 normally does but starting early. We got the 6.30 start time and I'd like a motion to go into executive session. The personnel matters. Does that mean I tune out? Yes you can join us back at 7 Virginia. Oh I'm sorry I didn't realize that. That's all right no worries. I'm new to this. I just want to hear you know I'm here for the damn damn. Yep okay thank you. I'll head on out. And so that was a motion. Is there a second to go into executive session? Yeah I'll second that. Okay so let's take a vote. Cliff. Hi. I'm an I. John. You're muted John. I think he's frozen. Yeah he might be. Okay so Rose do you want to vote? Yes I. Okay so the motion is included inviting Alfie into the executive session. Yes thank you very much. Okay Katie's here. Thank you Katie. All right let's call the meeting to order. Is there public comment for items not on the agenda? Yes not. Are there additions or changes to the agenda? All right hearing none. Sandra. Cliff can you call up Sandra's treasurer's report please? Yeah give me a sec here. While he's calling it up I can tell you that we are for all intensive purposes on track with both expenses and revenues. There are some line items that look as if they're over but they're typically the COVID expenditures that are reimbursable. Most of them have already been reimbursed. That goes for highway and for general government. So I'm happy to take questions about anything in particular but we're really in good shape. Good so I just have I just have one housekeeping item just so we have it for the minutes. Katie who is um who are the folks Dell users IP? I'm sorry? There's a box that has two uh a couple sitting in what looks like a beautifully windowed room and it says Dell users iPad. We just need for the minutes who they are but you have to take yourself off and mute so we can hear you. Okay hi hi it's Laura and Patrick Purcell P-U-R-C-E-L-L. All right thank you so much. Sorry Sandra. Sorry Sandra go ahead. That's okay. Delinquent taxes are coming in. We started out the end of the tax collection effort down $175,000. We are at $75,000 at this point in time. So taxes are coming in nicely. 2019 taxes are all but collected at this point. There is one parcel outstanding for $365. That person has contacted me. He does intend to pay that in full. So we are really looking at collecting our hopefully most of our 2020 taxes before the end of the fiscal year. Now we don't typically do that. We get to the end of the fiscal year and we might be at $40,000 that still needs to be collected but that also comes in generally in the next couple of months. So we're really on target on on all fronts at this point in time. Sandra that's really impressive and I think when we were you know in the early stages of the pandemic almost a year ago we were this is exactly we were concerned that this would not be the case. I'm wondering I'm just merely a matter of curiosity are you hearing from others around other of your peers is just kind of the general experience around the state that maybe we're all hunkering down and not spending our other our money in other places we actually are it's easier to pay the taxes I have not heard that everyone is really working on their town meetings and elections at this point and I don't know when other folks are experiencing weird calluses is in good shape at no matter what happens I think we're good my can my only caveat to that is of the $75,000 that is out I have had very little I'm married couple do you think and you can swipe across why didn't it just what's going on you Colleen moot Colleen you shouldn't mute yourself anyway I've had very little contact with the folks that are on the list and this is about the time of year that the letters which are informative become more let's say persuasive to get that money in so I think we're going to be good all right well we'll look forward to future updates and let us know if you need any support all right we'll do any questions from anyone any anyone on the board have questions no anybody else all right excellent work Sandra thank you thank you all have a good night you too all right and we've already um I don't see Toby so I'm guessing that means he has no update and Alfred has no update as well hey Peg you want to share whatever you're drinking all right so um I would love to all right so it's red wine from the maple corner community store there you go so um Curtis pond homeowner's association who's going to be speaking on your behalf I will um Colleen we didn't know if you were going to be here so I'm prepared to speak so Colleen if that's okay with you I'll just go ahead let me interrupt for a second Cliff are we supposed to be recording this meeting oh we don't do that anymore since Orca is recording it we don't have to record it ourselves okay I guess I want to make sure that wasn't an error okay sorry Heidi okay no problem so hi folks um I know most of you but for folks who don't know me I'm Heidi Thompson and um I'm a member of the Curtis pond damn exploratory group and um we are here some of us from this group are here just to say hi and to introduce ourselves and to tell you a little bit of what we're up to um we're kind of an offshoot of the Curtis pond association which as many of you know was formed about three years ago um we're of a group of about about seven or so core members that have been meeting since the fall sometimes we've had more than seven um and um I want to you know first acknowledge that um in the early 2000s a lot of you know John and and others did a lot of very very hard work um on the dam and exploring issues of ownership and how's it going to get paid for and you know dam studies and there was the task force that was formed and um kudos to you all you all did an amazing amount of work and we know things kind of fell apart related to um ownership and how it's going to get