 I'm sure you did. I just knew it was like on the fly all right. Well, welcome to an in-person select board meeting that we have As everyone can see there's also a zoom meeting happening for an Amazon comfortable attending Which is completely fine We're obviously there's new technology here, so we'll see how it goes so we'll start with a 7 o'clock meeting for June 7th select board first motion for a business would be to agree the agenda Yeah, I was just wondering if we might move the mask mandate the opening discussion To right after the public let that be the first thing you talk about I'll move up to the organization of the plan is only department to the first item in the man Okay, so speed a and Speed a Are you okay with those things? Yeah All right Any further discussion or addition? All those in favor you say aye. Hi. Hi It sounds agenda items minutes the May 17th meeting and I like your life I make a motion to approve the consent agenda items Any further discussion all those in favor please say aye All right, moving on to public this is the opportunity for the public to speak on anything that's not currently on the agenda Yeah Yeah, no problem. I just Since we've been doing to do and we've also just been stating that This isn't the only opportunity for the public to speak you also can speak during any of the other agenda items, so It's gonna be a little interesting here with this with zoom. There's a raise in your hand There's also a chat window, so we'll do our best if you feel like you want to speak on a topic and we're missing you Just yell out or something and we'll figure it out and as we understand the technology we'll learn more But this is not your only opportunity to speak as the public so with that All right people on the on the zoom here us Yep, we can hear you Your phone, right? Yeah, so you can come up to speak so they can so the people that are I Skip Landers and one of the E-foot commissioners and Some of you remember back in January Actually every coffee was a long time library resident sort of a different board passed away in December and I came to the Select board to see if you wanted to sign a resolution of sympathy listing Some of his accomplishment and what he did for the community which Mark and I did You approved it in the e-foot commission approved it. I think we signed it on January 11th or something like that and I have talked to members of the family about how they wanted us to present it to them that Mark and I offered to meet with them if they There's four of them and things and they never got together and got back to me so they had ever Committal service and then I Think it was May 22nd in yeah May 22nd up in library Center Cemetery. So I had this Resolution of sympathy and I'm going to take it to the service and give it to the family And when I got there there was an opportunity for the public For people in the audience to speak about everything I talked to the family and said be mine if I read this So I did read it at the service and then handed it to Don coffee to the oldest son Let the eye were there at the service not Representing anybody but so so I think it ought to be in the minutes that we delivered that resolution I'll set the beat of a family on May 22nd We'll put the same thing in a minute of our Commissures meeting on Wednesday So I thank you for your effort to do it. The family was you know, please with us Thank you for doing it at the At this Lefty and I spent a lot of hours I don't know if he was ever on the select board, but he certainly intended a lot We value this opinion. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. All right Hi, thank you I'm Aaron Lander the resident of Waterbury on Shaw-Manton Road speaking on behalf of the Waterbury area anti-racism coalition also known as work in our over 90 members At the May 3rd 2021 select board meeting my colleague Aaron Hurley read a statement from work requesting the resignation or removal of Chris Viennes from the vice chair position due to his history of racist statements and Insufficient efforts by Chris to acknowledge or apologize for these statements While we remain encouraged by the prospect of ongoing equity and anti-racism learning for the select board and town employees We continue to request and encourage public accountability and transparent decision-making around the decision to elevate Chris to the vice chair position this March Since the May 3rd meeting municipal manager Bill Shepulak and three select board members Mark, Danny and Mike Had meetings that were in compliance with open meeting law with members of work to discuss this request through our concerns and share their thoughts We really appreciate their time and their thoughtful consideration of this issue and acknowledge their stated commitments to advancing equity and inclusion in our community Katie respectfully declined the invitation to meet and Chris did not respond Work is committed to continuing an honest open dialogue with the select board and to challenging racism at all levels including interpersonal racism and systemic racism To that end on behalf of work I'm requesting the select board update the public either tonight or at the June 21 2021 select board meeting On their response to the statement calling for Chris's resignation or removal from the vice chair position including the status of a vote on his removal In addition work request the board explain how they'll respond to future racist statements or actions should they occur Thanks again for your continued conversation around this and consideration to support racial equity in our community and we hope to continue to partner with you on this important work Thank you Thank you Do you can probably see Chris? You can see that Chris is not in attendance tonight? I don't know if you can see that from Zoom Yeah, so Chris is not here. I think you get the answers to what I saw. Okay So just a comment there. Hold on, Tom. Yeah, I think through the conversation it was an important conversation and understand that there are certain members of the public that are unhappy with the decision that was made. I'm not sure how to proceed personally And I think that not all of us in the board knew that the statement would be made tonight. I think it's Chris's absence I would say that I would suggest that we respond to the board at the next meeting at the 21st But yeah, I understand. I think for me personally I sat as the vice chair for a number of years and I saw it as more of a role to run the meetings and to run through the steps of the agenda and try to do the best I put it that position, but I understand that the public had seen the importance of the chair position as a voice for board And when those words hurt our community members, it's a problem And I don't know how to proceed here. I understand your concerns and I think that potentially we should have really thought about that decision Maybe a bit more than we did, but I'm not sure and I'm interested to hear if the other board will You know, the other board members can decide to speak tonight or if we can table up on the 21st, but yeah, I understand the public's concerns I couldn't have said it any better than you did Mark. I concur with everything I do think with Chris not being here I think that discussion should go and again, since the 21st looks like we're going to be doing racial equity and inclusion training That may not be the right meeting. We probably should do a good meeting there at Yeah, so I'm not sure and if you know later on the agenda, we're going to be discussing the racial equity training that will most likely be the entire 21st meeting That as far as we've discussed would not be open to the public and we'll discuss the reasons and the legality behind it I'm not sure if there would be a public session prior to that, but just so you know that's going to be voted on tonight that most likely that meeting will be in its entirety that training Great. I did see that on the agenda. Thanks. Yeah, I'll stick around and listen to that discussion too I'll just add it's the same thing, but just so that it's in public record and so you can hear it from me without Chris here I do feel a little uncomfortable speaking about it I think it's most fair to have the conversation with him in the room. I've spoken with you know members of work and separately some members of the board and Because it was my very first select board meeting I did not know how to handle the situation when Chris was nominated and looking back I think there's a lot we can learn in terms of training board members and talking about the election discussing the importance of elections to positions on the select board and how to proceed with voting So I think it's a really good learning opportunity and then in terms of the specific issue I definitely would prefer to speak about it when Chris is here as well No problem. So yeah and I think that's where we are right now here in terms of what you mentioned we as a board don't have the ability to remove someone from the board that's not a power that I just understand that we have any control over the only thing we could potentially do is Remove Chris from the position of vice chair, it would require someone to call the question and then majority of the board so that would be the only real power we have for Chris to remove himself from the chair position or the board. Those are, as far as I understand the potential things that can happen we cannot remove a number of the board. So obviously we are voted into these positions. So that's another way in the future that anyone can decide to try to change the board or decide someone doesn't deserve to be on the board. So that's how that's the procedure that could potentially come in the future. And I think we'll push this to an opportunity to work Chris is here as well. Because I do think that's a very good thing. Thanks. Feel free to have any comments back. Yeah, I think though it we're not at this point looking for Chris is removal from the board just from the vice chair position as a as a leadership position and you know he does get to then whoever's in the vice chair position then does get to conduct the meetings and designate how much time different members of the public have to speak during any particular issue. We're real. That's what we're looking for is just board to really examine whether he's the right person to be in that position and just share publicly then what the next steps would be, if you choose to take any action. So thank you. Thank you. Anyone else I think it's Tom your hand is up. Yeah. Okay. About a month ago, I had seen the grass growing out in the multi use area at Hope Davey. And I offered to do some limited mowing, as some of you may or may not know I have a newly formed nonprofit called friends of Hope Davey Park Incorporated. The bigger issue is about 10 or 12 years ago. I had asked about mowing out at the gazebo with my son because he had to do some community service. And at the time I was told that because of liability policy that privacy private citizens could not do maintenance or run machinery or run private machinery on town lands. I was told in a select board meeting the same thing that because of liability policy that private machinery cannot be used on town lands. And when I made the offer of being available to Moe, I was told that it was best that I keep an arms length between the organization and the town of Waterbury. I was also told that the select board specifically needs to be informed and must approve of any improvements or new developments on town lands. Okay, with that being understood. There was a massive private mowing operation Memorial Day morning at eight o'clock this past Monday. There was four large three zero turns in a large rider and probably in the area of eight weed workers and tremors and probably 15 private citizens for a good portion of the morning. Taking down the the fairways out there in the multi use in the pathways in the multi use area. So I guess I would like them confused. I would like to know what is true. What is the town liability policy, because I've been requested to to both have proof of my corporation and also to have private liability insurance for something that I can do for the town. And I'll be in a position to do quite a bit and ask nothing of the town that's kind of the reason why I formed this, but it appears to me that there's a double standard, and that the approval process is not. I don't believe there's a protocol for it. And I feel that I was discriminated against both in the previous events of 1012 years ago where I was told, No, you can't privately come on the town lands with machinery. And then a month ago when I made the same offer and was told, you know, specifically to stay off town lands so. So, you know, it said that it is these are waterbury town lands and that people need specific approval before they take the initiative to do anything on their, you know, on their own, which I have never. That's not one of my. So I guess the first question. I'd like to finish, please. I have one more sentence I'd like to finish, but I do feel that that there's a double standard and I feel that I was discriminated against in this instance I might have joined if I was aware, but it wasn't offered so that's where it stands. So I think the first thing that's important is to know whether or not Bill or Nick were aware that the mowing occurred. Obviously, the double standard question is, is does this group, were we aware of the town that this mowing was occurring and what happened from there. I think that's the first question because your comments are saying that you were treated differently if this might have been someone that showed up with mowers and just did it, you know, so we need to understand that before. Maybe you should have the feeling of you've been treated differently than somebody else. So I guess my first start should be to fill and then I see Nick is on the line. So, you know, happy to hear what Bill has to say and then next, but we might not have the answer tonight, but we can certainly. I don't have the answer to the second part of the question. So a little history, and I'm not sure what happened with regard to the, you know, game mowing situation that Congress described. But years ago when the, when the center chains golf course, this golf course was established. The select board at that time told the disc golf community that they could use the land at Hope Baby Park, and that they would have to build a facility on their own, and the town wasn't going to spend any money to put anything into that. And they would be allowed to do the work on the park. Now that's a long time ago, and I'm not trying to take cover and hide under Iraq, so to speak. But it may be that some of those people are still involved and they just kind of been going on doing this year and year out. Steve was here and was involved when the, when the disc golf course was first, first established. Now I don't know if you talked to anyone else, Tom, but you were the one, you reached out to me, and I was the one that told you that I didn't think that it was a good idea given your, you know, you're not a prophet that you've established trying to help. You know, you established this not for profit, helping out a town municipal park without having any conversation with anybody in the municipality. Maybe it came up at a recommending meeting, but it never was talked about here. So, you know, I talked with you or emailed you back and said, No, I don't think it's a good idea that that you know, I was specifically talking about, you know, the perhaps itself, not the disc golf area. We did work out an arrangement where you wanted to volunteer to do something with the, with the bar to pick up there. And I think I arranged for you to be able to do that. I know that there's been some email exchanges going back and forth about, you know, trying to get that work done. So I don't think anybody's trying to blackboard you. So I'm not sure what happened on the World Day. This is the first I've heard of it, but Nick is here and they know. So I'll turn it over to him. Hey, so, yeah, Tom Tom is Tom's right there was mowing on Monday, Mark Starwall emailed me a few weeks ago and mentioned that he was going out there to mow on a scaled back level based on conversations that he's had with the, with the rec committee and whatnot. I talked to Woody our public works director as past practice and as chef like Bill had just said that the, you know, the running stipulation that is that that group was to take care of that area so the town didn't have to invest into it. We're working. I mean, as you all know and Tom knows, so to try to form something new here, something more in writing but for now, I was aware of the mowing I didn't know it was going to be X amount of mowers from the email it just sound like it was going to be Mark. To add a little context to Tom feeling discriminated I did apologize to him. When we first started talking about this volunteer effort. It was at some point $200 had come up and between me and the town foreman we we thought that we were paying for materials or somehow paying Tom. And so I asked him for you know anytime the town town can't just pay people to work so I asked him for you know our standard vendor forms are you know our contract and liability forms proof of insurance. After Tom and sent all that I went to the bookkeeper and she's like confirm that it's you know, volunteer or talk or if it's something we're going to be paying for. I confirm with Tom that it was gone. It was going to be a volunteer effort. And so therefore I didn't need any of that stuff. And I apologize for that explain that to him that it was just a misunderstanding but that's that's the context I have on that on that topic. So, to make the board members clear on how volunteers and machinery procedureally should work. Obviously you should contact the town offices, but there is a path to allow that we're saying, but it needs to be with a representation of insurance and what is that procedure I mean I guess I guess my question is, honestly, did these, did this group have insurance for their equipment, you were aware of this. I mean I know we're talking about this now were you aware that maybe they should have had insurance. What was that procedure. The insurance procedure is for if the town is paying a vendor to come on so like when we tell the gardens. We really should revisit the whole thing. As I said, my, my guess is that the people who are mowing are still operating on an agreement when things were much less formal with a select board. I don't know it's 1520 years ago that golf course was built. So, you know that that they, they basically dealt with that area. It's only since really last fall when, you know, and I'm not blaming on just the issue of the multi years and the conflicts between the disc golfers and other people who want to use that area really just came up last fall. And so I think that I know the rec committee has been working on policies and protocols and are you still there. What, where is the rec committee in terms of, you know, the