 I'm going to go back to the meeting. Susan Clark, welcome Susan Sandy Levine. Welcome Sandy and Kim Jessup. What a pleasure. Welcome. Quite an ambitious quite an ambitious agenda. So let's dig right into it here. So our first our first order of business is considering whether to implement provisions or not. I'm going to go back to the meeting. I'm going to go back to the meeting. I'm going to go back to the municipal meetings held in the year of 2021 by vote of its legislative body action likely. So Susan Clark I believe has an update for us on outside developments and then we'll throw this open for general discussion. By the way before we start the meeting. I'm going to go back to the meeting. Is this a little button here which is for the last time? No. And then I have this handy little one. I just put new batteries in them. There you go. Where did you get those Peter? I think Staples sold them years ago. They gave them to me in the office as a Christmas present because they said I was Mr. No. It's like that. And it's on TV all the time. Yeah. It starts with whoever played Mike Myers whatever he played in that movie. They're fun and they're at times useful. So Susan you're up. Yeah. Well I actually didn't know I was going to be gone. I don't. Where did we leave things in terms of an update? I don't want to bore you with the things you already know. Well just just you know when I was talking the other day and you were telling me what had happened in the last two weeks and people you've been talking to and all of that okay. Give us a quick quick version of that. I think that would be helpful to set the tone. Sure. Yeah. Well and you guys know and Kimberly can join in here as well. The literature is looking at it seems quite certain to move ahead with allowing towns to postpone the meetings if they want to and also a piece of that really really simple bill. They're trying to keep it as simple as possible to get it passed right away as to allow you if you choose the Australian ballot option which was something that they gave select boards of power to do last fall. If you want to use that they will give you the power I think to mail ballots not just my absentee but actually actively mail them but so though and then I just I was just curious based on the conversation that this board is having just sort of what in general what people were thinking. So I just called some of our neighbors and I'm sure you guys have all done the same thing you know. What do people think and basically what I was hearing based on the options of should we postpone and hope to have a meeting outside in the spring versus should we just move to Australian ballot for one year only and have the meeting in March. Obviously the March option is a lot simpler. People in general people were excited about the idea of an outdoor meeting. It sounded different and fun and that people were hopeful that spring would be you know the things would have moved ahead in terms of the health of our bar nation. But I did definitely hear a few people who said that sounds a little scary to me. I'm not sure that I would attend that meeting and when I heard that that made me just sort of feel like probably the safest thing to do is to is to go ahead and go to Australian ballot for one year only. It's not something that I'm excited about at all. I'm worried about it frankly and I would hope that the select word if you do choose to do that would be very careful in how you communicate that to the community because I think it will be confusing to people. But you know it's really hard for me in the world's biggest town meeting to defend or to defend getting together face to face during a global pandemic. Okay. Let me just say that it's hard to defend. Okay. So what else do you want to know from me? I think that that basically basically says it. I mean the thing the thing that concerns me is I've been paying attention trying to pay attention to all this talk about you know when assuming we all get our shots like good little boys and girls when this pandemic is going to go away and the best guest seems to be next summer or next fall. So it just seems to me that it may is way sooner than that and we might not be in a substantially different position in May. Hopefully a better position but not substantially different enough or safe enough to really think that an outdoor meeting makes sense and I would hate to I would hate to make the plan to you know vote on the voted items on town meeting day and then plan on having plan on having a public meeting in May and then not be able to have it and have to then switch all that stuff over to Australian ballot seems like a very confusing convoluted situation to me. So there's also the risk that you know the governor is going to say you can't have groups of higher than you know 50 people or something like that which would make it you know impossible to have a meeting where you could let you where you had to limit the number of people who would be able to come like did they talk about that Susan in terms of like moving town meeting to like that there could be like some sort of crossover between something virtual and something outside because you know we don't know in May if they're they're going to allow any large sums of groups even if they're outside 6 feet apart. Yeah. At this time electronic participation in town meeting isn't something that the secretary of state is encouraging. I think I think that the legislature is going to be addressing this in the next year or two a couple of years that's the that's the sense I got from listening to the government operations committee's talk was that there was interest in virtual meetings but it's not unless your Brattleboro and have an elected town meeting. The secretary of state's office isn't recommending that. So combining an in-person meeting electronic meeting is I think will be I think that they will be addressing that but it's probably not the way that it's not going to be the people could attend but they couldn't vote. That's why don't we hear from Kim and Jess up and see if she's got any later updates from the legislature. Yeah. Thank you. Hi everyone. So I do not have any new information. I mean I am really here just to if there are particular concerns that you want to flag or Susan wants to flag or anyone else and to then try to address those concerns in any vehicle or