paid for but um what we've been doing in about the seven meetings or so are just trying to educate ourselves about those issues um we know that there is a lot of work to do um it's a complicated issue with ownership and insurance um again how it's going to get paid for um but we are just chatting together and um asking questions learning along the way and um we just wanted to make our presence known to you we're not here to of any we don't have a big ask um but we we are pretty clear that the dam needs to be repaired um as many of you know there was a 2019 study that was done that said the dam in essence is not in great shape um of course there was that Du Bois study a number of years ago and um with climate change very much in our midst another Irene would take the the dam down and it would fail and as again many of you know if it did fail um the state would not issue a permit for it to be repaired um so you know the Curtis pond association has been focusing on lighter issues like beavers although removing the beaver debris has not been no pun intended no not a light heavy lifting there but um you know lily pads removing some lily pads figuring out what to do about the lily pads and then vases but we are just feeling more of an urgency to deal with the dam repair issue um and want to move forward and you know want to ultimately work with you all and uh so we will we'll be coming again but I know Mark Mahaley has a few things to say and again thank you for having us here really appreciate it and I just provide a point of clarification or two absolutely um yeah thank you guys and thank you Heidi for putting all this together I know you're instrumental in getting this thing going thank you um there's points of a couple points of clarification um one and I think you all know this the engineering design and plan plans have been approved by the state the hundred percent plans have been approved by the state drawn up by duboyan king um yeah duboyan king um with regard to the ownership the town and its attorney our illegal research we confirm we know who the owners are it's the father gills um and rather than debate it and because we arrived at with father gills attorney an arrangement where their concerns over admitting to ownership even though the chain of title goes directly to them um it we rendered that more or less moot because we reached an agreement and the state was part of this um that we could apply the town despite not being owners of the dam we could apply for the the permits and secure the permits which was um required the state to change protocol and we've done that and upon construction of the dam and completion of the dam once that is done the and it receives that final engineers uh as built certification and final set of plans rendered approved by the state then the town at that point in time what has agreed to take take ownership of the dam in the vermont league of cities and towns insurance plan that we insured a town and town facilities and buildings under would then cover uh would then provide insurance coverage for liability um going forward with the new dam so we have that kind of all set up it's ready to go and really the only thing holding this thing up is the funding piece um it was last estimated to be 400 000 i would bet you'd want to add another hundred to that now uh because cost of concrete is just skyrocketed but that's all i wanted to put on on the table and let you folks understand that yeah sharon um i just my question is only to see a show of hands of the folks who are here as part of the curtis pond dam group okay yeah great yeah mark i was wondering like is there a is there an ecct thing no no no this i just happened to have a camp on our curtis pond and so got drawn into this but okay and it's all i think i'm pretty positive uh you know we're looking at each issue to see if we can find preliminary approaches that it'll be a win win for the people of callas for the town the users of the pond and the owners of land around it i've met with state officials and public and we've met with public and private insurance folks and talked several times to paul gillies who was one of the attorneys involved and we're looking at approaches on each of these issues and i know john i'm going to want to talk to you more but once we get a better grounding we want to return to you and discuss next steps the key issues are yeah the father gills own it but they don't want to own it so the question is what's the best way to resolve title in a way that title companies will live with and the bet that involves the best entity to take title i'm not sure it is the town it might be the town it might be a special district and then i've talked to pacif frank satin who's the deputy director of pacif and they would probably ensure ensure it either way depending on who takes it if it's in private ownership insurance is very difficult but then we're looking at possible approaches to dam renovation what's changed is that ben green is now the chief dam safety engineer and i think his attitude is very different than the prior guide there are distinct possibilities that might be less expensive for approaches to the dam but that remains to be seen and then and finally of course we're going to have to revisit the financing approach in a way that works for everybody because that's what we really want to do is is revisit this we have an urgency this time we're there we want to work with the town and we want to avoid replaying exactly how it worked the last time around and so we've luckily hannah smith who is the deputy general counsel of a and r it's an ex student of mine and she met with us with oliver pierce the lakes and ponds program manager at a and r and ben green and they're very positive and very helpful really helpful i think there's a general sense that people really want to resolve