process that they've been going to through to address the issues that Tom and others in the community have brought up. That's really the crux of the issue I think. Yeah, they Frank actually sent an agenda to Carla and I today but it looks like on the agenda they have on it to talk about the, the laundry list of issues or problem areas that were identified throughout this process. Frank Frank's pretty confident that we can check off a few of the issues and then, and then the language that they're recommending is still being officially formulated but there were some small things that we were able to do on the side like request for a trail use counter. I didn't get it. The state is using both of them right now, but there were some small, small steps that they were able to kind of present to me and I've mentioned them to you. But nothing concrete in front of the board yet they're still working on trying to sort everything out making sure that they have the best language going forward for eventual signs and whatnot but you know, they've been working on it so Can I ask a question though. So what Nick what will the procedure be once there's a policy through the rec committee and rep department then will it go to the municipal manager will we see it as a select board like how does it work that we can stay with what that procedure is. Yeah, so, so the rec department is the municipality so that the rec committee separate their volunteer group. They're an advisory board. So they, they are going to present their recommendations based on how they see it through the view of recreation in the town of Waterbury, they're going to present it to theoretically me and select board and the town manager we're all looking kind of one. I'll I go to the meeting so I'll be able to give input on like, if this is feasible or not. But they will eventually bring something to the select board meeting for all of us to see, and then from their staff will go in and implement the changes that we can we can do that are approved, you know, etc. I think the other thing too, you know, Thomas brought a reasonable concern to us. You know, probably a good time maybe to revisit the arrangement with the people who are the disc golfers, because I think part of the issue that comments had and others have had is that it seems that the disc golfers have been given a pretty loose leash, so to And there needs to be, there needs to be a plan, you know, a land use plan, if you will, what to the what is the expectation for this property. And while the select board might still choose to ask for this opportunity to pay for and even do the work that's necessary on the course. The work that's approved by us. And, you know, they shouldn't just be allowed to go out there and say, wow, we want to take these trees down and we want to leave this year. There should be a plan that comes to make as the right director comes so that, you know, Steve, who the planning department was very instrumental, as I said, in the development of the hope they depart. And ultimately, it's a municipal facility. So the select board should be the one putting the final stamp of approval if you will. So we've got to revisit the whole process, I think. And thank you for bringing your attention. Yeah, some things and I think the other thing too is if they're not going to formalize themselves and someone within the rep department or committee to help with that arrangement. That is one of the things they're trying to do is get them to kind of formulate a group similar to water. There's been progress on it, but there's also been. It's also stalled, you know, members aren't stepping up, who have been doing the work and whatnot. For multiple reasons, it's, it's, there's a lot of pieces to this, but yeah. I was going to say, you know, thank you and thank you, Bill. And my main concern is for the town is liability and exposure, and it's huge with power tools. It's huge. If someone hacks their leg and goes to the ER, they're not going to talk to that buddy that owns it. They're going to call you, Bill. My lawyer said this happened on town land. So these are big issues. These aren't to be tossed aside. They need, they need policy. So thank you. I appreciate your willingness to hear me out. I agree with Tom. I think maybe this is like a parking lot issue that we need. Not so much even recreation. I think we need to speak about liability issues in general. Because I know when I was chair of the conservation commission, when the reservoir was drained, we went out with weed whackers and chainsaws, cutting down, rush, you know, before the reservoir was going to be refilled. And that was a volunteer activity and no one probably thought anything. So we probably do need to look at what the town's responsibility on any activity is in terms of when our liability coverage is and what people need to do if they are going to volunteer. Or also talk to council and see if there's a liability waiver that there's some kind of path is not still allowing the work to be performed, but remove the town's risk. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. We have to continue to move on Tom, but we'll continue. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Yes. Hi, thank you. Back to the racial equity piece and Chris Vianza's vice chair. Yes. Oh, by the way, I'm speaking as an individual constituent and I live in Waterbury. Yes, I mean, as far as what to do. You know, I think that a warned agenda item, of course, it makes sense. You know, to not do it tonight, but my suggestion, my proposal would be a warned agenda item on a vote to remove him as vice chair with a roll call in the meeting minutes so that the public knows who's voting which way. And I say that is because, you know, as you will learn in your training, if you haven't, you know, if you haven't don't already know it's either name and dismantle systemic racism, or you uphold it there is no neutrality. There is no in between. And so doing nothing and saying, Oh, our mistake you can vote him out in two years is upholding systemic racism. You know, it's, it's not in the walls, it's in the people that govern and that's you and it's in your decisions. So I would ask for a vote with a roll call. And as you consider that I would, I, you know, and I will say this too so that you can reflect on it in advance. I'm also happy to state it again when Chris is in the room. This is a position of power. The vice chair is a position of power your procedures say so. Your procedures are clear that the chair and the vice chair when standing in for the chair, get to rule on all questions of order or procedure and enforce the rules as required by one vsa 312 h. The statutes are clear that it's the chairs responsibility to decide how public comment is run. I just needed you stated and it's pretty clear just by watching any meeting that the chair does talk the most on and so the vice chair in their stead. That's a whole lot of power. And so, you know, a defense or an excuse or something it has been proposed on a number of times by a number of select board members that it's not a position of power. And I respectfully disagree and I think that the law and your own procedures are pretty clear to that. And then the other thing that I just don't want to get lost in this is that this is a what you are voting on or what we are asking you to to take a stand on is not one incident. It's not one thing. It is a pattern of behavior that has happened over and over again, despite the fact that people have reached out to Chris individually, and he hasn't responded. And then when we reach out publicly, he plays the victim and acts like nobody has reached out to him individually. Yet again after the 419 so he made statements, racist statements back in September and then in November and then in January, and then all of you elected him voted to elect him as vice chair in March. And then when we first brought this issue up on at the 419 meeting. He went on a tremendous unprofessional diatribe that was very much directed at a member of the public, who was speaking on behalf of an organization and was talking about systemic racism and Chris made it very personal. So not only did he say more racist things at that meeting, but he did not in my opinion show conduct appropriate for a select board member and certainly not for a leadership position on the select board. So, so when you vote. Please know that it's not only about Chris's pattern of racist and harmful behavior, but it's also your endorsement of it, right, because when you voted for him, whether it was and, and if it was an honest mistake, wonderful undo it, you can undo it. So that really the vote isn't just about his behavior, but your endorsement of his behavior through your vote and through your inaction. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Any other public members wish to speak before we move on to the agenda. All right, moving on to select board business mask mandate. So as many people are probably aware, we voted in a mass mandate. I don't remember what date it was. And it's still in place as far as we know the thing. We're all aware that CDC has come out and said that back fully vaccinated individuals actually don't need to wear masks. So it's a discussion on whether or not we modify or remove the mandate. Yeah, thank you. You really hit the high points. They're already the governor, as you know, issued an executive order for COVID way back in a year ago in March, March 13 2020. And shortly after that, a couple of months after that, the town actually followed suit and select board adopted a mass mandate in the town of Waterloo, which applies to businesses as well as public facilities and public institutions. We've never, we've never gone out to enforce this rule, but most businesses in the community still have signs up the signs signage is beginning to change a little bit. That's reflecting a little bit more of what the governor has said. So on the 15th of May, the governor amended his executive order, and this order will stay in effect until June 15, unless he updates it earlier to be tomorrow or as early as tomorrow that he makes a different ruling. But right now, it says mask use section seven absolutely amended and we stated that the executive order is hereby amended in its entirety to read as follows. I'm not going to read the whole thing. But in effect fully vaccinated people affected immediately. This is May 15. And the zoom activities without wearing a face covering only motion mouth or physically distancing except where required by federal state or local rule regulations. For the purpose of this section fully vaccinated people are defined as those who have received the second dose and two weeks of pass and that second dose of the five without modern vaccine. Or if they received a single dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine after two weeks of that. Inside on vaccinated people are still supposed to wear masks outside on vaccinated people are not required to wear masks. Outdoor public spaces provided that they don't have close contact or sustained contact with people from outside their household. So, there has been a lot of questions asked of me and asked of staff, some from people here in the building. Some from people in the community. And I would suggest that it might be timely for the select board to lift its last mandate now. And just make a motion to to withdraw the local ordinance dealing with masks and simply state that people are asked to follow the governor's states directed. And, you know, that's the case. If, if people here have been fully vaccinated you can take your masks off now. And you don't have to worry about. So, I'll stop there and see if you have any questions from anyone public staff like board members. You know, I agree with everything you said, Bill. The only thing I would change is that our mass mandate goes when the, you know, emergency order is lifted, which is probably going to be in a couple of days. But I'd say the two should be concurrent. And we could make a motion tonight that has it that it gets lifted when the state of emergency is in. You could have to wear a mask. So even though there's states emergency order has been amended to say that fully vaccinated people don't have to wear masks now you want to make us wearing masks until the state of emergency is completely canceled. Well, I think that's going to happen, you know, again, based upon the number of vaccines that's almost imminent. And I always say, why have this interim step and we kind of, you know, just do it when, you know, we're going to have in a couple of days. The interim step has been instituted by the state. I know. Could we put both in whatever we passed? Could it include that we'd like to lift the mask mandate in accordance with what the state mandated and also when the state mandate changes our municipal mandate will follow suit. So that we don't have to do this again. Is that clear? We would have to do it again. The only we put in place with the mandate as far as I understand, so if you remove the mandate, we're following state rules. So we don't have to do a second. Okay. So like you don't want to do it now in accordance with what the state mandated or state guys. I just thought it would be cleaner to have it when it's the state of emergency is going to be done. You know, as a matter of fact, the governor said he will go on the air. I know his conference is tomorrow, but we may not get 4,000 vaccines by tomorrow. So it's probably going to be by the end of this week. You know, I think even sooner. Would changing it still allow businesses to create their own policies based on their staff and. Well, no, I mean, right now we have a mandate. It's a local decision by the local or I don't, I don't have the motion that was made, but we're not enforcing it. People are beginning to relax their standards, so to speak, and they're complying with what the governor has said. But we have a mandate that says you need to wear a mask in public place. So if we don't change anything that stays. And because you're the body that makes the rules, I think it would be very inappropriate. At least in this building, if we ignore the fact that you left the mask mandate in place. So, sure, I'm sorry, my question wasn't clear that if we do make a change now, could a local business still encourage. The executive order goes on. It says businesses, not for profits and government entities shall continue to implement measures, notifying unvaccinated customers and clients to wear a mask. And then, you know, the legislative body of each municipality may enact more strict local requirements regarding not used in those set forth herein. Businesses may also have more strict requirements. If a business feels strongly that they want their customers to wear a mask, they can still demand that, just like they can demand tuition. Yeah, like I understand your idea, but I think that there's also an important thing to show the leaders that we're confident in the science and that we're on a good path towards going out of this pandemic. And then I said we should remove it and move on to the state. I think when we did it initially, because we didn't die, but I think we as a board also felt like the state was moving back on our roadmap. But I think now we have a mandate in place that is behind where we are at the state. And I think that we're luckily number one, I think right now in vaccination. And it's been proven as a very effective way to work against this fire. So I think it would be important to select board to make decisions, might to say, you know, I would take the mandate away. I have no problem with that. We're just looking at the optics. So, you know, we're having a statewide thing and we're just, you know, I thought it would be like a two step process, but I guess we can do that ahead of time. And then the rest. Well, I don't think we're doing anything different. We're doing it what we want. And stuff with this. This has been those rules since May 15. We're not saying that we should still, I believe the CDC rule is that you should stay on the state road, if you're unvaccinated, you should continue to be wearing masks. So removing a mandate that is saying that any person, no matter who you are, should be continually wearing masks. I think that the removal is saying that we're moving to mandate but now it defaults to the state and federal rules surrounding that. So it's not saying we're saying water raise masks free. We're saying back to you as people that are fully back the full time after a year, two weeks that you can now remove your mask following these guidelines that the state is following federal guidance. I think that's a very important part. I have no problem with that. So I'll entertain a motion that everyone, anyone get what Bill's going to lay out the motion. We will comply with the government's executive order and fully vaccinated people are not required. So move. Second. Thank you guys. I think that's a really, that's a pretty big moment for Waterbury. It sure is. The second part of that question was about reopening. So mask mandate slash reopening. The municipal offices have been closed to the public except by appointment for a long time. And we've been talking and, you know, we have to kind of plan things and some staff working from home. And I expect that will continue. Three weeks or so ago, we had a staff meeting and at the time the governor was suggesting that it was going to be July 4 when things kind of fully open. So we kind of plugged in, I think it was like July 12. We're looking to reopen the building outside of the building completely that the library will begin to have in person patronage allowed sooner. But the select work doesn't have to take any action. But if you have concerns about opening on July 12 or waiting until July 12 to reopen, you can talk about it now. I think you were talking about continuing appointments for land records after that or not. I am strongly considering requiring appointments for federal searches and lawyers. I don't have one public terminal. I don't anticipate that we would have two or three people at once, but the appointment system has been working really well. We've been fitting everybody in a point is three days a week. Has there been any pushback about the appointment system? No, and I think I think a lot of them actually find it more convenient. Yes, they don't come. Something we do during COVID that we never did before was email tax bills and booster cards and fees and hope they pay us. Which I don't think you should assess when we receive the payment, but we're talking a couple hundred dollars. It's worth. But for planning and zoning and recreation and things like that, we plan to basically open the building. I think for us, logistically, if we can just count on the 12th as we've been talking about internally, that will be helpful to us. So that means the space would then be available for public. It's already available. I know has been for some reasons. We allowed, well, it was, we told people we have to get into June. So the cemetery commission has met here last week. John Malters