bill that might be moving forward. We haven't yet convened. We don't yet know what committees will beyond that this bill is not yet in draft form. It's all discussions that have been happening with folks like Susan Vermont Leagues of City in town and I've not been part of those discussions but again if there are things that you want me to run down or bring back I'm happy to do that. That's why I'm here and I do by the way just so you know not being rude. I do have to jump off at 4.30 but thanks. Thank you Kim. The other thing and Kim correct me if you have a different take on this than I do but it sounds to me like the legislature is not going to have a special session and that they're going to take this up as one of their first first things to to dig into in the new session but that likely means there would be no bill passed until probably at the earliest what the second week in January. Yeah they're trying to get it out of the gate but it would all all things hopefully working well and as soon as possible I hesitate to put an exact date on it but there's a lot of momentum and that's to Susan's point about trying to keep it fairly simple. Yeah yeah and they're working with the governor's office as well so that they have something that both the executive and the legislative can all move forward with Smithly. My concern is that based on what we've heard from Sarah and speak up speak up Sarah if you disagree that that's going to put us in a real time crunch and maybe an impossible time crunch if we don't have an answer until then so. I think that's cutting it very close especially if Susan's talking about a public information campaign to build support for this my only question and maybe I don't know or Susan is I'm sure we're going to have a virtual information meeting correct? Right you're nodding. Yeah yeah it would be just like this would be the select board holding an informational meeting about the right and. Yeah it's the select board's meeting it's like the town meeting is different statutorily but the information meeting that goes with an Australian ballot vote is it's all on you guys it's the select board running and so do you know if that has to be held within a certain time period a certain I think it does right it does it does it's in the statute I think it might be 10 days okay right now of course they could they could change that in the that's one thing they might want to look at Kim and your legislation is giving some more flexibility on when to have that information meeting rather than the 10 day window yeah a longer window I mean I fundamentally I don't see any reason why towns wouldn't be able to do it 10 days ahead but just depending on what's going on more flexibility I mean the other thing I've thought of and I don't even know how this would work is that potentially depending on how many interested people we had we might have to have multiple information meetings I mean you get to you get to a certain number of people on zoom it becomes so unwieldy that it basically doesn't work and I if we're going to be able to have a meeting an informational meeting where we could have back and forth it wouldn't be just us making a presentation in front of the assembled multitude as they say I don't think there's anything keeping you from having multiple meetings I mean they just want to make sure you have one within that time frame but you can have lots Peter are you raising your hand Mary if you need to raise it a little higher so I can see it thank you I'm sorry but I'm sorry I was just what it was just down there well I saw the tip of your fingers yes go ahead don't you mean a shorter period of time shorter notices I mean rather than a longer period of time when you're able to have the meeting or meetings over a longer period of time okay but I mean not the notice requirements but this but maybe the notice should be somewhat flexible and then getting things warned and all that I mean I just think that those periods need to be examined depending on what the legislation passes because you know if we have to post something and it's a long time before I don't know we may have some time issues that's all I'm saying so Peter I just checked the statute and for this year the morning can be posted no earlier than January January 21 it can be posted January 31st so we are kind of coming down to the wire and all that not to mention putting out the town report January 31st is you know cutting it close right I mean the long and short of all this folks is I've come around to the point of view and I did talk to Steve today and we've we've already heard what his point of view is but he thinks we should make the decision and go ahead with Australian ballot just for this year and as Susan said be careful what the message is so people understand that you know this this is a one year exception to our normal to our normal practice or the town yes Mary for the town budget because you know they've already voted to have a school budget by Australia this is just the town Mary absolutely just but I don't know I don't know others others feel about that Bill or Liz or I will tell you that I did get a call from Ginny Burley who was doing a survey of towns and all the other towns around us are doing Australian ballot I think my Eastmont Pealier was considering it last week yeah I did attend those meetings and Eastmont Pealier definitely sounded they hadn't decided yet but they were sounded like they were leaning toward Australian ballot I talked to the Worcester Tunkler she said that Worcester is going to Australian ballot and Callis had just taken up the topic last night for the first time and you know they're dealing with the same issues that we are where they don't love the idea of you know if you do things by Australian ballot there is no amendment from the floor I mean people just don't have as much power we don't really get to act as legislators but the pandemic is a pandemic so it sounded like Callis they hadn't decided yet but they were leaning that way so I'm going to add that I don't see any other way really around either just given the fact that May is not going to be late enough in this pandemic to be able to feel like it's inclusive and that it makes much more sense to just have it all be Australian ballot on on town sorry on whatever date it is March 2nd whatever date that is so that's what I would be