this they will positively they they want to this has been around a long time and so i'm optimistic that if we kind of are patient and do a lot of educating along the way and are kind of slow and careful this time around we can do something and when we know a little more and have talked to a few more people we'd like to come back to you and talk about next steps if that's okay with you but right now we're just letting you know we're nosing around but i'm glad that you're keeping us and keeping us and we'll keep us updated so we appreciate your work rose did have her hand up a while ago um i just wanted to let everybody know that um i became involved with the select board back in 2003 and from time to time i searched the minutes that i've been keep the keeper of select board minutes so i have my computer open in front of me and i came upon select board minute search for the Curtis pond dam from 2003 to 2009 and it's a 16 page document and it contains a lot of really good detail about what transpired it talks about the engineering studies it talks about recommendations um it just talks about everything that's happened since 2003 and i would be more than happy to email this to you mark um i don't think i have any other emails for anybody else um in your group but i know i have your email mark um and i'll also email it to the other members of the select board um but it just talks about the condition it talks about financing it just gives you a really good historical what we've been talking about since 2003 that's excellent rose thank you very much yeah yeah john um i know we're not going to get into the weeds tonight and by the way i hate that saying what i say it um it's overused we want to talk about weeds look at Curtis point yeah we'll get into the uh whatever um the one of the of the four hundred thousand dollar bill for rebuilding the or putting a dam ahead of the existing dam the concrete dam uh a large portion of that cost close to 25 percent was the coffer dam right which was being required by um quite frankly alan quackenbush of the wetlands program working with lakes and ponds we tried to push for an allowance so that we wouldn't need the coffer dam for you know three weeks we would do it in the summer um when you know the the species are can migrate into safer places as the pond is dewatered it's not an option in colder weather in the fall because they've all gotten it gotten to the mud to hibernate and then it can be found it's it's less of a risk to the biota um they can seek cover um and we try to have that dialogue actually given the the straight arm and actually alan quackenbush said as long as i'm here i'm not going to allow that well he's no longer there so that that might be an option mark uh that that would avail itself and that would take take a lot off the sticker price and it might be helpful i think that would be helpful we discussed that when i met with ben green and oliver pierce and and hannah and they acknowledged that what it is is the wetland folks want to go one way and the dam safety folks want to go another and you know how that will i think but we can take we can take another run at that the dain the interesting thing is um well just in a few words a dam has to meet a thousand-year storm you don't one way to do it is to raise the dam another way to do it is to armor the dam so that if there is a thousand-year storm and it's over topped it can stand to being over topped and my understanding is that that approach was not really available to us the last time around but i could be wrong but it is available to us now then green is definitely you know open to that but i think that's down the road a bit i mean i think dam design is one of the things that you know we're all going to have to look into and i think what happened john in oh 304 we have to selectively use all the work we put in but not be wedded to it if we've got a different cast of characters at the state and the coffer dam is definitely something to revisit your right right what he's talking about everybody is that you got to obviously to build a dam work on a dam you can't do it if there's water up against it so one way to do it is to build a dam behind the dam that's temporary and dry it out and then you can fix the dam and another way is just to draw down the water temporarily and that's the ladder is much cheaper than the i mean hundreds you know six figures cheaper if i remember right last time the idea of drawing down the pond was not an option was that ellen clackin bush down i'm trying to remember right yeah i think yeah that's what i remember but i did explore we did explore um we first had hired if you go way back in the archives i apologize my connections bad here tonight um we did explore rebuilding the existing dam um and there was an engineer morris root who said he would he would uh put his engineering staff on plans to rebuild a laid up stone dam as as they were built back in the 1820s or whatever um he said they they are actually safer than concrete dams and there's a whole presentation he did for us i think uh barry bernstein dug him up the problem with his approach was not his approach actually he just never came through for us he's the guy right and he never came through he lost you yeah and every time uh yeah he was it got to a point where i mean he used every excuse but to doggate my homework uh but his his closest excuse to that was well my wife's school went to france on vacation and i wanted to help chaperone yeah so you know so we got rid of them and that's when we hired duboy and king and they're they're straight up engineers uh concrete dams are all they do and all they're willing to put their engineering licenses behind so um they're may armoring maybe it i know that there was concern that the dam was was uh tilting um although we had documentation that showed