got a hosting workshop that's scheduled here this weekend or next weekend. But yeah, we will start to reopen, taking reservations for the space is great. I don't need to take any action here now. It's just a concern questions on that. What was I am a B permit for NQ ID on July 10. Right. So, Dan McKibbin is here. Dan is the president of the road club. And the road club is going to be doing NQ ID. Typically it's always been the last Saturday in June, you know, the Saturday before the fourth lab because as I was just suggesting the governor was saying things weren't going to get back to normal and not be fully open to the public until after the July 4 holiday. In conjunction with the town pushed off the date to July 10. And I think logistically because they've already started to plan everything that nobody wants to move back to June. So, there will be an event at rusty Parker Park. And they made a festival permit for that. When I sent this memo out on Friday, we've seen a plan for how they were going to segregate the Park for the purposes of selling beer. So we're going to do what we did two years ago and fence that most of the park, except right across behind the monuments close to main street will have a fence across the park there. We're going to have two entries, one in the corner closest to park row and main street on that path. Another gate directly behind the pump house. It's the same configuration we used two years ago that provided perfect control for us if we're going to go out and making sure, you know, no journal of ever just come in and no, no beer goes out. We are going to have a small number of food and multi vendors, they're going to be along Park Street and park row. We can be within the fence. We'll let them come in. Early afternoon on Saturday and then we'll put the fence around them. And there will be, we'll be selling beer only. Nobody will be selling any alcoholic beverages there. Who's the actual carrier of the liquor like Tom bedowski is filled in the paperwork as a member of the rotary. I thought you have to be like, like, do they have to be a liquor license connected to this like a year or bar or restaurant. You just do an event with fear but how does the sale of beer to them. But I guess I'm just trying to figure out, I've done large events like this and I know that it can be very difficult to just manage the crowd. And I'd imagine that you're going to have this roaring 20 back to an outdoor event. So I would just make sure that I was just wondering who it might be because I just want to make sure that they're aware of how chaotic this could get and how you control it. But certain sizes require double fencing and there's quite a bit to this and then I guess next question would be just liability and how does that work. Other things just on town land here then obviously there's dram shop law. I really thought about it until thinking that this could be actually crazy busy. Which is a good thing but just making sure there's a plan to be busy. I'm not an expert on the state liquor laws but I know we're following the same protocol review in QID for many years where we Tom is our expert on the state liquor laws and gets trained and trains all of our servers and our servers servers are not we're checking IDs and everyone are not drinking and you know you're very strict about following the guidelines and making sure we're not serving any related people. We, we have not had any control issues in prior years at NQ ID. You know we're hoping for some festivity this year but we're also not putting the event as widely as we have in the past. You know in the past we've aim to get cast as wide a net as we can this year. We're trying to keep it local and you know we're not doing a lot of advertising. And I know Carla deals with the liquor licenses and the select board and I'm not an expert on it at all. But I believe this festival permit as described is a way that organizations like the Rotary Club can get a liquor license to do this directly. But they don't want a liquor license. Yeah but they don't need to have you know I mean we'll make sure that's the case. But when when Rotary has done this in the past I think it's direct the licenses direct. And so the question to us is the approval of the permit. Right. Right. And any other board members have any questions for the notes that you sent that the application was not yet complete pending this. What does this make it so now you have a complete application and what we're approving is is fully finished. Yeah I think you can you can still make a motion to grant the permit condition on all the eyes being dotted and she's being crossed. We'll make sure it includes the state. Yeah we'll make sure with the Department of liquor control that we can issue this directly to that. I believe we can. So there's an assumption they're going to lift the other thing to work for allow or that as far as right now because we hope that goes away. So we have to put that comment in the motion even though we're pretty sure it's going to go this week. Yeah we will be approving a permit for something that technically isn't allowed right now. I think you can. That can be part of the conditions. I think it's important that the state protocols and the liquor license is you know we're saying the issue in accordance with. Yeah we've studied the guy state guidelines very meticulously and we're all really different things we're opening up faster than expected. But that's the primary reason we moved from June. And was to be in step four. So, you know, we didn't have to have tracking this vaccine isn't as we all know very high probability will be out of all controls for July 10. Just a question. How does the parade part of this, you know, because I assume that if we have everything being lifted the parade. Go on just the way the house. So it is going on. Right, right. This isn't for the parade this is right this is the part the part where we're asking what you're being asked to act on tonight is the festival permit. It's not allowed the sale of alcohol. They've already reserved the park, the park is owned by the utility district they've already reserved the park through that process so it's just the festival permit again. I guess I look at the festival and the parade all one kind of thing. So we'll approve the festival. Permit for the not quite independence straight day parade on July, July the 10th subject to lifting of. The governor's part of our governor's protocol. I think that the year sales condition as well, which we wanted to put in that motion. Part of the festival permit is yeah. I guess I have one quick question for additional discussion. Are you bringing in a third party security company for this, or are you planning on doing all the security yourself. Right now we've got bills help and the tenant whites help both of the state troopers assigned to water barrier going to be on duty all day. Do not think we need additional security. One of the primary concerns are traffic management during the parade and traffic around the rules from the firework, but having them on duty, you know, near or in the village, if there is any issues. Good thing. We, you know, since we stopped having a carnival is the last time I think we really needed any security on site. We've been debating that today we've got a meeting on Wednesday to discuss that further. But I would, you know, appreciate maybe offline your thoughts on that bill, if we have additional security or just rely upon the state police. Yeah, well, I mean, you can do it either way but the, of course, what you've got to be able to do is have enough people that are stopping traffic at all the various intersections and two state troopers aren't going to be able to do that. So you're going to have to be able to, you know, keep traffic from coming off of slow street traffic from coming through the roundabout the new ski street, the other end of main street so I know in the past you've used sheriff's departments to help with that but I'm sure you've taken all that into consideration. I'm sure you've taken all that into consideration. So, the rotary is working closely with the fire department on the logistics for the parade, but I will make sure that we have a staffing plan to cover. My thinking was state police at each end of main street like at the traffic circle and down by Batchelton Street, but we'll confirm exactly control the traffic at each intersection. Just a point of order. We should have probably had a second before. Oh, I do hear the second. Okay. Right. We say hi. Hi. All right. Next up is special event permit for the anti car show, which is a car show that came to us. Yes, sir. And I think there's someone here you want to come up to the table and introduce yourself. My name is Robert Chase, and I'm the co-chair of the Vermont antique and plastic car. Mr. Chase is very thorough. He sent me that same manila. Well, not that same manila and the world, but he sent me a manila and more like that. That has everything in it that you could ever think to ask for. I did include just two or three pages in the packet I sent to you, which describes the parade route, the road closures, and the little map. But if you want to take a few minutes to talk to us about your plans, that's great. Well, there's a couple things in the three that way and three that way. And relative to your earlier discussion about COVID things, you put this over on the very back. You'll see near the bottom that we have stated on there, whatever COVID things are in effect at the time of the show. The other thing is we'd like to change the location of the street dance. Previous years we've had it down at the train station, which we thought was going to be a wonderful place and everything, and it was okay. It was kind of the atomic train station with the cars up front and all that. But realistically, it's a long ways from the center of Waterford and the sort of nightlife of Waterford, so to speak. So we've proposed to change that up onto Stowe Street, and I believe you've had other events on Stowe Street. We have a direct festival and so forth, and WDEV is really the sponsor of the street dance and takes care of all that. They're really excited to do that and have that on Stowe Street. We're proposing to close off Stowe Street from Main Street, kind of up over the driveway to have its union street. Park some cars alongside of the street and have the street dance there. That ends it up so that people want to go get a bite to eat, they want to go have a drink or whatever, because we don't have any alcohol. We don't sell any alcohol or anything in our event. So that allows that all to happen right there on site. So this is different than what you said to me, right? No, it is not different. There is a piece on here. Since for the street dance, you want to close Park Road, South Main Street intersection, stopping traffic from traveling through Park Road, we'll provide access to the center parking lot. No, there's an update to that. I think I put how many cars were there? I don't mind if it's an update, it's just it's not anything that I saw. You're trying to make it because I've been to the car show many, many times and it's making it much more like what it was in Stowe when they closed off the Main Street and had all the cars. And I think that's actually a much better idea. Let me see if I can find the opportunities to read as well. There's a separate page here that I denoted on the front, because this is something that kind of came along here. You should have a copy of this. I've got this and I've got this. I don't mind. I mean, we can shift gears. I didn't say anything about this. I didn't plan it. Yeah, it was a different thing. I apologize because this was kind of an update as everything happened. And we really like to change that. WDVs were excited about that to change it. It would really work better. So your parade group? The parade is the same. And notice in there, there is a, we had reserved Cresty Parker Park and everything and the anticipation for having something there. That's all the books to use for caring in place. And I have permission from Levi Weiss and Waterbury to use the porch on the train station to announce for the parade and so forth. So those things are. That's fine. Again, I don't have any problem. Just for the select was benefit. And I'm not asking you not to grant permission to the using Stowe Street for the street dance. I think it makes a lot of sense for the reasons you just described. And it gets people a lot closer to the business area. But the festival permits, the ordinance that we have that talks about these permits. I guess the select board needs to take into consideration how many of these things are going on. And so also one tonight's agenda. The next item I think is looking to close the street for their 90th anniversary. And as Mr. Chase suggested, the, our W is going to be counting. It's our expense later in the summer. This year. September I guess. August. June. July, July 7. On the notes you sent out, it says you and the stuff. But I couldn't do that. How many of these happen generally each year. I know of arts best and then generally. Typically that's typically that's been there is the arts best. And again, I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't approve it. It's just, you know, and I think it can generate business. I think it's a big plus for the community, especially, you know, I know I have had a car in the show in the first year when they had it in Waterbury, but they still have the street dance and Stowe and I said that's just really bad. You're going to have the parade at three, four o'clock in the afternoon, and people are going to be done and then not going to want to come back to Waterbury. So we didn't have it then. So the first week. I mean, when it, but there was a gap. There was a time when they sort of still sort of thought that we were going to do that, but we never had. If we made the move to Waterbury made the move to water, you know, that it's a huge generator thing. Have you ever had any complaints from the businesses on Stowe Street about like closures like that in the past? No, because like I said, I imagine. And then I was asking how many cars are in the dance. And do you think you need to do the entire drag race or could you go from Main Street to where whatever. Yeah, so I know it's been to do that. And then some of them take the whole bridge, obviously the construction going over the bridge, but it does take out a route. But I'm just wondering if you think you need the entire first because of the amount of car. Kind of because I was envisioning that we might use a little bit of the fit well to parks up in that first little bit of it goes back to a parking area. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's important because that is public municipal parks as well. So then we're saying that we're going to be moving that part of bid well to. I just I'm trying to. So that wouldn't be able to be event parking if it's being used as well. So street over the dry bridge to Union and then down bid well to basically slippery cafe or continue on. No, I don't want to continue way along. I mean, just in this is sort of a work in motion. So I think it would be disruptive to have cars come up over the bridge and suddenly eat. You know, you can't really go here and try to cram down. I think it would be easier to stop it on the northern side of the bridge. Most locals know how to work around it. I just take it all the way to just those three. You also want some of it well or not. I actually have a little bit of, I think, but basically the parking spaces that bump into. The other side is private. Yeah. There's private parking spaces for the property. So that's not all ours. I'm not totally comfortable with doing that. I don't know how to navigate that unless we got approval. If we knew before tonight, maybe we could get approval. I mean, I guess if you want to close off bid well, I'd rather not shoot the traffic. I think we can do that in this meeting going down any of bid well and closing it and continuing it for your event. Which I know, even maybe the Arts Fest does. But they must arrange something with, I don't know. And if that's going to interfere with people, that's fine. You know, if you don't want to go down there, that's going to prove that also with, like, as long as the property owners don't have a problem with it as well. You know, and we're not trying to step on people down the earth. And one of the reasons for moving from down near the train station, there's kind of a large residential area just south of the train station here. And I know that the first year we had it there, there was some people there that were a little upset with the noise level or the, not necessarily, not that it was real loud, but just, it was kind of encroaching on the residential area, I guess, is what I'm saying. And by moving it up into town, we felt we could kind of alleviate a lot of that. Sorry, what are the hours for this? What would be the hours for the closure and what are the hours for the gun? Oh, let me see. And six to ten. Six to ten. When the closure happens, what responsible ability do we have with the municipality to set up any of that closure or is it on the event? Yeah, we typically will send, you know, some couple members of the highway crew to put the barricade up and stuff like that. And we used to take them down. That's not a problem. We can. How do you do that? If it's at six, when are we actually doing a closure because people are parked on that street? I don't know. How does that work? Well, and usually also a lot of the participants are parking there because they usually, they don't park them like normally. No, again, that would be the thing to control that once the barricades are up there. There's so many parked on it. Shopping. Shopping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. Shipping. I think it would work with revitalizing one way to try to let the business community know and forget the word out that the streets going to be closed that, you know, from six, whatever, try to be off those streets by five o'clock or something like that. Okay, any other questions from the board? I think the other thing we should quickly discuss is because of the next agenda item and knowing that there's another event on 9 11. Does anyone have a problem with, you know, basically one month, right? I think they're fun, but I know that some people might, and if any, I don't know, we've tried and if the general public says up there you did that three times or they're like, thank you for doing it three times. I don't feel most people are you pretty excited about just coming out and being able to do an outdoor event. I think yes, maybe events. Yeah. Yeah, to me and just the economic vitality of coming off of a pandemic. I think it's a really positive thing for the community. Especially this event. I think the timing will encourage people to patronize the businesses. Exactly. Now a car's going in and out during the dancer and you'd set up the car and the dance. We want to leave the cars there and not let them move in