inclined to do for this year and to make it clear that you know we value and support town meeting and look forward to having town meeting in 2022 there you go yeah I agree with Liz I think you know she said it well my my only concern as we've talked about this over the past few weeks is the information meeting because you know you're absolutely right Peter with the number of people and we could get greater attendance with a virtual meeting than we ever get at town meeting and so managing that I think is going to be the difficult piece but maybe it's a series of meetings that we have so that we can kind of spread that out so I think and and I am not the one to do this and maybe we even need to hire somebody to do this but I've attended a couple of large meetings in the last in the last month where there was essentially a professional manager managing the managing the zoom and would only recognize people when they raise their hands and would mute them and unmute them and I think it's really one surprisingly well now obviously you reach a limit as to how many people you can you can deal with but you know I think we can figure out how to do it and I think we have some time to figure out how to do it the other the other question I guess is nothing in this vote I don't believe has to say that we have made a decision I've had people tell me we should send out ballots to everybody I mean that's that's a that's a separate decision we have to make it doesn't look like although who knows who knows Kim maybe maybe somebody will slide something into that bill it passes that the state will send out ballots to everybody I don't know well right now Peter just we don't have the town doesn't have the authority to send out everybody a ballot that's proposed in the discussion of the legislation that's one of the things that I understand we can't do it now but we're not making we're not making we're not dealing with that at this point in time is all I'm saying we're making town meeting will still be a voting day right you'll still have the office open on on town meeting day all day for people to vote is that correct Sarah well I'm not going to have the office open but I will be have one town hall open town hall yeah people just do it anyway and we're going to office ballots we're just going to have more on the town ballots than we've had before and if if they are going to require the towns to send out ballots or authorize us to do that I hope that you'll think about what a cost to do that just like they did for the presidential there must have been an allocation from the from the state right yeah that's been something that I've heard it and also the governor was going to see if he could maybe find some funding for that but we can't reserve some COVID money reserve some COVID money instead of sending it back not allowed they've talked about that actively they were like we've got some money let's not can't do that has to be spent by December number 15 yes Sarah Peter can I just just to be clear Kim I mean they we didn't have those costs for the for mailing out the ballots you understand that right the towns to that was not on our shoulders and even in the primary we got some help so this will be a huge cost that's unbudgeted if we have to mail out ballots to everyone I'm not opposed to it I'm just saying it's going to be big not to mention we did not actually do it LHS a company in New Hampshire mailed all the ballots I'm not aware of that I haven't gotten to the level of who actually sends them but Susan maybe you have more information or the one thing I know is that I'm pretty sure that if they put that in the law the intention was to allow towns not to tell towns to do it so it would still I think the town's decision whether they and who sends go ahead and who sends them I mean was it the town responsibility or is it going to be like for the presidential campaign and primary I don't know how that works to you Sarah right well I mean I just I just did some quick math correct me if I'm wrong Sarah but I think the ones we did mail cost about 65 cents to mail out those the ballots and with 1400 registered voters because you're not sending them to everybody I mean it's only registered voters so you're talking less than a thousand dollars well you're talking they're going to be about 80 I would say that they're going to be 80 cents this the the summer the summer statewide primary was 80 cents okay you're still probably talking you know same thing 80 times I'm just using it's $1100 right but it's really it's really also labor involved and I mean we we understand all of that I mean it's not it's not a devastating amount of money but it's real money yeah it's real money so so with that we're already five minutes past our allotted time somebody willing to make a motion I will okay I'll second well I'll make the motion will be we will move to the Australian ballot system for our town budget and all of our other Australian ballot items with the intention of enthusiastically looking forward to the 2022 town meeting when we can vote for the town budget in person okay the correct not to correct you but I think the correct language would be something like going to Australian ballot for all items that would normally be considered at the town meeting or something like that yes I second it okay thank you any further discussion all in favor of the motion please say I or nod your head aye any opposed okay we've done it here we go down the slippery slope Susan I know I'm already planning 2022's menu for the town meeting dinner very good maybe we should maybe we should promise steak for that dinner yeah I'll make the banners for the whole town hey guys thank you thank you for coming and Susan thank you for all your input and help with that in the end I don't think it was that difficult but weeding our way through it was a challenge so thank you very much thank you good night all happy holidays about okay so I have a quick highway report and and hiring updates update on the on the hiring of the road foreman and also thoughts on the road commissioner and this is partly me and partly I'm wearing steves out at the same time as I said I talked to him this afternoon so the easiest part of this is the work that's been going on for the last few weeks the road crew was able to get during our fall spring some of the worst potholes situations that we had