it hadn't really moved since 1973 when that was first noted but the engineers at the state were still remain concerned and we couldn't get them off the dime on that so if they're willing to accept that dam as as it exists as being somewhat structurally sound and it only needs to be armored up that sounds great you know we'll have to see yeah john you i think john you and i were both on the damn task force weren't we yeah yeah and the spillway needs to be enlarged that that is there's no debate about that and that's not a hard thing to do um but um it'd be great if there was an alternative to spending all that money um but there you know one concern and you know this is where i struggled with the town paying the full amount of it was that is in uh said before and maybe some of you some of the other folks um the the pond is in a mesotrophic state and personally i wish that if i if i could if we had the ability to sway the legislature and or the administration to to allow us as a test as a pilot project allow us to drain Curtis pond and pull out some of that material that sediment is loaded with nutrient and it's filled in the pond to the extent that we now get lily pads it's both a nutrient issue and a shallow depth uh issue and so that's why we're seeing the conditions that we hadn't seen here before um and they're only going to continue to progress and i struggled with investing quite frankly all the taxpayers investing four hundred thousand dollars in a pond that was literally on its way to becoming a wetland um so i would love to see that pond have its clock reset as it were um so that the water quality would improve and we wouldn't see this movement toward its final end state which it's it's moving fast toward so that that's i wanted to put that out there okay rose did you have your hand up again no oh okay um nick my neck so we're just talking about oh i guess that a way please so nick i don't know if you can hear me we're just having that damn damn discussion nick he's got audio now oh we were just having the damn damn discussion nick guess he's having trouble too setting yep we're uh in terms of our presentation i mean we're happy to continue answering questions but we we just wanted as Heidi said we just wanted to our presence know and tell you you're very interested this time around and and optimistic great thank you very much tag uh does anybody know how long it would take if they did let the pond drain out and you know what john was saying to get rid of some of the sediment etc which i would take for my garden some of it um is there anything any ideas that a whole you could sell the sediment right okay it could be a fundraise i always thought it could be a great fundraising mechanism um yeah i mean that i don't think that pond's ever seen industrial waste put into it so it should be relatively clean nothing's clean in our environment anymore but we use what we take out um right around my dock we use it in our garden it's it's incredible compost true yeah no it's it's full of nutrients and that's what the problem is so it would be great if we could get a pilot if we could market it mark mahaley maybe he can work his magic and convince them that this was sorry i'm i'm not great i'm not i'm newest to zoom my question was um did anybody hear how long that would take to have the pond drain down would it be a whole summer's worth of loss of using the pond or yeah you you would lose i i know what happened up at nickel's pond they lost summer but they're they had to drain that pond anyway because the dam was at risk of immediate failure and different than curtis pond if that thing failed it would have been a cause massive massive damage although curtis pond is a high risk dam as well most of the cern believe it or not is what not water flowing uh past a breach but mud consider part of the impound impound uh liquid so that's the concern okay is there any is there any further discussion on the dam or any more questions comments thank you for making time on your agenda guys you're welcome glad to hear glad to hear you're working on it thank you very much yeah this is great guys take care we'll be in touch there bye bye okay very good well that's good news all righty somebody coming in or off can't tell it's nick coming back to niece he he what i think a lot of folks are struggling with internet i know tonight is weird it seems like maybe it's the snow nick did you have something you wanted to add or eileen no i i just came to listen to the discussion thanks okay great no i'm just hanging out that's all and um nothing better to do okay thank you you're welcome so um just wanted to debrief a little bit on our meeting we had on saturday thanks to the magic wizard wizardry of our amazing technical person cliff emmons everything what went off without a hitch kudos and claps and champagne to you cliff we're making it all happen without missing a beat well we had a great team a lot of people helping out which made it a lot easier for me um and i think the big saving grace was agreeing to perform it as in the webinar format because that really preserved a lot of bandwidth and the issues that we were seeing tonight with so many people on board uh would it just been magnified considerably if we had tried to do it in the zoom meeting format yeah but i'm happy to serve i'm glad we were able to accomplish it yep yep it went off it went off very smoothly everybody was prepared um i think one of the counts when i was looking i think at one time we had like 48 attendees i mean the number kept going you know up and down but we had 12 i think was 12 panelists and then at one point we had 48 attendees so for a meeting on a saturday where there was really nothing to to vote on and nothing could be changed i didn't think that was too bad of a turnout yeah and i can add that um for the benefit of everyone