and out. We always have one or two that somebody got to get out. Not only that's what reason, but basically you've come to park at the dance with your antique car. And how we have done that is you have to have a number of registration number from the show. You can't just show up with an antique car and park there. You've got to be a registered show. You have a registration. And then you park on the street and you stay there for the event. Because if that gets like nine to ten you're going to have a few that are going to wait. But your group will manage that car to get out. I would probably like a local health and a recommendation. I don't know where they're going to be called. I think revitalizing Waterbury doesn't have enough people. But how did you how did you do person on the past for you today? Who are who are the other revitalizing Waterbury took care of it fully for a couple years. And I talked to Karen now that I'm not sure that she has enough people to do that. We have some of our people. But I would say that we would, you know, or if you have another organization or suggestion, I would certainly reach out to them. You're really just maybe navigating a car going in and out from time to time. But you're not. There's no other part of this. There's no fancy food. You're really just managing helping people across the street and stuff like that. That's the health. No, the health is just in maybe parking some of the cars and getting stuff in. Yeah, we don't need to help. Once I've already made arrangements for a police officer. We've hired one of the world county. Here's department personnel to be on site. So that's included in your. Yeah, I think most of them obviously we hope that the event coordinators will find the help that they need. But if we can help put you in touch with groups in the area that we're happy to do it, it doesn't sound like you're going to need a ton of people. And that's, and I have a feeling that people standing there with their cars will also help get another car out. Yeah, I think we can make this work. There will be another event in August. Weekend of 28. Friday night of 27. There'll be a concert. And a documentary show during the intonation. Saturday is the 10th anniversary of my reading and rw is planning a bunch of stuff. I don't know all of what rw has planned for the weekend, but it's driving or something. I just know that sometime Saturday. Or the arts will be unveiling. But my understanding is there will be the documentary will be shown here on Saturday. So there's a bunch of things that they've been talking about. But that means you've got two events. Chair, but I think our conversation around the number of events is the number of times still free to get close. So right now we don't know rw would be asking for the closure still free for that event. Unless they come and ask us and at this point have a feeling they already had another event coming up in. So if they can find space, that's not closing down to those three or we can discuss it, but they haven't put in that request. So I think it's a town-wide thing. They will be doing tours. There's articles that I will be doing walking tours that fall on Saturday night. So I don't think anything will be closed down specifically. They would have to ask us anyway to do a road closure. Yeah, we'll keep an eye out for it, but thanks for that. Okay, any other questions on the anti-car show permit? Any concerns from the town? Are you fine with this change? Bill, in terms of the closure, I think we can finish that. I think we can. Anyone want to make a motion or any other questions? I can make the motion. Moving to approve the event. As requested, but amending the location of the dance. Street dance to the street. I'll need to. Great. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Go street. Okay, great. Don't add anything else. The approval page of the permit. Now, I, when can I get a copy of that? That it has been approved because I would like to take that approved copy to the state for the state permit. Is that something you send in the mail to me? Yeah, I can do that. Okay, if I could get a copy of that, that would be. You want it mailed or emailed to you? Either way, whichever works for you. All right, well, and I apologize. I didn't put that. I put an update frame in there and everything. It made me in there, but I read. I thought I read the whole packet. Thank you for coming in tonight and being in person. Okay, thank you very much. When I send it to you, I may put some contact information from some people from the rotary club. They may be willing to help you. I think that we could use a little help kind of getting some cars in and so forth and situated and so that it just goes a little smoother. When we were in the Stowe, the Stowe Vibrant Seat Group did that thing for us and parked a lot of the cars. And it's a sidebar. They particularly separately and they had like several food tents and alcohol things and everything else. But that's something they did on their own and did the and helped us with the parking. Yeah, I would continue to engage as part of it and there would be a good continued part around. I mean, where would you be planning on putting the stage because I know with the logistics, I know the way the Stowe event, you know, everyone's, you know, kind of parked, not caddy cornered and the stage is kind of set back. Waterbury is a little more tight. What I've envisioned is that WDUD will probably want to run right out of their studio and set the stage. We haven't figured exactly where it will be because it would don't need to really figure it out. You know, you didn't approve it. We could let you folks figure that out. Yeah, thank you. Well, I'm sure we can. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Hopefully it will bring to business. And we'll all be happy. Thank you. We are running a little behind. So we are moving on now to WEDD request for special event permit for live. Anyone here? No. No, there's no one here. So this is a pretty straightforward request as well. They would like the road closed from 7 o'clock to 2 o'clock on July 16. I mean, July 17. I'm sorry, which is a Saturday. From 1 a.m. to 2 p.m. And it's their 90th anniversary on the 16th. They'd like the celebration on the 17th. They'll broadcast their Saturday morning. And then they'll have features there. During the morning and early afternoon hours, they will be working, I think, with local restaurants to try to find, you know, food and things like that. Again, I think this is something that will. It seems like a reasonable request to me. It seems like a reasonable request to me. I think that's going to attract more people. It may attract people. I'm not sure it's going to attract people. Yeah. It's not going to be a joint. All right. I make a motion to approve the request. To close Stowe Street for the WBV. 90th anniversary event. A quick question. Are they also going to do the bridge or is it to that? Once they're closer to space. We haven't worked that out yet. They just say from the driver. I can talk to them. It may be something like that. I'm going to brush them. Yeah, this. We talked about this two ago. We talked about this two ago. I can't remember who it was. Jenny. So Jenny, Jenny champions sent an email to all the select board members, not to me. About this. Let me talk about meeting yourself. And Danny forwarded me to make sure I had seen it. My recommendation. Is to do exactly what we said. Which was. We played wash. All. Even though. Somewhere. I'm not sure if we'll go right up to the culver. We'll stop that. Once we pray. But we won't pay that last section. This year. They expressed concern is about monitoring dust. And rough roads. From our perspective. You know, it costs a lot of money to send the milling machine up there and to have to send it a second. You know, just to know the short stretch of roadway doesn't make sense. And as far as, you know, the conditions of the road, it's going to be. This isn't going to be a standard gravel road where we're going to bring in new, you know, two quarter inch stone and crushed ground. In terms of into life. It's going to be. The reclaimed asphalt. That will bring out and add to impact it. A few years ago, we decided. To remove the pavement. Little river boat from. To where that payment ended. And we did that there. And, you know, we never did that. So from my perspective. You know, we heard from that one. One person. So I don't think it's a. I don't think it's a terrible friendship. I don't think it's a. Sometimes. Next year. Did you. Have any contact with the Timmy's after that email? Any concerns. I think it's down to reasonable and I understand. Operation. I understand the people's. Yeah. But I think it's just. I think what we're doing is a reasonable. Proposal at a reasonable reasonable cost to the taxpayer. And I don't think it's going to create a lot of extra. You know, I didn't do it. We don't need to. Okay. Non discuss equity training schedule. Well, some felt. Pretty detailed explanation. The proposed training and budget. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty close estimate. The only variable will be how much. The overnight accommodations costs, but it's going to be. Right around that $1400. You know, I didn't spend. A couple of weeks going back and forth with Mary. I can. Just really. Understand exactly what she was proposing. Initially when I asked the question, she said. I said, well, you know, does the. Does the $200 an hour include your travel time or not? I'll be paying that travel. And she said, yes. So I came up with a whole estimate and send it back to her. And I said, okay. This is why I think it will cost. And she said, I don't know who will cost that much. Only charge. Half place for women on the road. So it definitely does. So anyway. I said the proposal was taking a purpose for contextual framework in the way. And I need to get back to her. She's scheduled us for the 21st right now. She's agreed that the estimated $1400 cost is right in the post-bar. So you need to do two things. One, you need to make the motion to. You need to make the motion to authorize the expenditure and do the training and then secondarily. You have to decide the way you want to train. And as I said in the email. You know, we. I would suggest that you do it. That we warned the select board meeting that night. As a select board training only, you know, other business conductive doing that. And if that's the case. You can do this in private. I've been from that with both Mary. And other communities that have. That have had this type of training. And though the school board has had this kind of training and they've done it in private session as well. And if you insist, I'll call a lawyer, but I didn't want to add the cost to this. We don't have to. I know I've mentioned to several of the people on work that this would probably be a, you know, the recommendation was going to be that this would be in private. I think that that organization supports the privacy of this. And I think it's very. It should be private. She said, you know, this isn't a, this isn't meant to be something that, you know, there's people or puts people on the spot. It's something that we want to encourage some free flowing ideas and conversations. So if you're happy with that, I would recommend that. Well, the training should be in. Completely private. Whether or not you want to hold a select board meeting. You know, I'm fearful that the public sometimes takes a half an hour. And the question would be if you want to move off the training at all. When we first talked about that area, you suggested that the training would be two hours and potentially another two hours. Once you put the proposal together and then in the emails to do, she's free thought and she feels that a three hour session at the beginning is best. So. She's, if it's going to be in the evening hours at all. She would define that in time after four o'clock. We're involved with staying here. She doesn't want to have to write to where she is. Late at night. She said she used to do that, but she was a little bit older and why she doesn't like to do that. So anyway, if the board wants to consider moving it out, I don't know if it could be for the board. Those are the things you've done in the past. Why are you unavailable at the point first? I can. Problem is before this, and I guess I didn't realize when I originally, we originally scheduled this. I'm kind of in a bind because I'm not contractually, but I have another organization that I'm working the whole weekend. We're Monday. We have, I have to break down down and chip and point down in Orwell. So I could probably be back twice. A normal meeting time of seven. I know that's going to place us at a seven to 10 o'clock meeting, which I know is a little bit late. I know Bill said if you, you know, and I may be able to get back a little sooner, but it all depends upon how long break down time and getting the stuff back to the Derby headquarters and stuff like that does happen. But all right. Well, seven to 10 is not a problem for me. I mean, all right, select board used to meet from seven until 1130, you know, I don't turn into a public data. I have some board members. Some board members feel that, you know, going until 10 is a little bit late. So it's really good choice. But you're saying seven will work for you. I, it would be real close. If I, if I not, I might be, and I would also recommend that we have, this is just the soul. I don't think we should have, you know, any auxiliary time for consent, you know, unless there's some. Don't have a meeting. Don't have to have the meeting is great. Are you both available? Yeah. I'd be very happy to push it later to have. Yeah. I might be able to be there even a few minutes later. Yeah. And that's why I talked to Bill about that. I think I can make it by seven. I promise any earlier would be really stretch. And then do the board to the board. See kind of what the train entails. I was very impressed with the trainer's qualifications. It just seems. And I think this is long overdue. I'm glad it's happening. Okay. I make a motion to approve $1,400 for the equity and inclusion training on Monday, July, the 22 June, the 21st, and that the meeting be in lieu of the normal select board meeting in a private set. Okay. Yeah. As long as teleports estimated at $1,400. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That you can stay. I'll move in favor. Hi. Hi. Moving on. Moving up the. Yeah. So. We just let Nick know that we moved up the zoning discussion. And we'll be a mess next. Okay. We changed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Just. Just for you. You're so special. And for Steve too. I reported to the board a couple of weeks ago that being a book by a baker. I'm sorry. And, you know, the zoning and planning office has been a very busy place in the last several years, including the pandemic. You know, there was a lot of activity that occurred. And, you know, we have a standard. We have a standard organization, if you will, under the month state statute, where we have a community planner and communities are not required to have a plan. Even if they have zoning that, you know, we have zoning one before we ever hired a planner. But zoning requires zoning administrator. So I talked to Steve a little bit about. Is there a possibility to. Make the offices. The planning zoning department a little bit more efficient. And I'm not here to cast dispersions, but there's, there's a couple of things that in my estimation, and following through the cracks over time. Enforcement is one of them, even though we've just taken some actions recently to enforce, you know, if you want to call it a jump there over on the report. And, you know, that's been an issue that has been ongoing for a couple of years now when we started to stop and finally ended up moving forward on that. And then, you know, the issuance of zoning permits. More and more. And that's one of our requirements that. When people make application for format, they've got to go through the process. We've got to have. Staff reports written to. So anyway, I talked to Steve about reorganizing the department, whether there was any ability to do it. And he talked to me about. Some examples out there. I'm going to turn it over to Steve in a second, but really. What this would give us is basically two people that would be able to act on permits and do enforcement. And we would hope that we would get a little bit more efficient in our, in our process. And I, I put Steve in charge of administrative oversight of data back a year plus ago when he was reappointed to the, to the position of zone administrator just to try to give a little bit more administrative support. And I think that's one of the, one of the things that we're going to be able to do. And I think that's one of the, one of the things that we're going to be able to do. I think that's one of the things that we're going to be able to do is try to give her a little bit more administrative support to help out. But now we've got to go through the process of priming somebody else. And this might be a good time to consider it. So the first thing I had Steve do, and I apologize, I should have sent this out to the board at least by Friday, not before, but back in May when Steve and I first talked about this, I asked him to put on paper. And he just talked about how this would work. And then I took it and I sent this memo that Steve wrote to me from Joe McClain, who is our attorney who helps us a lot in suddenly planning issues. And David Liu is one of his associates. He does a lot of the entrepreneurship, you know, enforcement or appeals and things like that. So the reason I felt I had to send this to Joe is that watery operates under the general laws of the state. We don't have a charter, except for the charter that the King of England granted us back in the late 1700s. So we operate completely by what the state statutes say. In Vermont, municipalities can only do what the statutes allow them to do. And one of the things that I thought was going to be applied in this order, actually is the fact that, as Martin said, those of you who were on the board a year ago, when we hire a zoning administrator, it's the only municipal position that the town manager does not appoint. The process for hiring a zoning administrator is the planning commission nominates a candidate for the select board, and then the select board takes that nomination, considers it, and then the select board can either approve it or disagree with it. They can't say, wow, we want Katie instead of Danny. They can say, no, we don't want Danny. And eventually they might get the candidate. But I was concerned. I said, well, how do we put this in place where we would, essentially what I'm looking to do is to have Steve to be the planning and zoning director and then hire somebody else to be the assistant zoning planning administrator. How would we go about doing this if the planning commission didn't agree because I think that they still have to have the nomination process. So Joe McLean looked