to maintain a walking path towards it, which is currently above the Armory Building, which the school uses to get into the thatched area. And the pole is about where the line of the conserved area is. And who, yep, it's marked. It's a small circle. Oh, there it is. And it's in the first thatched area. Okay. Well, I don't get where it says land, you know, land conversion for library and land conversion for fire station. Fire station was an earlier agreement. Okay. Got you. Yeah. So everything thatch regards to the thatch is off limits. Okay. So all the fash, it's basically where the parking area, the shed and behind that is. Yeah. So I think in theory that at the bottom of the hill towards the bottom of Armory, the longer rectangular parking area, that could potentially be moved a little bit and shortened to give a little more room for development. And to give perspective just down the road on the high street is a nine unit apartment building. And that's on about a half an acre. So I'm not proposing offhand a nine unit apartment building, but I'm just giving that to close trade. It doesn't take a lot of land, but a resubstantial amount of housing. Okay. And all this is developed on town, served by water and soar. Yeah, that's speed of development now is important. All right, do I have a motion for the town to further explore this opportunity? Second. Seconded. Any further discussion? Surely David. Not a word. Okay. Hearing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No, I'm not opposed. I'm weeding. It's part of it. It's the other side. Any abstentions? All right. The motion carries. And we will, do you have a timeframe? Tom? Wouldn't I? I do not. And much of it doesn't depend on me. I'm going to be focused on the budget and all that ready. You know, we're moving into the holidays. I would, I would hope we have something before the housing task force in about a month. Perfect. Thank you. And Roger, two points just to say out loud is that as the minutes will work back, this is just a preliminary investigation of staff looking around potential constraints and the map that we were provided will be in the minutes for this meeting, which will be posted on the website. The folks are interested. It's just a copy of the deed of the property. Quite well noted. It's not a standard proposal, it's a proposal. They're investigating constraints. Okay. Before we go into the executive session, shall we discuss what'll be on the agenda for the 18th and then also decide the dates for meeting the first meeting in January? Yeah. And Cheryl did ever hand up, it just went down again. Okay. Cheryl. Here's my concern with the high street development. There is already a problem with people who go to visit their family on high street because of the parking situation with the school taking away some of that parking lot might cause more of a consternation. Just something to think about when you guys are looking at constraints. There's times I go to help my parents and I can't park. I have to park in another neighborhood to get to their house, which is not right. So if you're gonna add more housing, it's gonna take away more parking where the parents are supposed to park, which they don't, but they should. It could be a really big constraint for the people that live on the high street area. That would potentially be another parking bigger issue for those people that live on that street. Many people do not have garages. So they pull into their parking lots if they can in the winter, but tend to obviously park on the street in the summer. So I just wanted to point that out for folks that do live on high street. That could become a bigger issue for them. Thank you. Thank you. We'll ask the town to take that into consideration on their further exploration of this option, potential option. Okay. Next meeting will be the 18th of December. I will not be here. Just wanna make sure that we have the chance to have a quorum. Is everyone else planning on being available? Denny? And Karen had sent. And she sent about the Board of Civil Authority. He's gonna meet at six. Right. We have one abatement request and we have one individual who has requested an abatement. I've gone to the, told him about the legal process. He's got the form in front of him. He has promised me he will be filing it. So we may have two. Okay. And so the Board of Abatement will be meeting at six. The select board will be meeting at seven. What else do we have proposed on the agenda for the 18th? Skip. Yeah. Go ahead, Denny. We're just losing internet again. Oh. You're out of time. You froze. No, you're back. It's a good one. I'm not sure if we're gonna get to the top. We're gonna try to get this off the line right now. We can't hear you very well, but I can I think address your issue because I did talk with Skip who did say that you had asked him, Denny, to give an update on EFUD on the 18th, which I think would be great. So we can put that on the agenda and you can let me know how much time I can talk with Skip as to how much time he might need to address those issues, which would include plans for EFUD's expansion to serve a mobile home facility, the shopping area near the cabin annex and other issues that are facing EFUD. Yeah. When you say mobile home facility, do you mean like a mobile home park? East wind mobile home park. Oh, East wind, okay. Yeah, East wind, I guess it's called mobile home park. I just, I was like, is it a place that makes mobile homes? I didn't think what you meant. No, yeah. Yeah, no, East wind mobile home park. And so, yeah, we've got that. Anything else that people are aware of, Alyssa? I was just gonna ask Tom, is there anything budget related at that point or is it too early? I don't know, have a full draft. Just that light agenda item and it's full draft budget. It's full draft, it's full draft. What is the light agenda? But we're not gonna be updating each line item at that point. No, I'd like to. Overview. I'd like to give you the full overview of some of the major decision points and there will be some moving parts where the numbers will have to, still coming in will change a little bit. But I think it'll be, I'm not gonna give you a budget that says there's a 4% tax increase when the real number is gonna be negative three or plus 10. It'll be pretty close at that point, I think, to, from