here the uh zoom video um to get published and it is now available on the website uh denise is going to make an announcement on porch forum to let the community at large know that it's available for viewing i am also looking into posting it on youtube but there's a couple of extra steps before i can do that but i will get it on youtube and then we can also announce that to the town because um it'll probably play a little cleaner uh once we post it to youtube then it'll play off of the zoom cloud account which is where it resides right now and i don't think or i never i sent orca if i had several different emails for them and i sent them notices of the meeting but i don't know that they were really there i don't remember seeing them on as an attendee view yeah i saw some of the postings you did regarding um the meeting and attendees but uh you had posted or a separate post about using the gmail account and i don't believe that one ever got published no i think what happened is i i posted twice in one day and sometimes they limit you and that's what i found out that they post because the larger post i did included that same message so they didn't feel it was necessary to post the additional message okay so they make those kind of situation like that again what we can do is pull in judy and she can do one hosting and you can do the other yeah so um i don't know did any did anybody have any thoughts or comments on the informational hearing you know it was our first first time i have a i have a question um i i did get feedback that it went impressively well which i agree with um it went really well really really well um what was my question oh the fact that everybody um cliff is it is it exclusive is it the web webinar format that accounts for why the attendees couldn't they i understand they couldn't why they couldn't see each other i actually appreciate the bandwidth explanation um the fact that they couldn't either they could also not see but this is my hand over in the right hand column uh the list of names of who else was there is is that also a function of the webinar format that's correct okay it wasn't that also a decision we made at the rehearsal no that's uh something that's built into the zoom webinar format attendees can only see the number of people participating in the meeting they can't see the names of the non-panelists they can only see the names of the panelists okay so the only way then just so i'm understanding how this works so the only way then would have been to every time an attendee spoke was to make them a panelist is that what i'm remembering well when when the attendees spoke their name would appear on the screen much like you see orca's name on the screen right now yeah and then once the permission to speak is removed they just go back into the attendees tab but to be able to see their image um and while they're speaking you would have to make them a panelist and as we were practicing in the dress rehearsal we realized that created other problems and also really messed up the flow of things because there was an extra layer of delay while the attendee was bumped from the attendee list and brought into the panelist list and then that was duplicated when you reverted them back to attendee status right okay so it made more seamless by allowing people to participate as attendees only yep okay good thank you for that additional explanation okay i'm curious if they could see each other when they were there's a lot of messaging in the q&a so if someone posted a question or a response or liked it could they see who was writing it or did it just say attendee no it would have their name who asked the question and actually that brings up something else i'm wondering um i could download a file and put it into an excel format of all the questions that were asked at the meeting because we answered them verbally they won't have the answers to them but we could create that list of questions um and publish written responses to them for the benefit of the community if anyone thinks that might be of value i don't remember whether we maybe and did we did did gus um like articulate the question i don't remember yes yes he would read them out loud because we thought that would be a good idea because we didn't know how many people might be attending by phone they would not be able to see the questions on the screen right so every single question that appeared in the box gus would read it aloud say who asked it and then someone would step forward to respond to it so it's all there in the video yeah i well i think that's good enough because if you just post the questions and somebody's going to have a great idea of why don't you type all the answers out too clever right that's why i was saying if we did that then we would have to take the time to type out written answers i mean i think that you didn't already have to jump on that sure i'll i'm i will volunteer for lots of worthwhile things um yeah i don't i don't think unless unless we hear a huge outcry or something like that i mean i got i got good feedback um people were amazed at how smoothly it went compared to just like a regular zoom like we're doing tonight so my thought is let's just publish it as video or whatever you're calling it okay that's what we will do john are you john i want to know is john still there is he frozen there he's in the state house well i'm still here i got my video turned up because i'm having okay i wasn't sure if you were really there or not i i also would point out that um our webinar license uh will expire uh we only purchased purchased it for a month but um it is an option to keep in our back pockets if we know there might be a large turnout at a particular meeting we could opt at any point to purchase another month's worth of webinar so that we could handle a larger meeting with uh less hiccups