at this and said, it can work, but the short circuit is still that planning. You still have to go through that process. So if the select board is amenable to this, and I think Steve may have thought the planning commission a little bit about this, but if the select board is amenable to this plan, then I think there'd be a more direct outreach from me and Steve to the planning commission to get there and to see how this might work because the planning commission will have to nominate the zoning, the person who's going to be the lead person. And it's a little awkward because if the planning commission doesn't want to do it and I want to hire Steve to this new position, the planning commission says no, well, then it's no, and it doesn't work out. And I don't say that with any, you know, bitterness. It's the law, that's the way it works. So there will have to be a conversation with the planning commission about this. So bringing this to the select board to get a little bit of input from you right now is what we need. I did ask Steve to actually write to new job descriptions for each of these positions. He got to that late Friday. I haven't even had a chance to review it yet. So we're not going to look at his own, the job descriptions tonight. But with that, I guess I'll turn it over to you briefly, Steve. Sure. You want to say anything and then let the board have some questions. And this is really the time where, if you don't like this idea at all, just tell us and then you go ahead and direct it. Okay, good. Okay, so this idea really started back when Dina was brought up for remodernation. The administrator positions three year term by state statute. So she came up to her three year period after she was initially hired, nominated and then pointed by the select board. So there was a lot of discussion with the planning commission around this process. And ultimately Dina was nominated and then appointed by the select board. There was heavy ups as far as reporting back to the, to the select board and the planning commission in terms of progress. But one of the ideas that came out of this and Ken Belvo who was the chair of the planning commission for time and had been the planning and zoning director Williston said, look, in Williston, we ran into some issues and decided that it would be, this was in 2015 when he was the planning director, they had coordination issues and trying to figure out more of a teamwork approach. They have a larger staff. They have a four person office. But Ken became the zoning administrator along with the planning being directed. I'm sorry. He was already the director of planning and zoning, but he was appointed to be the zoning administrator. And then another one of the staff was hired to be the assistant zoning administrator and fulfilled that way. Now, Wilson has a charter. So they were able to do that under the charter that the municipal manager was able to make these hires and appointments. So it's recently gone through the reorganization. Tom Jackman is retiring. He's the long-serving planning director, Rick Baker, who is husband was the zoning director. He retired and now they've reorganized where Sharon McShane, who is currently the zoning director is becoming the planning and zoning director. And then they're going to hire an assistant. It will be an assistant planning and zoning administrator. And so it has a charter as well. They have a charter as well. They don't have the right signature stuff. Yeah. So I presented this bill and I presented this scenario with Bill and he said, well, we're going to talk to the attorney. I mentioned this to the planning commission. We didn't have the opinion from the attorney. So I was kind of hesitant with the planning commission, but I said, look, we're looking at reorganizing the department. This is an opportunity. He is retiring. And we really want to create more of a teamwork approach. And with the developer view board, this is the way we operate currently where he and I team up all handed certain projects, do the preparation to the staff reports, present the DRV. You don't have to be the zoning administrator to do that. Dina will handle a couple of the other projects. And it makes for a more effective approach. Things are very busy and they have been very busy. So what this would do is it would expand that to include all permitting and expand it to include enforcement. And the, it would allow me as if I became the planning and zoning director to basically organize the workflow, delegate to the planning and zoning, consistent planning and zoning administrator, delegate projects, applications. It allows for collaboration. You know, I already collaborate in terms of applications that may need to, are not clear how they should be handled, how they should be referred to the view board, whether we need legal advice. So it really creates more of a teamwork environment, which I think is very beneficial. Right. Correct me if I'm wrong, because what I'm hopeful for is that it puts us in a position that we have two people that can actually do the work of the zoning administrator. So right now, when the zoning administrator is absent, so when Dina was furloughed last year, Steve became the zoning administrator. We already get that advice. If Dina goes on vacation, Steve's the zoning administrator. But when Dina's here, Steve can't do any work of the zoning administrator. So if he gets a complaint or if I get a complaint and talk to Dina or Steve about, well, there's an enforcement issue out there, under the current configuration, only one of them, only Dina, once she's here and do side permits, issued permits, refer things to the BRD, take enforcement actions and the like. And what we're hoping to do in this fashion is to be able to allow the director to delegate some of these things. And clearly when people go on vacation, the other person is very vested in to do it all. But we'll have two people that can actually issue permits. The permits will be issued in the name of the director, I'm sure. But there can be enforcement actions taken. So I'm correcting my fault that there's two people that can actually take action. That's true because the statute is set up with three options, the zoning administrator position, assistant zoning administrator position, and acting zoning administrator position. Now we have the zoning administrator and the acting zoning administrator, only acting in the absence of zoning administrator. When you set up a system with a zoning administrator and the assistant, they both have parallel authority. And I think they'll actually, the assistant zoning administrator could issue a permit. They can take enforcement action. And if there's an appeal of a decision, then that the person, the staff member who has issued a denial, let's say, of an application because in their mind, it doesn't keep zoning regulation requirements. Then when it goes to develop a review board under appeal, that person can defend their decision. And then the other person can step into the staff's role and advise the BRB and work with them around deliberation. So it allows for that separation of roles as well. So I think it's really two parallel positions. And then the other piece that the attorney recommended is that it's very important that duties of each position are held very carefully. And that would be in the job description. And I think that the idea is, I grabbed the job description is to have all those duties, we'll get the attorney or even then we'll go over them on the planning, that you get the planning mission, but I've talked to Alyssa down here, and I can't talk to you about any more, but yeah, because it's all been very much talked about. But we would present that, we talked a little bit about it at the last meeting, but I would present this plan, maybe Bill might be willing to join me. We'd present the full planning, say, you know, what is your view of this? You would be in the role of nominating essentially two positions and making recommendations. With the assistant, it would be more of an open advertising for position. We have candidates, they would be interviewed by the planning commission, planning commission would make up a recommendation and a nomination that person would come to this level. And full disclosure before you might have a question like, you know, if you did this, it would, in my mind, it would necessitate an increase in pay for Steve because he would have additional views and responsibilities that he doesn't have now. And full disclosure, when I first talked to Steve about this, I mean, we're still, we're still dealing with a pandemic and revenues and the like. We're a busy office. Dina has been working still now from home and from the base for a week. And when Dina was hired, she was hired as a 30 hours, I believe it was when she first came on and that's when it got to now 40. And, you know, my hope and I'm not going to hold out for this, but when I first talked to Steve about it, I said, well, you know, I think it would require paying fees for you if you did this, but maybe there's an opportunity to roll back some of the hours for the zoning administrator because now there's two people. That may or may not work given the workflow and that's something that we'll have to talk with the planning commission about and potentially in the BRD to see if that's in the parents. But I think that's all I want to say. If you have questions. Steve, look at who do you see in this new setup as being like the lead for the BRB, you know, guiding them and leading them in their meetings? Well, to be honest, Mike, the two staff person, people would team up. If it's a normal meeting, normally we have three or four. That's what we do now. So we're both there. Nina hosts the meeting right now. And then I would take a read on certain projects and of course the other, and certainly comment where I can ask her if there's something I'm not sure about. So I would prepare the staff report for certain applications. She would prepare the staff report as the new person. And we work as a team and it works very well because it's very busy getting ready for the BRD meeting to take because there's a lot of going on. Usually it takes a day or two of my time, to be honest. Other than that, I can dedicate my time to other things. So that's how I'm going to do it. I think that's a good way of collaborating to approach to it. So I was looking for the same scenario. They haven't had that, to be honest. Rich did all of the preparation for the BRD and Sarah is a big advocate for this. He works for Rich. So let's do another. What's that? What's that? Yeah, well, I'm going to say something. Yeah. We know some microphones. We'll pick up fairly well. But I don't know. Yeah, just have a question. If Steve is the zoning administrator and as I understand it, who do they report to? What is the zoning administrator report to? It's an independent position. Right. Well, that's a degree. Yeah. So, so the zoning is that I, right now, being a reports to Steve, that was put in place. Yeah. Before that and Steve reports to me. Prior to doing that, you know, reported directly to me, but really for only administrative purposes, just for, you know, time issues and, and questions about, you know, personnel policies that. And I've talked to Joe, the plane about this and said, well, yeah, the, you know, I, I don't have the ability. I don't have the ability. In. With being asked the zoning administrator to deal with. If there's job performance issues, I have to bring that issue to the select board and the select board, and eventually the plan is going to end up getting involved. So I can't remove the zoning administrator because I don't have the appointment apart. And even in this case, I don't think I would be able to remove the zoning administrator because of how we have to follow. General law. But it is complicated and, you know, it's another reason why. You know, a few of the reasons why I wish we had a chair. There's plenty of other reasons why I like not having to write a charter. It's a good reason not to have a chair. But there's a bond. Yeah. So the next one then is, you know, no defense Tuesday, but he's already super wicked busy. Like we don't get our agenda until the 11th out. So I'm a little concerned that. Not doubling. I know you're on a team player here. I just think that's the consideration of the planning commission. I'll bring up to the planning commission is the additional work load on speed bringing in a new person. Even I like the economy. Let me start by saying I like the framework that the zoning administrator is also the creative director. I don't know what happens with the community planner aspects of your activities. That would be a little bit of concern. And just because it's been on my mind lately, you know, we're, we're replacing this assisted. How long into the future until we're replacing or we're refilling. I mean, we're only here. So if we're doing, you know, one assistant, then we're looking back a couple of years from now or just being at a new director or zoning administrator. And so I just think that the select were to think about the grand scheme of things. And then we all want to retire at some point. And if we're in that focus in the people with stuff, I think we should keep it in mind. Right. It's, it's definitely concerning. And, you know, Steve's business is, is a concern that I have as well. Yeah. There's no question about it. It's very busy. And I preface to starting this conversation by saying, we have a very busy office. And I think from the, the, you know, the planning commission is Steve's customer when it comes to, you know, agendas and how quickly they get it and things like that. And I'm not trying to dismiss that. Because it's, it's really an issue. I think from my perspective over the last, I would say two years, there's been a lot more on raising a flag, saying, you know, the zoning process is just kind of grinding to a halt here. And, you know, unfortunately it has really been a challenge. And, and that's what I'm trying to address here. But that's why I want to talk about it. Just don't want to say it's going to happen. Yeah. But that may also be a personality too. Like we invited Dena, I wanted Dena to come to the planning commission to sort of, let's hear what her perspective of how the position being approved. Just her filling with the vision. And I'm supposed to come. Yeah. So that's unfortunate because I think we could all learn from just understanding what her perspective is. Once she sees words and what she doesn't, you can take it with a grain of salt. But I think it was, you know, I've had to get permits and I, I mean, honestly felt the pain. It's not been great. Right. It's not been great. But the issues. I think you have to look at the job role, not the personnel. Yeah. And that's what we're trying to do. Yeah. And clearly, you know, the last, the last four or five years have. It was the example, but some of the issues of permitting and certainly. It goes way back. So anyway. Yeah. I think this is a conversation. We definitely should have the next Monday. And I think in an ideal world, this assistant would assist with planning. Well, I would be able to delegate apps, whether it's something relating to. Editing some money. You know, someone's good at any field. Yeah. Or some other research project. So ideally this person will pull that role. But I think they'll never have to talk about. Yeah. I only came to listen to what the select board has to say. I don't really want to put my info here because I'll get that opportunity. Yeah. But to be clear, it almost sounds like in this scenario, we're almost training or. Right. So the place is because there is that. Planning. And don't need that. They will still have it. They will. This will be successful. Yeah. It could. It could, but I think, you know, certainly. I'll play it. Who's got the credentials that Steve has. I mean, it's educated. Yeah. He's got a master's degree. And, you know, so it may be that we're fortunate. We get somebody who's got the ability or the credentials that you want. But anyway, I'm not saying no to that market. And just not saying it's absolutely, you know, training. Yeah. I think it is true though. Yeah. Yeah. And I've been hearing. The year for that March. This everybody knows. So that is. I'll have 30 years in here. And. I'll play. I'll be. Number seven. But anyway, so what I wanted to say is I do think. That. Trying to put. and moving into the future as well. So, and I think it will be interesting when the conversation comes up with a planning mission, I know Alyssa is the owner of the charter. So that issue may come back to you at a later time, but I think we can make this work, make the supervision and work at work closely with the old person 28 years now. So I think we'll continue that supervising the new regulations. So you know that date, which I appreciate it, but that's the new planning purpose. Yeah. Sure. Is there a scenario that makes sense to try to consider increasing, I mean, I know it's not the eventual idea of the assistant for one year to get them fully up speed and then bring an assistant in mind of like spend a little bit more money or we're gonna go get an assistant and then you move on. Right. Well, again, my memory might be short and the calendar moves a lot faster. She talked to me about this and they quite some time ago when you just said that, I said, well, that kind of boils any of them to maybe try to hire somebody for 30 hours. Maybe at this point, if that's the case, if you're less than two years from retirement, I apologize, I forgot that. Maybe it is something that we have planning director and an assistant, planning director and whatever. Planning and zoning director and the assistant planning and zoning director. Maybe the person you try to hire now has the credentials that you might not see in your eventually. It seems like a worthwhile investment and it also already sounds like workload is a concern. So why try to do like 30 hours? We are concerned about that workload. You know, start off and set up the success for both positions. Now and that'll be 40 hours. All those are details. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like collaboration communication is something that many, including our municipalities shall go with. So I see this as a huge benefit moving towards collaboration and shared workload. And I'm curious if you see any benefit that existed to having a separation or if there's no real. When you say separation, you mean as a current? The current position. What are the legality about? Well, okay, a little story. The fellow named Jeff Kilgore, who some of you know, I know very well, who was a attorney here in town and retired who was the president of trustees for the village for quite a long time. And he was a great advocate for the planner not having to do enforcement and told me that a number of times he said, look, you're the planner. You shouldn't have to be doing enforcement with some of the same people that you're doing planning. So that is really the main, to be honest, from my perspective, that's the advantage of having two separate positions. Beyond that, I don't see a whole lot of advantages. And to be honest, when it comes to enforcement, sometimes I've been involved in enforcement and you just have to sit down with people on a one basis and talk about what needs to happen. But I think with the way that we are structuring this, even if you wanted to keep one of them more away from enforcement than none, the fact that the other individual has, both job descriptions would be broader and there'd be the ability to help out. So you could still segregate that, but the planning director couldn't be issuing permits and things. So I think it can work. Yeah, I think it can. That's the main advantage I think it has. Because there was talk and Steve, when we first hired the planner, we had zoning administrators, the zoning administrators were very fine in those days. And as always happens in municipalities, there were some board members who felt, well, why don't we just have a planning and zoning administrator and have one person do both jobs, which happens in many communities. And that's where John kind of came in and said, we need to separate zoning enforcement. So Mark's point is the algorithm has increased in some ways as well. In some of my, how does it like the steps of process that kind of, who increases the planning commission or does your role, because I do feel like there's something doesn't seem right there, or maybe at this is how perfect it goes. I'm not getting perfect in other times. I did recently go through it. So I felt like it was a little smoother. I don't know exactly why, but I do feel like I've heard feedback from people, so I think it's all going to get through the perfect process smoothly. I don't know if it's personalizing or if it's the steps or something within our process, but I think that would be one other thing I'd be very interested if we found someone that has education and some experience that could spend some time also in that year of overlap, talking about reviewing our process, getting feedback from people that have gone through it, and even I'm sure the ERD numbers and planning to have feedback on it as well. And then the next person that takes and carries that on to the next director is behind maybe the work that could be done in the next year and a half, or the other part of the case, but it seems like that's something that would be very worthwhile. And then maybe make your workload and their workload in the assistive workload somewhat easier because maybe we're just, there's something wrong, there's very more work that it needs to do. Well, yeah, I think there's a number of things. Some departments are very automated. They have permit databases that you want to fill all the data and virtually issues the permit for you to sign it. So set up that way, Rich Baker is an expert with the assistive. So that's one option. The other is really a customer service oriented process where there are kind of prescribed process deadline. Statute prescribed some deadlines. And one of the issues we've had is not meeting some of the stats for it then. So, but I think we do very well in the ERD process getting things referred to the ERD, getting things through the ERD. That's where some communities have a lot of struggle that it makes you forever to get through a development that you do for a Google process. So I think we do well there where I think where we struggle is with that administrative concept, getting an application in, getting it referred quickly, getting the permit as soon as it's complete, getting that printed out within two weeks or less. So that's where we struggle and the customer service issues that I think will definitely wanna crack as we move forward. And that's where personality and style come in. And we've had some zoning, and it's a challenge because, you know, I've been here a lot of time since I've been here a long time and sometimes you get a zoning administrator and, you know, they all read the statute that says the zoning administrator has to interpret the bylaw literally. But the board interpret is still in there and some people interpret it literally, but they're pretty easy going about it. And there's other people that know it's a really narrow, you know, you got to really hit a really narrow window in order to get, you know, your application to improve dean. And that's where I think sometimes, and again, I'm not trying to be critical of dean but there are some zoning administrators who will just say, well, you haven't submitted this yet so your application isn't complete. I don't have to act on it until you get this in. And so it's part of the process when it comes to hiring to ask the right questions and to try to inquire some philosophy from the dean as well. I mean, hope Steve and Dean are many times, you know, from my perspective that you got bylaws that we have to use to regulate things but your first definite should be to the property. So if there's a gray area and you're on the fence, whether the issue or not issue the permit, issue the permit and let the people who might not like it be the ones that appeal the permit as opposed to saying, well, these people might not like it so they'll deny it and make the property or appeal the decision. So anyway, but that's getting into the squeeze. Where do we go from here tonight? I don't think, unless you want to kill the concept, you really don't have to do anything. If you don't like this at all, then you need to tell us that. Any other board members that have an issue with the continuing conversation and work? I just do have a question, my brain's been going back and forth on this. If there's this new position, this kind of team appropriate as director of planning and zoning, is that person hired by the planning commission? Both of these positions will have all the gubernators. So that would have to get a recommendation we wanted to buy. Yeah, that would be a big idea. The zoning administrative portion of the job would have to be nominated by the planning commission. And there's no way to be given up separately. The only way is... Charter. Charter. Yeah. It's just getting built. It's probably not going to have that much of a life. But I think the commission can come to a sec where and say, we don't think, sorry, this is what I'm going to do. Steve should have power in whatever it is, and pull it back, right? If it really came to a point, they could ask for that part of that job. You would rule this person, right? They could do it once the turner, I think the turner still exists. The slack board can remove the costs. Can remove the design industry or the assistance design industry? It would be no response for a rule to a company that that zoning... Right, yeah. So in theory, if something really went awry, you could take zoning administrator hours away. But if the planning commission just soured on the individual during the course of the free control, they would just have to play with that. What about the assistance? Well, it's the same, right? Yeah, okay. You're going to have to know the main two things. Yeah, that's what I thought. I just wanted to hear you say that. That's what I wanted. Yeah, I was a little confused when I was talking about that. Okay. Okay. What else? So we'll bring the planning commission back on then and we'll come back to you at some point. That'll be it. Would you guys like any of us to be in the planning commission meeting? Well, it's a public meeting. I know it's a public meeting. You're welcome to attend. But I'm just saying, it's really not my role. I know we're all the same. I know we're all the same. Oh, would you like one of us to be there? Are you presenting it to the planning commission to make a decision? Or are you just introducing it? The main reason I'm here is because I had heard the details and I'm kind of like, I don't want to show up Monday night and not know any of the details. So are you going to be asking the planning commission or are you just presenting the concept? Well, I think because the planning commission would be, in essence, nominated to be a development fair, obviously that's fortunate with my job and nominated in the system. I think we need to present the concept of a theater project. Right. Well, I guess we're ahead of here and I think that the presentation is, hey, we're looking at reorganizing the department, keep the personality, individuals out of it, but we want to have this dual team. And I mean, I'm going to advocate for it. What I would also hope is that your meeting is next Monday. Yeah. We can make that point. Yeah. So I'm hopeful that I'll be able to read the job descriptions that Steve wrote up and then get them to the attorney and get him to make, say, yeah, this works or this has to be. And Steve can present the actual job descriptions to the planning commission as well, which I think will help inform the direction we'd like to go. Yeah, I guess it did sound like a two-step process or like what you're doing here. So then it's a select board. And then the select board is going to wait and hear from the planning commission. We have to present the planning commission. And then it's going to be a two-step process. But if the select board wasn't interested, then there would have been no reason to bring it to the planning commission. And then, because we know Dina's end date, really, have we even started to put any word out? No, we haven't yet. And one of the reasons we haven't yet is because of this. And I don't want to figure one or one period of time, but it's very unlikely we will have, whether it's this new position or if it's just the zoning administrator, it's unlikely that we're going to have somebody by July 9 on board. Steve is already the acting zoning administrator, one of the zoning administrator present. So he'll just continue that. And we'll get someone hired as quickly as we can. But I'd like to advertise knowing what we're advertising. No, well, yeah. Yeah, it's one of the things that was a blessing in the curse in May that we had five Monday's in May because we lost the weeks. We could have done this a week ago. But it was a regular four or more times a week. There's no action necessary. OK, great. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Hello. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Mark. Thank you for coming. Recreation, safety of all other things. Yeah, so Nick is here. I want to give an ad avoidance to Nick. He really went out on his own and searched for this grant from Albertsons that I'm not sure he was planning to talk about what we're really going to talk about. The night here is, same, Leo's Hall. But I think I don't know if you've got this memo from, should you send it out to them? The one, the two things I think can make. I'm sure. I think Nick's going to put that out. OK, anyway, Nick did reach out and apply for a grant, basically a donation from Albertsons for $60,000 to help with the summer feeding program during the rec camp. And it's a huge benefit. He's already begun working with local restaurants to get the food preparation made available. We'll be able to use this money to make sure these kids are dead, both breakfast and lunch. And we'll be able to spend it locally with some of our restaurants. So I want to give credit to Nick for taking the initiative to get out there and find this money and we'll put it to good use. I think Nick is here really to talk more about the St. Leo's basketball. I did put this in the memo. I felt it needed to come to the board because I wanted to just make sure that this was done completely transparently. As I indicated, we will be using St. Leo's Hall and West St. Methodist Church again this summer for our recreation program. It's helpful to have these additional venues. Last year was essential because we had real stringent requirements with regard to capacity for the COVID reasons. But having the three venues allows us to have a few more people involved in the summer recreation program. The West St. Methodist Church simply is asking us to pay the larynx fee to the building. That's what's in Nick's budget. Nick, why don't you talk about the arrangement with St. Leo's that you had with the Father of Edwin? So I guess I'll back up last year when we got to St. Leo's. We secured it when it was under, I forget who the previous priest was. But within a week, he transferred to Fairfield and Father Matthew came in. Father Matthew is a bit younger. And so I was able to convince him to, and he was all on board with it, we paid last year $250 of our rental fee in line striping their pavement as a basketball court and a street hockey court. So no damage. He was all on board with it. And then our summer camp was able to now use a basketball court and a street hockey court that we usually have at Anderson at this location, which was great because it lacks a playground and some other things. Though we do have the security permit from the state to use the horseshoe complex for that grassy field. But we still lack similar play structure. So it's helpful. Father Matthew brought in a hoop that he had and then we brought in a donated portable hoop. It broke at the end of the summer, but we got two years out of it. This year, I've negotiated with Father Matthew to kind of do the same terms and put more of a permanent hoop in there. So we've allotted $250 a week rent, $2,000 for the summer. That's very loose. He's already allowed us in the building to start setting up and he'll allow us in there throughout the year if we need it for little things. But we budgeted $2,000 for it. I found a pretty industrials. I don't know what the word would be for commercial. It's meant for more use, like the ones that we have down at by the pool house, the basketball hoops down there, an in-ground system that isn't just one that you buy off your driveway or something for your kids to shoot on. They're pretty pricey. I found one for $2,800 comparable to what we have in town. And with our municipal discount through our BSN sports rep, we get it at $2,300. Father Matthew has agreed to let us, if approved, pay for the hoop. And we would install it. We already have concrete budgeted for the year for some miscellaneous projects like this. He would then cut a check for the additional $300 to the town and our $2,000 rental fee would then be used to improve this property versus just us giving them $2,000 and they do whatever they want. So from a community and rec standpoint, it's a win-win that they're allowing us to do that. On the contrary, we give Wesley $1,500 for a bit smaller space and we just cut them a check. And that goes into whatever they use it for. It doesn't really get, we don't really see that in return. So this seems like a good deal. So if there's any points that someone wants to bring up that I hadn't thought of, I'd love. So what I wanna be transparent about, I think this makes sense. It's the cost to us is gonna be $2,000, which we can cut a check to the church and that's the end of it. Father Matthew is looking to improve the facility so it can be used more often, not necessarily just by us. This basketball goal would be a permanent fixture on their parking lot basically. So we'll be using municipal money to put this basketball goal on private property and frankly, it will become their property. And if down the road we don't have rec programs that say, well, it's all we're gonna go down there and pull the thing out of the ground and improve it somewhere else. So I just wanna make sure that the select board is aware of this, see if you have any concerns about it. I think from the perspective of basketball use in the community that there's a need for another court, people, it will get used even outside of rec programs. Yeah, absolutely. We just lined in the court in front of the rec building on that new pavement because there's just a demand for basketball space right now. The court at Anderson is overly used and just space in the village is limited. So Father Matthew, yeah, I think Bill just said but Father Matthew's allowing us, pending everything's respected, his property, the community is allowed to play on that hoop. And they have on his hoop that he has there now, he's allowed some pickup games going on like on a weekly basis on his court that we painted there and then that portable hoop. So everything, he said that he would be continuing to allow that throughout the year in addition to our rec program, assuming that it's respected. Well, I think you missed a great opportunity for a pun by not calling the plan a slam dunk, but otherwise I fully, I think it's great at my mind and I don't think it's a reason not to do it because we'd be paying them rent to use the space that I just think about like using municipal funds to make purchase something for a religious organization. It is not a religion base, it's just that. It's a church and we're purchasing things for their property, I understand it's community use. I don't think it's something we should not do. It's just something that I think about and I don't know like, yeah. Well, we would be purchasing it because maybe we get the discount. So we're directly writing the check and that's the question here versus we gave them the $2,000, they'd have to pay 2,800 to purchase. And then they don't have, they don't have so much to purchase. Yeah, I guess I, the bulk ability is an easy problem with this, but I don't see a problem with it. And it makes sense and it sounds like this, hopefully will be an ongoing ability to continue a larger rec program in a facility that we're not carrying, right? Right. Yeah, that's one of the reasons it's here to me because it's a church and it's municipal money. But I think based on how Nick explained it, what I just explained to you, I don't, I can't promise that there won't be somebody out there who complains about it, but I think it is something that's justifiable and reasonable. I don't think that, you know, the founder Matthew was asking, you know, people to come down and say, how many are these people are they quite, you know, they might throw a camera at the task. He's a good basketball player, don't you think? Yeah, he is. And the mom, Cornel, we're on tour. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. The lady who came tonight. All right. So do we need to make a motion on that? Yeah, I would just make a motion, ask you to make a motion that allows us to rent. Say, you know, it's all for the purposes of the recreation program, agreeing to the terms and conditions that Father Matthew has proposed. So I'll move. Second. All right. Any further discussion? I just have another question for you. Next up, there's basketball hoops down there and it's lined with basketball. Is it also lined, I mean, are there also street hockey nets down there for the community to use? No, no, street hockey nets are kept in the rec building. Those are after places every year as is this with our programs use. So I don't think there's any way we can put them down there without them walking and not being in the way of the basketball court. But we do bring them for our camp. So they'll be there through the summer if someone's looking to play, but those will go with us. You can use them back at Anderson. There's slam dunkers taking down our basketball. You need to say anything about the grant. We have a motion. Oh, I'm sorry. So we're going to move on to the papers. We say, hi. Hi. Go ahead. Oh, yeah, I didn't see the email but I'm aware of it. Nick, do you want to say the grant you got? It's Anderson grocery store, or Anderson? Albertson's. Albertson's is Shaw's parent company. They gave us, they just, we got a $10,000 grant from them for the van back in December, January. And then I saw this one wrote it and they must have liked this. We got $60,000 for this one as well. Yeah, the idea is just to turn around and, and you know, we have St. Leo's. They have a commercial kitchen. You know, I could take this money and, and buy food from Costco, which, you know, we do it every summer anyways for like backup snacks and whatnot for kids who are hungry. But I, yeah, I could hire a person to cook the food and it would be mediocre. I'll be pricing me cooking the food. I don't want to taste that good. But I was thinking it'd be a way if we just use the kitchens in town, use the restaurants and, and put it out there. Almost like, like a bid, you know, up to bid, but kind of divvy it up maybe five, six restaurants throughout the week for breakfast and lunch. And, and, and that way it keeps the money local and gets the experts making the food versus, versus me. Yeah. Great job. Great job. Can I ask a quick question? Yeah. Nick, is it just for food for red kids? Yep. Yeah, it is. I would like to figure, figure out after I get, it's more of the numbers back. If we can open it up to, you know, Camp Kota is the YMCA camp in town. They typically rely on the senior center as well for food. They're a much smaller camp. But they, they weren't going to run this year because of low numbers, but I think they have like 10 campers. That's enough. If we, if we, if we end up being able to afford the extra few meals, you know, I think we'll do it and have Camp Kota work on it. I'll reach out to their, their staff and see if it's something they want to come pick up from us or, or however we work it out. But if they're definitely excess, we want to make sure all the kids in town are fed. So that's what we're going to do. So we're going to do that. We're going to do that. We're going to do the rec program first. So Nick, was that an expense that the town was paying? And this is covering a previously town expense, or just saving the campers money or how does that, how does it work? So typically we've been able to offer. Low incomes. Low income campers. Free meals through the senior center. And they would get reimbursed through the department of agriculture. And then we would pick it up there and distribute it to the, to the camp. Those plan A and plan B haven't really come to fruition. And so this was plan C. And we got it. So we're going to run with it. It's possible the senior center, maybe. You know, opens back up to the capacity, what they were doing before, but it from, from when we were planning camp. This whole spring it didn't seem like that was going to be an option. So that's what led me to find other solutions just so we can make sure that kids are fed this year. And with this grant, you know, this year we can provide meals to camp all campers. Like it won't matter if you're low income or not. It's, you know, don't spend it all in one year. We have to spend it by December 31st. Yeah. But it is non-reportable. So, um, as long as we keep it in, in how I wrote it. So logistics. Um, We can, if there's money left over this, you know, we've got trans, we've got to transport the food. There's a logistical things that we can spend it on. But you know, we've got to transport the food. There's logistical things that we can spend it on. You mentioned doing it for all campers because you know, the money, but could you spread this money over multiple, because every year it sounds like you have to try to figure out how to feed the low income campers. I was just wondering if you could maybe spread it out and not open. No, one of those stipulations is it has to be spent by the end of the year, but we, um, maybe we buy it. Maybe we buy another van. You know, if we have that much money left over at the end of the year, but, um, yeah, that's great. Nick, would you like a letter to come from the select board to Albertans, a letter of thanks from us? Absolutely. Yeah, I, I, this is move. Yeah, this move pretty quickly. They gave me a whole toolkit to do a sponsor like a, thank you through our social media and our website. Um, there'll be a giant check presentation. Um, at Shaw's. Um, but I couldn't, I couldn't figure out the pie because I knew Albertans, I thought was a southern chain and I didn't know they were attached to Shaw. So that's why I said, why is this Albertans giving this from on down $60,000? Making deals. But, um, no, so yeah, um, I'm sure we can do that. The timelines more of this summer, they want to kind of do a public city stunt where they, they're going to help one day serve meals to the kids and do a photo shoot. So I think we have time to get that under, under, um, you know, control. I'll, I'll probably reach out, but yeah, I'd love to do something like that. That would be great. Great. Thank you. All right. Anything else under that? Or we can let Nick, the rest of the night. Thanks, Nick. Thanks again. All right. Um, consider authorizing short term, your municipal bar. Yeah. Usually I asked for this a lot later in the year than, than, than now and I continued to forget to put it on the agenda. Unfortunately we haven't had to do any intermissible or any tax anticipation borrowing yet this year. Um, more for Danny's benefit. Um, we, we are operating on a calendar year budget. So our, our expenses start in January and, um, you know, our revenues are close to 90% property taxes and we don't fill property taxes until, until July and we don't have our first property tax collection until August. Uh, so we have to pay expenses with cash on hand. Uh, and then if that runs out, we can borrow an anticipation of taxes. Uh, it's called tax anticipation borrowing. Uh, typically in the old days, we used to go to the bank and we would, we would borrow $2 million in January at, at, uh, say 3%. And then we would put it in savings of calendar CDs at 5% and, uh, use the money over time and the added interest that we made would be spending the money as, as we worked through the year. So it wouldn't be that we would be paying 3%, we would be borrowing and earning 5% of $2 million, earning 5% on the balance as it, as it went down. And we could use the, uh, earnings on that, on the deposits to offset whatever, um, whatever, uh, interest expense that we had. Um, now interest rates are so low that probably about eight years or so ago, we stopped borrowing the money all at once and we just opened a revolving on credit with the banks. Uh, and now, um, because I'd rather pay money and keep it local if we can. Uh, I asked the boards to authorize, uh, borrowing and anticipation of taxes and when possible to borrow it from the other municipality in town, so that would be EFUD. So what I'd like to do is have a motion made where the board authorizes, um, borrowing and lending for the purposes of cash flow between the town of Warburg and EFUD in 2021 at an interest rate of 1.5% percent. Um, we haven't had to borrow yet this year. Uh, I think probably before the end of, well, sometime in July, we'll probably have to borrow, um, and, um, cash this last little while longer this year than it did a year ago last year, we started to have to do the tax anticipation borrowing, I think as early as, as April. So anyway, um, I think more than likely I looked last year between, in the middle of June and August, uh, 15th when taxes started to come in, we had to borrow about $300,000. Um, I don't know how much we'll have to borrow this year, but we'll likely have to borrow something. We've got about $32,000 in the bank right now, until next deposit, $62,000, you know what I'm saying? Tomorrow, and we'll have $90,000. So we're going to need some, some money. And this way we'll, we'll pay the interest to e-fund as opposed to pay it to the people tonight. Thank you. Any questions? I don't want to make a motion. How long have you been doing this? I think you said five. With e-fund? Mm-hmm. Call on and off probably for ten years. Well, I mean, previously not e-fund. Right. It was the village. Right. So what, what we did last year, for example, is that when we started borrowing money in April for the town's needs, we borrowed from e-fund. And I borrowed from e-fund until it got to the point where it was compromising what they could pay, because I didn't want them to have to go out and borrow money to pay their expenses. So at some point around the end of, maybe beginning of June, we transitioned over. I didn't need to go to the bank this year to get the revolving loan of credit because I didn't think that we were going to be meeting with them so I'm going to continue to deal with and e-fund has more than enough money. So I didn't even negotiate with the bank this year. I believe we need a motion. We'll set it earlier. It's right there. Is it in your memo? Yeah. I'll find it. You give me the guy who needs it. I'll make a motion to authorize and improve tax and fee interpretation, borrowing, tax lending, the cash flow purposes between the town of Waterbury e-fund and 2021 at an interest rate of 1.55% per annum. Second. I just moved the tax bill on it. Yeah. Further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Last year we did it at 1.85%. So it's a little cheaper this year. I'll get that in my student board. All right. Refunding resolution. Okay. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this. We talked about it at budget time. In fact, I talked about it back at the special town meeting we had in November of 19 of 2019. And we authorized the purchase of the two fire trucks and the roadside moor. So last December of 2021, we actually borrowed 1.36 million dollars to fund the fire trucks, the roadside moor, part of the main street reconstruction and a few other things that were authorized in town meeting of 2020. I waited as long as I could in 2021 to borrow that money. So we wouldn't have to make any payments until 2022. So we borrowed for five years from the community national bank at a rate of 1.55%. That's why tax anticipation borrowing. That's a good way to take that number. And we were scheduled to pay that 1.36 million dollars back in five years at payments of about $286,000 a year for five years. The fire trucks and the roadside moor and main street all have useful lives much longer than five years. And normally I would have advocated for borrowing over 20 years for this refunding, but some of the board members like to keep borrowing to a minimum and doing a bunch of time this year. We kind of crossed out the idea of borrowing for 15 years and that way, even though the fire trucks have used the lives of 20 years, that will shave five years off the end. So there's a long resolution that I emailed to you. I don't know if anybody have the stamina to read it all and try to understand it, but I have read it several times. I've renegotiated it with both the community national bank and culturally at our bond council. So I'm recommending that you approve the refunding resolution, which will in effect refinance $1.1 million of the 1.3680 lending. The first payment on that 1.1 will be in June of 2022 and then we'll get to the allege in a minute. So I had hoped my initial foray with the bank was to get all this done and get the select board to approve the refunding resolution now but have the issuance of the new debt we're not going to get any money into refinance. But I was trying to get the issuance of the new debt to be in December, just like the old one was. And the bank blocked that a little bit and then I tried to get it in September. But the bank said, well, we really can't not kind of start the clock running on the interest if we're going to give you a 2% rate for 15 years, which is an incredibly good rate. They said, we really need it to be sooner. And you can wait, but we can't promise that we'll keep you at 2%. So we're going to have to make the first, the annual payments on refunding in June. It's not ideal because we'll potentially have to be borrowing in anticipation of taxes in order to make this payment. But to do this, I didn't want to risk with, you know, inflation is really upticking right now. Over the last 12 months, it's running at over 4%. There's talk about the Federal Reserve, you know, are they going to up interest rates? And if they do that, then our interest rate on this would go up. So I think we can live with the fact that we're going to have to pay this in June. So I would recommend that you approve this. We need questions. What would be the amount of? We're refunding $1,100,000. For 15 years at 2%. I make a motion to approve the refunding resolution. Resolution and certificate as prepared by the town manager to the amount of $1.1 million for 15 years at 2%. Fair discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. And then there's an orange, which is a fancy word to say that the remainder of the 1.3680 that we've had, we're going to have to sign on the right places. And then there's an orange, which is a fancy word to say that the remainder of the 1.3680 that we've had, we're keeping that at the same interest rate, but in December of each year, instead of having to pay the $286,000, we're going to have to pay $55,539,992. So in essence, what they've done is taken the original loan at 1.55%, subtracted out to $1.1 million that we're refunding and then applying a new land reposition schedule over five years. So somebody needs to make a motion to approve the allowance, which is part of the refinancing of this debt. And simply move to approve the allowance. Yeah, that's presented. That's presented. Okay. Are there any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Well, that's going around. We can move on if you want to make sure we do this right. No, no. We can make sure the bikes are signing up. With the sunglasses on. So this, that was a pretty huge, my goal all along was to refund that debt. We did that with the Perry Hill paving note of a few years ago. We had a $500,000 loan that we took for five years and then we turned that into a 10-year bond. But at that point, we had to go through the Vermont municipal bond bank to do it. And there's a lengthy application process. It's, it takes a lot of staff time to go through that application. And then you've got to, you've got to pay the bank for closing costs. And you've got to pay, we're going to have to pay out our lawyer who reviewed and wrote this. But I was able to work with the community national bank. And successfully let them agree to agree to take the 15-year bond. As opposed to having to go through the bond bank. So there's a significant savings in that. So I appreciate them all. Savings in terms of fees and costs. Yeah, both fees and costs and in staff time. And it takes, you know, it takes me, you know, several weeks. An hour here and an hour there to get it done. Can't just have lunch with Paul. All right. Wages. Yeah. So this, you can take as much or as little time on this as you want. The board put this issue in the parking lot. So to speak. When, when raises went into effect, there were some questions asked. You know, Chris was the one who had most of the questions. Unfortunately, you know, I didn't realize what we're going to do here this week. When I did all this work. Last week and get this information out that the board just asked is, you know, what's the plan going forward? And the plan going forward is really kind of what plan is always been. I think from the spreadsheet that I sent out, you know, you can see that we have never been one organization to give exorbitant raises. You know, they're pretty much going along with inflation. As you know, I put in some information at the bottom and, and you know, you can say, well, over the course of time, you know, you know, you can say, well, you know, and you know, you can say, well, over the course of 2007 to, to now that in the aggregate, so the, the wage increases look like they might be being inflation by, you know, a percent. But it's, it's really for the, the board's information. So you can see here. What, what pay rates were. And as I said, there are several of us that were hired way before 2007, but I have easy access to wage information back to 2007. So I kind of use that as the, as the cutoff point. So, if you look at the top line there that, that first highway department employee is being paid 21, 15 hour in 2021. When he or she was hired, he was hired at 1450. So they've been $7 an hour, more now than they were before. That's a total increase of about 48%. That person, that 1450 was paid to that person in 2007. So that's 14 years to divide the 48% by 14. That particular person is 3.45% increase. And, you know, and you can see in the next column that I, I ranked what position of. From low to high that particular individual. Out of the 25 employees listed here. There were only 10 people that got higher increase than that over, over that period of time, but there were 14 people that got following that. So it's just information for the board to, to let you know that, you know, I don't think that we've ever gone hard while in terms of paying increases. And this year's budget. The budget that I put together would have allowed everybody to get a 2% raise. And then some people would get more than that based on merit, basically. And a little bit of, you know, when people get promoted or if they wouldn't do responsibilities, there's usually some marginal increase that's getting there. But when I presented that, the board said, okay, on the 2% across the board, but the question that I got was that they didn't want me to, they didn't want anything beyond the 2%. So everybody except me has got a 2% raise. There's always a lot of time and work. So I appreciate it. And it's not, I don't think it's for not even though, you know, I just didn't hear him. He had some questions that it'll stand. And I think it shows a lot. It does speak volumes and it sounded like close with my first time talking about it, meaning that there have been questions continually throughout the years. And I think this is a good way to talk about them in a fact face way versus in a feeling face way. So I really appreciate it. Yeah, I agree. I got to absorb a little bit to fully understand what we're learning. But I think, I think Chris, the whole thing is, it's sometimes hard to separate yourself from the private sector, public sector, how you deal with increases. In some businesses, employees could go years without any increase with them. Usually that jump in increases, you know, that the procedure is a little different. There's not, I mean, I'm sure larger companies have boards, but you know, sometimes you wait for the employee to ask. Sometimes you do it off the mirror. You try to get ahead of it. Sometimes you sell business to your enemy. It's completely industry to industry. It's different. I think, you know, I've been on the board long enough to know that Bill takes every time he comes to the board with the yearly employee requests of increase presented very clearly. And I feel like it's very fair. It's very thoughtful. I think we do have similar to the conversation we had tonight, that is procedure, but we don't know who the next person might be. And there probably is something that maybe we could start with. I'd like to have some kind of conversation surrounding how you, you know, I think you explain your approach, but how that would be, how that would be handed off or that really a skill that you learn. You've been here for a long time, you know, and boards change. You know, I think, I don't like that every year there seems to be like contention surrounding, right? That like, to me, that's a problem, but a disservice to our staff. I think there's an expectation that wages should go up over time, obviously, to keep up with inflation and to represent the work that's being done and longevity in the business. So, and you know, this is a big talent, the talent of business. So it's, how do we get away from that? I think it's an important conversation and much more of an understanding of the work and the why you're presenting it and respecting that presentation. I don't know another way to do it, because this is the only way I've seen us do it, but I don't know if there is something we should be considering. I don't have a problem with what you've done in the past. I don't, I think the one thing that we haven't done as a board is make sure now we have a parking lot, but Bill mentioned, I think that's the one thing that your pay typically kind of a separate conversation. Right. And so the board knows, as far as I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong, like we really should have a yearly discussion at probably the same time to discuss Bill, give feedback on our feelings towards his work and then discuss his weight and increases as well, because I can tell that it's always that kind of like, you know, even here, you know, kind of. So I don't know, you know, I don't, I'm new into this role as a leader of the board, but I still don't know totally how to approach that part, because I think there needs to be more conversation in and out of the meeting as well, or surrounding that, you know, and. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's not, it's not a cut and drive thing. And I understand the, you know, the, the nebulousness, if you will, of it. And, you know, I appreciate your expressed confidence in what I've presented and, you know, that you think that I'm fair and that I'm thorough and, you know, I clearly try to be professional with that. One of the things that I tried to communicate in the memo was that for a relatively small organization, municipalities in general, there's a, there's a broad range of, of jobs. Now I don't know anything about the restaurant business and I know you have cooks and servers and, you know, maybe you have bookkeepers. I don't know what you have, but a lot of businesses have a very narrow range of, you know, small businesses, how, you know, kind of everybody does the same thing. And in a municipality, you know, we have people that have advanced degrees. We've got people that have special skills. Not to pick on Chris, but I think Chris kind of, when he talks about municipal employees, he thinks about hiring employees. And that's all, you know, he kind of relates that to what his business is. And, and I think that showing the board and getting the boards to understand and appreciate that there are people with a really broad range of education levels, skill sets, and job descriptions is, is important. So it's not everybody, you know, fits the same cookie cutter. If there's a lot of different cookie cutters out there. Now, you know, there are some communities I expect. I know that a lot of the cities and towns, and I've been on one board or another of the LCTs and governing boards since 1986. They're not very much bigger than we are a little bit. They've got a whole insurance item. But, you know, what they have done is going out and, you know, they hire a company to come in and do a whole wage and salary. And they do a survey, a market survey. Well, that's pretty expensive. And I think it's overkill for, for us. What I try to do is use the Vermont legal cities and towns every year or every other year at least. They do a salary and benefits survey of municipalities and, you know, every from, you know, highway laborer all the way up to municipal manager, finance director, they're listed. And you get to see what other communities are paying these positions. And I rely on that because when we, there are certain classes of our employees, when we lose them, we lose them to other municipalities that particularly happens in the watering sewer, wastewater, water treatment fields to a lesser degree, but happens in highway departments as well. We've been fortunate, you know, a lot of people, and I think we have a relatively low turnover rate, but the turnover rate is higher than I think some people do here. I think a lot of people think that everyone who comes to work for a panel stays there for their, for their whole career. And certainly when I came here, you know, we had a much smaller staff. We didn't have a recreation director. We didn't have a planner. We have only part-time throwing administrators. And, you know, we didn't have a library really. And, but if you look at this list of when people were employed, and I think I pointed this out in the memo, you know, there's six or seven of 25 that have been with us for five years or less. So, you know, we do have a turnover. And unfortunately, I think the turnover is going to accelerate some of the more high-profile positions in the next several years, you know, and that's going to be its own challenge. So, you can do with this what you want, what I would like, and you don't have to say yes tonight necessarily, but I would like to be able to implement the budget that I had put in place, which did come in place more than a 2% raise for some people, not everyone. And the fact that that didn't happen in April already is, in essence, saved us some money. Some of them were going to happen in April. But my intention from the beginning with folks, like, you know, I know we're not in the executive session, but I don't think this will come as a surprise. Nick has done a lot of great work in the past couple of years. And what he did last year to just be able to run a recreation program and to get everything organized and move it all forward, he did already get a little bit of a bump up there. But, you know, there are some positions that sometimes you feel you need to give a raise because you hope to retain that person. You don't necessarily want it going off to the next town or to some other position. So sometimes you have to do that. And there are positions that are in high demand. And as I pointed out in the memo, the four highlighted in yellow positions, those are E-FUD positions. They're all water sewer or public works directed positions. And in almost every case, you know, when Alec Cuskany retired as public works director and I hired Bill Woodruff from Water Superintendant, he got a pretty significant increase in his pay. So on this list, if his name was a, you could probably figure it out if you wanted to try. But, you know, it shows him with a significant and higher percentage increase than the average. But his job description and his duties went up exponentially. And then when his position as water superintendent was filled by an existing employee, that person got away. So in the E-FUD, where they're all technical positions, they all require state licenses. You know, those positions, if you don't keep up with the Joneses, you lose it. So how do you approach, say there's an employee that you have this concern, you feel like they are performing quite well. And, you know, a lot of times around budget season, we talk about this on everyone on more of a broader degree. But in that scenario, are you coming to the board? Or how do you want to approach that? Because I agree. I think that I would hate to lose a staff member that you think you're performing well and we may be under pain. So just like any business, I think there's a conversation around entertainment if you can afford it or decide that the investment makes sense. So what is that? So if I thought that somebody really, you know, somebody needed a 10% increase for whatever reason, I mean, I would come to the board for that. What I've tried to do in my time here is that, you know, obviously we measure inflation. It's always helpful if you can at least keep up with inflation. There are some years like last year from 2019 to 2020. We didn't do it. COVID was here. It threw a whole monkey wrench into things. We didn't know what was going to happen. So I told the employees, you're going to have to suck it up. And, you know, yeah, you didn't get laid off. And I know the person who did get laid off is making more money than they made before they got laid off just because of what happened with the federal unemployment laws. But there have been times when we haven't been able to get those even cost of living raises. You know, the same thing happened after the flood. We couldn't give a raise. But later in that year, the board agreed to give everybody who was an employee who clearly had worked hard. You know, people got like $500 bonus or something like that just to recognize what they had done. If there was somebody that I felt was really outside of cost of living plus reasonable, where I would consider a reasonable bump up for merit, I would definitely come to the board for that. Many times in the past, when the boards have been able to say, okay, cost of living is 3%. We're going to give a 4.5%. They make 4.5% available. And in a year like that, where there's a real opportunity for people to kind of take the next step up and get additional pay beyond keeping pace with inflation, what I've done in those years is say, look, okay, highway people or others, you know, I'm going to give a higher percentage raise to the lower paid workers, to the more junior workers. So we hire somebody to be in the highway department and I'm not taking anything away from somebody who's been working, you know, Randy Dyatt was hired in 1986. So, you know, he's the longest serving municipal employee we've got even two years more senior than I am. Randy has a wide, broad wealth of experience, but in terms of doing his base job, driving trucks, filing snow, maintaining roads, you know, the guy who's been working seven years doing that has kind of caught up on the learning curve in terms of most of what has to be done. Now, Randy might be a better, you know, he can do a concrete sidewalk and understands, you know, working with concrete and being able to really make a good slump and get a good product out there better than that doer person. But in terms of the base job, after six, seven years, you've kind of caught up. So I told the staff members, I said, look, we're going to get raises. But if you're making $20 an hour and Joe Smith is making $15 an hour and you're really kind of providing the same, you're at the same point on the learning curve, if I get both of your 3% grants, you're at $20 and you're going to get further ahead than the board. So more of the money in those cases when I have been given additional money has typically gone to the lower paid employees because I can tell that more senior person, well, we reward you for your longevity by giving you more income. You get four weeks vacation whereas this person only gets a week and a half or whatever it is. So that's what I always try to do and, you know, that I think provides, you know, good, some morale boost to the lower paid employees because they feel like they're kind of catching up that, you know, they're not always, I mean, they're pretty much always going to be behind somebody who's been that far senior but as long as they get closer because they're doing the same jobs, I think that's important. But if there was somebody that I thought really deserves something out of the ordinary I would clearly come to the board and say I think we need to do this because of XYZ. And we don't have to decide all that now. This is, I'm hoping I'm giving you some information that you find is helpful and it can just inform the next conversation. Just this information was useful but just to add on to some of the comments that Mark made a lot of people, because I've been on both in the both private sector and the public sector and just people have to have a realization there is differences between the two. You know, the public sector definitely has more even-base, you tend to get raises yearly where sometimes in the private sector it's more merit-based, but sometimes in the private sector when a company has a really good year you get a $10,000 bonus. It doesn't happen in the public sector. And, you know, people just have to realize that it's trying to make people in the public sector happy with what their jobs are. Sometimes it's not always, hey, it's other things that make people... Well, you know, we have good benefits. We've talked about that before. You know, the recent retirement system pretty good health insurance and compared to many small businesses the health insurance method we get is excellent. But also, please don't forget and I'm not trying to, you know, feel sorry for me. I chose this business because this is what I have a passion to do. This is where I want to be. This is what I went to school for and I was committed to local government. For some people you can say, well, you know, they're getting... they get raises continually and their counterparts in the private sector wouldn't. There are a lot of us who work for municipalities whose ceiling for pay is far lower than it would be. If I were doing the same job for a three-mile coffee roasters I'd probably be making more money than I'm making now. I think it's a little bit different than I'm making now. And that's something that you and the public need to keep in mind. Oh, well, I know that all the time with my job. I could have made a lot more money working in a bank. I didn't want to do that. All right, nothing to be decided tonight. But I think I would like that. I'll just talk about what we're supposed to do. And we can have a continued conversation. Can we add to the parking lot the question about, you know... Charter? Well, no. That's a long-term parking lot. But I don't mean to interrupt you, but were you saying something about the wages? Oh, yeah. I was just wondering if you were hoping for us to make any decisions this evening. I know there was a little bit of discussion about that additional increase that we didn't do. I would love it if the board said, yeah, you can implement what was put in the budgets. There's nothing that I... Can you remind me what decision we made that didn't allow that? So I don't know if we... I don't know what the minutes of the meeting would show. But when I talked about it, my impression was that what I presented again, he's not here to defend himself, but I'm not trying to put the words in Chris's mouth, but he had some concerns. He felt that, you know, municipal employees expect to get a raise all the time, and that's just not how the real world works. And what I heard was the board said, you can give a 2% cost of living increase across the board, but you didn't feel comfortable about anything more than that. And what would be asked? Well, you're saying that... There are some employees who I think should get more than 2%. I don't want to name them, but I don't think that's necessary or appropriate because I'm not finding out what is, you know, 15% raise or something like that. No, I think... I agree that it's a danger to do percentages because of the differential. So I'm trying to remember a thing that that was what we wanted, or that was how we wanted you to proceed. But I understand the concerns on spending and COVID and everything else, but then once we learned that it seemed like financially we were doing well, I think that changes things too. So I think you don't have to make any decisions tonight because it seems like there's some questions. There's some other information that I'm waiting for. You probably, if you read the newspapers at all, pay attention to the news. The American Recovery Act, I never can remember what the P stands for. There's going to be some money coming our way that I will talk with you about at a future meeting. The Congress is trying to pass an infrastructure bill that may indeed really open the floodgates, but there's going to be some additional money coming. So why don't you let me wait to find out how much that is, what that means, how we might be able to use that, and then I can go back and look at the meeting and remember your criticism. So you don't have to do anything tonight. And that way Chris can be here when you do it. I know it's late. You said you want to add something to the parking lot in order to ensure its liability. We discussed kind of earlier. Okay. And then pulling things out of parking lot, which is a very likely training that we're going to pull for now. Employee wages, we leave. We're going to revisit it. Making strategy. So we leave the route. We're making strategy? Yeah, we haven't really talked about new strategy. I was going to ask you, I remember I was going to be like, how can we decide the mill? What's that decision? I just don't understand how you will be eroded. But again, that's part of the whole strategy. I want to add more. I think that's more of the conversation of like inventory roads every year condition when you make the decision to do the investment on the mill or some full rebuild. And are we keeping up with inventory in our roads? So we don't have to fully rebuild them. So we're quite concerned to the orders. I'll start bringing them every other Monday. And Chris, the ends who stopped out like six thirty. I'll be here at six thirty. I'll give you a little more instruction. Yeah, I have a couple questions. It's a long time ago. You didn't email go off weeks. Somebody can stop in. No, that's good. We offer off weeks. Somebody can stop in Monday afternoon or Tuesday. It's weekly. Yeah. So can we still do it by email or just. If now it's coming in and do it. What's the matter? Either way. I could email them. As long as they get done. The bar has been on the email. Nobody knows what's going to do it. And then nobody does it. I can always just go. I'll stop in versus I'll definitely forget. I never have a problem. You know, just like the last one I happened to be at the camp. So no internet connection. So it was impossible. Every week. On the off week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thank both of you for your service. Thank you. Tough year. And thank you. And I'm not going to. Um, Just pick. Second. Second. Any further discussion. All right. All right. The recording stopped.