around town so that was good unfortunately that has now come to a screeching halt with the with the colder weather but overall most of the roads are in good shape there are some places with potholes and people need to pay attention and be aware of them but they've been out there out there sanding Charles has been doing a good job of keeping track and communicating back and forth with me about any concerns that he has so I think all that is going about as well as it can be and thank goodness we haven't had any big storms where we've been severely impaired by only having three people Liz and I did meet with with Shane excuse me Shane to the road crew we had what I consider to be a very positive meeting everybody seemed in good spirits and and up for the up for the transition after that and I don't know if you have anything to add to that Liz I think that the guys you know everyone seemed to be excited about him and seemed interested so I think it's going to be good yeah and after after that meeting out in the parking lot he accepted the position so with that we've been moving ahead he had his drug test today so we'll have the results of that in a couple of days so we can't I guess the way this goes Sarah is we can't formally offer him the job or we should or we can't we can't formalize any of this until he passes the drug test is that the right way to put it that's what the DOT would this says okay so as much as we've offered him the job and he's accepted it it is subject to the drug test so within a couple of days we will know that he's cleared the drug test and then we're then we're off to the races the salary and vacation situation was exactly what we talked about at our last meeting with no with no deviation so that's all all good and he's been communicating back and forth with me I do have Dorinda is it you that who contacts the uniform company about the uniforms should I do that you do that I I believe Sarah didn't you send the link or something to who they talk to or no yeah you know it's if it's easier I'll just contact him I just need I thought he could he can contact I called a universe whatever their name is and I said he should just contact them give him his the sizes and they will when he starts and they will include his uniform but if you you want me to serve as the mother between that to order him a uniform I will well if you give me I'm happy to do that too if you he sent me his sizes so I have okay well I don't I'm a pretty straight short legs I mean we are we are reporting so I think that if you I can take care of that for you it's not a problem I just need to know his start date it's going to be January 4th okay did Peter did you get any of the paperwork that I sent to him no I have not so I presume he hasn't I'll follow up with him on that I've been I've been laser focused on making sure that we're good to have that in place yes oh yeah well for once for once we're doing it before the fact not after the fact so it's all good I just want to be sure that that drug test is good before we go too much farther down the yellow brick road so anyway I really think I think that's all good he is very excited he did we had a little conversation about you know how he was because he lives how he was going to deal with you know surveying the town roads in terms of storms and he said he and his wife had already talked and he's talked to his father and his plan is he's just going to hunker down at the farm when there's a bad storm coming so he'll be here which I think is a great a great compromise so in terms of in terms of the road commissioner there's there's there's sort of a boiling pot going on in the community I guess about the about the road commissioner we certainly need to figure out how we're going to go forward with this whether we are going to open it up which in some way manner shape or form we need to I don't I really don't know how we need to proceed and I don't think we need to proceed proceed immediately we can work our way work our way through the transition he understands Shane understands that in the initial part of this process he's going to be supervised and directed by the select board not by his father but his father certainly going to be involved in the training and acclimation acclimation process he has to be there's been some talk of trying to find a quote unquote volunteer road commissioner if we could find somebody who was who was willing to do this the way select board members have have done it in recent times I don't think we've ever had a volunteer road commissioner who wasn't either the road foreman or a or a select board member but it isn't to say that there might not be somebody out there would be willing to do that it's a little scary to think of taking on another and I don't know Steve Steve is is giving some thought to how much how much time it really takes and what it would be is that a half time position I don't know but even it would certainly be at least at least a half time position which of course is is potentially real money especially when we're in the throes of trying to hire a new financial person so we've got some work to do on that when it comes to the budget situation I think we would be remiss not to put some money in the budget to allow for a paid road commissioner but we can talk about that talk about that when we get to that I think that's basically it unless anybody has any questions okay treasurer's report well let's see we've got our annual audit back Peter and I talked to our auditor today and went over a couple of points on it and she's going to be finalizing we have to get back to her with a couple things and she will be sending through the final report and that's basically it with the audit as far as the bookkeeper position I don't know if you want to take up that portion of it now or if you want to wait to you know like we have other people that are attending for other things if we want to you know delay that portion until we get to the budget part and tie those all in together or I think that's probably better because a big part of that is the money so why don't we why don't we why don't we wait for that okay yes Mary either you had some comments about the audit and I was going back through my emails trying to find one when you sent it where you sent us the audit and two of your comments so I couldn't find either so were those concerns