like we're seeing tonight what's what was the cost with yeah um i have to go back and double check that it wasn't horribly expensive i want to say it was around 132 for a month oh okay that's not bad so if we ever needed it again we could just purchase it for another one-time monthly chart that's right as i recall it you it's probably a little bit more than a 132 dollars because as i recall if you purchase a year's worth it's 1400 dollars okay all right very good anything else on informational hearing anybody wants to comment notes questions i just want to say i think it went great you know i i think it it it couldn't have gone any better and you know kudos to cliff but everybody worked on it and you know yeah it was it was a team it was a truth it was a real team effort to make everything come together so yay i'll just add that i thought it'd be assuring that um so there could be an occasion in the future where we would need to have 140 people in a forum and i just it was sort of like a maiden voyage made me feel like okay we we hope we pull them off with 50 that's promising for a future yeah yeah all right um updates if everybody done with this topic it looks like i just googled it um if i'm looking at the right page on the zoom uh landing website it's 140 dollars a month for 500 attendees under for zoom video webinar yep that sounds right all right um john do you have any update for us on you want to give us some update on central montosan waste management district all of the things that have happened with that um well you know bill powell is our our primary rep there so i don't attend the meetings unless he can he cannot and then of course we as select board members denise and i interjected ourselves over the glass dumping issue um so as you all probably have read that case was settled um i actually in my professional capacity did a record request of the uh agency natural resources because the settlement agreement did not uh include admissions to the listed violations which i saw back when i worked there we that was a necessary prerequisite to settlement and the primary reason is so people couldn't run around say they did nothing wrong and behold i got my records request answered and the reason they didn't require is because they pj donovan changed the policy that had been in place for 25 years for no apparent reason and um i got a memo that explained why the the process before they changed it was so good and why it was important and then i went and changed it anyway so very odd uh i i smell political pressure and so i attend legislative zoom meetings and i testified before legislative committee environmental committees i will be tomorrow too um and uh these chitness all waste district official that actually directed the dumping testified last week that they did nothing wrong um and uh the state got it all wrong and they paid a $400 to avoid greater risk of cost of litigation so um this is what the world we're in and um unsunfortunate the dumping the waste that was dumped was not required to be cleaned up and will not be cleaned up there is it's viewable but through satellite imagery that's how large it is um and there it resides so i don't know i'm a little discouraged by it um dj donovan's using it as a campaign issue he's already campaigning i think he's going to run for governor uh that he's just this uh intrepid enforcer of the law and he's using this as his case one of his cases in point so uh regarding the district uh they did all they could i'm really impressed with our solid waste district i'm really happy with how they responded on short notice with you know a lot of information thrown at them they did a great job they wrote a nice letter um they did all they could do they um the select board our select board and our district and other districts and towns weighed in and it actually resulted in a better settlement agreement than they were contemplating um so as it could have been better but you know there was a $400,000 fine i guess it got their attention i hope it did um and i do know that i had a conversation with a legis a legislator i'm not going to mention the name at this point doesn't make any sense to do that but uh they're trying to get uh an after-the-fact evaluation of what were the circumstances that made put that resulted in the chitin solid district feeling they were so pressured that they had to dump the stuff and not inform the state they were doing that um and so you know that you have to at the debrief you know look at the situation on the ground and wonder do we need to reevaluate existing state policy and reassess where we're at and where we're not going or where we should be going or where we intended to go and maybe did not reach that those objectives and so i'm hoping that there'll be a a review a legislative review of the current state of affairs with regards to recycling and waste management in general and see if we can get state policy improved so we don't see a repeat of this and we actually see uh better systems put into play so that we uh are more effective at kind of reaching those goals of reduction um and reuse before we recycle so that's i got i guess all i got to say i talk a lot i'm sorry but that's where we're at not much to report from center of montsoil always district however thanks for being on top of that john okay um town hall i think there's not much town hall update um the election is being held um for in person at the town hall on march 2nd the office staff have made arrangements for the town hall to be cleaned before the 2nd is happening on the 25th they're going to come in and do a thorough cleaning and use the um whatever i forget what the name of the stuff is but it's a biodegradable safe spray they're going to spray all of the um you know the doorknobs and bathroom fixtures and things like that and it's supposed to