the perspective of accuracy. There's always a desire to massage it because you've got your actuals for the year by the time January rolls around, but at the same time, we've got years of actuals, so one month is not gonna change your analysis dramatically. With the coming budget coming up, with the recent announcement of that property taxes are gonna go up 18%, can we as a town have some sort of opinion on that? I think I would qualify. I'm pretty sure that was like a preliminary forecast. I know. Pretty sure I need to go through a few more steps. Pretty preliminary, but it sounds pretty definite. Yeah. The governor came out today, said he's totally against it. He said they're gonna have to work with the legislature because I know that's gonna, if you look at the numbers, you're looking at a $600 increase on a $200,000 home. So you just multiply that by if your house is worth more, that's gonna be a serious increase for a lot of folks. I would say as a board member, regardless of the financial circumstance, I wanna make prudent, responsible financial choices for the town and I think that's a value we share, regardless, I'm not saying that might further enhance it, but I guess for me, that would be a starting point regardless of what else is happening. Because I think in the last few years, we have taken the trying to keep a revenue neutral kind of budget. Because we know that the increases are really in the education budget, but to minimize either keep our budget zero based or a slight increase or a slight decrease. And I think that is something that I know I would propose at least come going. I hope I could just recommend that. I don't think I'm gonna deliver anything unreasonable. I'm getting pretty close, right? So I don't think it's gonna be a zero percent, but it's gonna be, when I presented the numbers in the local option tax, I said that the 20 years I went and looked back that we've averaged 5% annual increase in spending. Our grand list tends to grow about 1%, so the taxes are more like four. The goal I think every year is to be at or under that number. I mean, what I've said to department heads is that hopefully 2025 we'll have a local option tax and that changes some of the dynamics significantly. So this year. Keep your budgets low, lean. Stay fairly lean. We don't wanna be silly and defer anything we need to do. But if we'll have the option of paying cash instead of borrowing things like that in the future, I think we wanna keep our pattern dry from that respect. And Gary did come before you some months ago and talked about a fire truck and getting that on the ballot, but we wouldn't need to pay debt on that in 2024. We would not have to. We would not have to. Because we'd just be placing the order and not take ownership? Yeah. We could take ownership, but we can structure it so that we wouldn't pay debt until future. Okay. Public works, we're having, they may well come in 2024 before you and request a place in order where they wouldn't pay anything for 2025. But to illustrate one of their challenges, we're having this debate internally about what we purchase for trucks. The tandem trucks hold 15, 16 yards and we're going down to Barry now for every load of gravel. The more typical plow trucks hold five or six yards. So do we wanna buy the tandem and trip to our hauling capacity at the same time if we trip to our hauling capacity, we really should dedicate a staff person to hauling all the time, which means that person's not doing any actual work. Well, that's actually the problem. More truck driving. You gotta watch it every truck driving. He's just in there listening to my ass. He's just in there listening to my ass. And we're looking at different options about hiring contractors to haul things for us. But if we buy an F 350 that can haul five yards, we might have it in a year. If we get the tandem, it seems like it's more than, it's about two now. Two years out? Yeah. And it's would be dedicated to hauling. Not 100% dedicated, but essentially dedicated. That's- Do we need that or do we need that? Much hauling. Man, we average three to 4,000 yards of sand a year. That's 200 trips for sand alone. Grab one crush stone, depending what we do, is about it is a similar number. So if it's 600 trips alone to South Barrier, I mean you can do a bunch in a day. It's a lot of diesel. But it's a lot of hauling. And if we wanna do a bigger road project, pick a couple thousand feet of a gravel road, throw in another few thousand yards right there. So it's a substantial amount of work. And we do have another gravel summit with Dutchmen coming up, right? Yeah, no, we've always had one tandem. And also the question is, do we go to two? I would love to attend the gravel summit. Oh, by two. Okay, well, and you're gonna come up with a recommendation. That's too many variables for people like myself. We need to get our own bit. We do, but there's no place. I know. Yeah, one point, I don't recall the specifics of the conversation I've had before the course. I'm guessing it didn't go anywhere. Let me get back to you, all right. There's train options for salt to some towns not too far from here or closer to a rail line and do it for salt. I don't know if anyone doing it for a stone level sort of thing. Yeah, we'll transfer the transfer might be. Difficult. Difficult and costly. Okay, so I think that may be enough for December 18th. Yes. The next meeting would be Thursday, January 4th due to holidays and Tom's availability. Does that work for everyone? Yes. If you do that. Okay, and then following up, assuming we need to have further budget discussions Monday, January 8th. And then again, we've got holiday. We're skipping a week there. Yeah, I guess we could meet either the 17th or the 18th if needed. Otherwise we'd be meeting on the 22nd. Maybe let's just see where we're at at the 8th. Like, you know, when that may determine if we're gonna need another meeting. Yeah, but we'll keep the 22nd and then 29th again if necessary. Yeah. All right. That's clear. Do I have a motion to go into executive session? Session. Move that premature public knowledge of pending real estate matters would clearly place the town of a substantial disadvantage. Someone please. I think I had this. Is it? Oh my God. Second that. Okay. Moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right.