last the um i forget how long it is it's like three or four days or something like that yeah it's the same it's the same chemical or the same non-chemical that they use at the co-op to spray down the shopping carts and the bathrooms and doorknobs and all those kinds of things so um andy felice is working to get the um shoveling done and cliff you found you got the hardware for andy to install on that door yeah we're going to get the automatic door closers installed so that we don't have the problem of the doors not closing all the way when people are coming and going as they drop off their ballots and we need to uh do a tickler to alfie to remind him to make sure that the lot is cleared right and there's also been a request um because of the angle at the exit of the parking lot that uh he dropped some sand there right so you have any friends update come uh no friends uh didn't have their um meeting this month because we cleared the deck to allow me to work on prepping for the informational hearing but our next meeting is scheduled for uh the 11th of march and um we are working towards revising the management agreement so that we can present that to the board at a later date okay great great great and maybe you're sick of it but is there anything else on it to update us on um no the only thing to be aware of there is that uh we're coming up close to renewal time for our contract with rb tech and we'll be making arrangements at a future select board meeting to have ruben come in update the select board as to what they've done for us over the past year where they see the holes coming up in the coming year as well as an opportunity for us to as well as the office staff to make them aware of any issues that we need them to address and you'll remember that was that was one of the things that we asked them to do on a annual basis when we spent time over a year maybe two years ago checking out other vendors to see you know if we were going to switch vendors and one of the things that we talked to ruben about was annually giving the select board an update so we just need to schedule that to happen the contract comes up for renewal in early may so we're going to want to do that sometime soon and it's actually baked into the contract for them to do it so they're the ones who proactively contacted us and said okay it's coming up so we should get this on the schedule yep yep so they did what we asked them to do nick this is what i hope is uh getting close to wrapping up on the elder grant with two um it pieces one is we're still waiting on rb tech to come through with the two laptop computers and the other is the new website which has been kind of moving along at a crawl uh but judy's been slugging away with with uh office gov office they've um just just this week completed the graphic design phase and we did it's helping a little bit with that and are now starting on the content phase so um i'm only bringing up because uh the terms of the grant say that we this we should have had this finished on december 30th and i don't think anyone's going to come after us with you know with pepper spray and bull horns but um on the other hand we were hoping to get it wrapped up as soon as we can you know when you might have um something available to present to show the board where we're at with that yes i um i wouldn't i don't want to jump ahead of judy on this but um we do have a link to show the the graphic uh design and but but not the content so well maybe we can just do that out of you just select coordinating and ask judy yeah um okay great that'll be nice when it's done it's gonna look fabulous i'm sure it does look good good and with regards to the laptops um we have them now the ram find ram chips that we needed finally came in and it's just a matter of coordinating with everybody's schedule for a tech to get out and help the individuals get them up and running okay uh we will also um need to this was not part of the algae grant but um there are a few of the computers that we need to update with the current version of adobe acrobat so we'll be arranging that as well great um denise i missed the first part of nicks statement i said we got we're late on finalizing uh something required by some grant i what grant was that for the elder go ahead next yeah it's it's the grant that that helped us purchase um the updated website and uh for laptop computers and a couple of printer scanners and so on uh and we were supposed to have everything operational by december 30th but we when we were talking about that though we thought that they wouldn't come after us with pitchforks if we didn't have it done right right yeah all right thank you um that was a grant we we already received payment on right correct uh so i wouldn't worry about it okay well i'm the guy who signed saying i'll go to jail if we'll bake you a cake nick oh okay yeah i'm happy to drive you to the jail i've taken a bus yeah but you have to wear masks all right are there any other updates um i just want to uh note that this is the last meeting of our session um echoing all of the comments about twice the meeting i send rosa note in the chat and tell her i'm going to miss her say it out loud now um i don't like us cry and that but that means that that next our next regular scheduled meeting after town meeting is a the beginning of a new a new year a new era time to hit reset and so um i we are having an organizational meeting in our first meeting and i hope that we can dedicate the better part of our organization of the meeting to an organ to organizing kind of taking that time to step back and pause and say how are we going to work together over the next year and um order our ground rules what's our framework and just yeah walk into the new year with absolutely no assumptions and um and you know revisit all of all the i think we have a lot of assumptions and i hope we can revisit all those assumptions and test them with each other and put a framework in place for how we work together and all of that good stuff that an organizational meeting for a board should be about so looking forward to that okay um we have some minutes to approve does anybody want to say yeah that looks sounds great i i want to say it sounds great i'd like and that i Sharon sent us all a a summary and a lot of what's in there is what we've kind of over the years agreed to do but we've kind of been slow getting off the marker we've been inconsistent in all of us and applying us those kind of greed upon standards so i think if we get the stuff in down and writing and we can it's something to measure against also getting something in place for when you know me well i got another year and i'm out of here but eventually all of us are out of here even young katie she's gonna one day say you know i've been doing it for 45 years and i'm done um so um it'd be good to have a night organizational structure in place for the next next board to pick up with so i think it's it's in the interest of the whole town to do that so yeah Sharon sounds good you're welcome all right i yeah i just want to say thank you too and thank you Sharon that's really sweet but i read what you had sent around and i thought it was very well thought out very effective um and i just hope that you know you can hit the reset button um and i just want to say that this covid thing has really been not good and i just think we're all doing the best we can but it certainly in my view um is not efficient at all so i would hope that everybody has their button on you know the moment that meetings in person can um resume even with still masks or sitting six feet apart i think that there's something to be said for sitting in the same room so that's my hope that's my hope that we get there pretty soon the year is young i think we're all hoping for that rose thank you yeah yeah cliff you wanted to say something yeah i'm sorry i forgot something under the it update oh okay go ahead um if you scroll the bottom of the screen and click on reactions you'll see you have some new tools yes i thought they were very much they were very fun so just want to make sure everyone is aware of them there's a yes and a no button that we have now we have signs for we all have the ability to raise our hand and we have um prompts for hey slow this talk down a little bit or we should speed it up a little bit what is this okay oh slow down that's slow down speed up oh how clever how clever all right how much fun is that yeah this is it slow down i don't understand oh yeah it just it it just asks the speaker to slow down oh okay i was afraid how do you make it now how do you make it go away it'll pop away or you can click on it again and it'll go away oh oh there we go how how much fun is that okay talking about fun about um we're pretty much caught up with minutes i think we have minutes from maybe the 15th um first one i see is from two eight two eight okay i see basically three sets of minutes that looks like unless there's someone not showing up on my screen and i went through them today i didn't see any other inputs you know what i i thought i know i reviewed those and i thought i made a comment at the top but katie gave me a little tutorial today so um yes i did review those and they seem fine yeah i don't know where my comments went because i put a note at the top that i had reviewed them yeah huh okay is there anybody that has any comments or changes to the minutes does anybody want to i wonder can i just can i just ask well ask my question after you guys approve rose would you like to make a motion to approve the minutes sure i'd be happy to do that make a motion to approve the minutes of February 8th yeah thank you i'll minute i'll second that all right um anyone to vote i'm a yes rose hi cliff hi john yes jaren uh i'm gonna abstain okay you wanted to make a comment i just had a question okay um did anything come up i didn't see it in the minutes but i'm just curious about the trees committee no that didn't come up i figured it would be in the minutes if it had but yeah no i know that i know they're working on it but it they didn't bring it up and 15th and 17th i think are combined right katie yes other than a few minor typos that i'm sure katie would catch on a reread i didn't have anything when i reviewed these and again i know i looked at those and thought that i found some typos and made a note at the top but again they're not there but like i said katie gave me a tutorial today so i can hopefully do a better job going forward i see her i see comments here from you denise on page um there it is yeah i think that was that it was it anybody else continuation yeah anybody else no it looks good to me is that a motion rose yeah i'll make a motion that we approve the minutes from february 17th and february 15th and february 17th okay is there a second i think johnny's seconded oh did he okay all right are you ready to vote Sharon and hi okay thank you and i'm an i rose i cliff hi john hi okay that takes care of that um i would like to make a motion for the board to go into executive session to discuss a personnel matter denise we do have the minutes of the informational hearing that we could approve if you want to oh i don't i haven't looked at those okay i don't know if anybody else did we'll hold off on it but i do want to say great job katie and i'm amazed you caught everybody's name as well yeah you do a fabulous job thanks guys thank you so we're gonna um i'll make a motion that's a motion to go into executive session to discuss a personnel matter at 806 right is there a second by second okay let's vote Sharon hi i'm an i rose hi cliff hi and john hi all righty thank you katie thank you orca thanks everybody