that you raised in your emails addressed during your meeting with Durinda and Bonnie today or whoever yes the fund she had a rather rather severe finding in her draft that that Durinda strenuously objected to and I agreed with her and we talked we talked our way through that and we're going to have instead of a finding a much later recommendation about a change in procedure so and that will be only in the management letter not in the not in the audit so we're going to have a meeting with her I mean I wouldn't say it was too friendly a meeting but it was OK she was OK Durinda behaved herself like a good girl which is nice she wasn't always it was it was OK we're going to have so when we get when we get the final draft the plan is to have Bonnie come in per usual and go off with everybody but I think that's fine yeah send a copy to us having to get it done by email yes we will as soon as we as soon as we have it we'll make sure everybody gets a guess thank you you said you want an actual copy not the not sent by email I can't read those things by email I mean they're just too long so yes I want a physical copy OK well we'll let you know when it's available I mean ultimately we can mail it to you but if you can stop by the town clerk's office and grab it I get one of the other yeah that would be fine OK OK anything else you're all good that's no I think we're all good I do have one one question just quick question for you and maybe I just I fouled it up and deleted it or didn't get it but I never got a copy of the budget as it stands after our last discussion well that's because I didn't send it well that's that's a good explanation so um my question was is that in a state where you can send it to us now for our budget discussion tonight or no well I don't think it I mean I can send it it's really not a lot different than where we were before I was kind of waiting for tonight so we could get the real salary numbers in there and actually this week I also got another one of the ones that we had just plugged in I got a real figure on it so I was kind of holding on rather than keep sending it that's fine we can we can talk about that we can talk about during the I just thought I might have missed something that I was supposed to get okay so guess what now we're back ahead of schedule um we're going to be reaching project commitments for the bike pet scoping study with twenty percent town match action possible so here we are we're back we're back to this again and I don't know Sandy do you want to yes I can I can talk about Theo um Kennedy's is also planning commission member he's on as well working on this both as a planning commission member and also as sort of leading one of the groups connected with what's next middle sex on village um vitalization and working on projects in the village but basically but this V-trans grant which the select board provide a letter of support for the town to apply for it was awarded a pre-propagation scoping study which more clearly identifies what any costs would be for improvements to put in sidewalks through the village and is a necessary piece before V-trans would move forward with a project to to have sidewalks or road improvements like that we the grant request also included what um issues might be for building a more of a recreation path along the river as well both of these came out of the walkable middle sex study that we worked with Du Bois and King going forward these V-trans grants are a little more complicated than the municipal planning grants it was brought to the public and we can assist in the administration of the grant which seems like that that would be a good idea we need to have a separate contract with them bottom line is overall we have $30,000 there's a 20% town match for that um you can invoice time for town employees like that and it can include that in the invoice that can be part of your 20% match other sorts of in kind contributions are a little more difficult because they require a lot of paperwork in terms of justification and supporting them because these are federal dollars and there's a whole slew of other requirements that go along with that so it is a 20% match which is $6,000 the way it works it's a reimbursement grant so the town would have to pay for it then you submit your invoices and then you get reimbursed from VTrans and what I was hoping to do is maybe we might be able to continue to work with the boys and King who did the initial work on this project and they have a bidding process but the planning commission needs to make that determination and then secondly have a separate contract just for administration with the regional planning commission and they could do that for 10% of the grant which would be $3,000 either way it's still going to cost the town $6,000 if there's town employee time spent on this you can invoice for that the road commissioner are from Sarah but if there is and they can invoice for that that could be reimbursed so the $3,000 which they estimated for administration if we do that internally that doesn't count as a credit towards the match doesn't if you if you do that if we do that internally that does count but we have to invoice for it and part particularly Sarah is that she's dealing with a lot of things right now and managing these grants as well is a big burden and secondly these V-trans grants are pretty complicated I understand I understand all that the question is one of our goals in hiring this new financial position whatever we're going to call it we're going to talk about it in the budget but the budget that we do as a capability to do part of their responsibility is going to be that grant administration so rather than spending another $3,000 if we have an employee in the house who can do that so it isn't an undue burden on Sarah then that's a pretty good swing about. And I don't know how other people feel about that. Sarah, what do you think about that? Well, I feel like I should have my face on here. You know, I don't know how it's hard to know exactly what's going to be involved in a grant that I've never administered before, so I don't know how much work. But I can just tell you that, and I don't know when this starts. So I can tell you that. That's a good question. When would this likely start, Sandy? Within the next month or two, you need to submit the contract, get a contract back, you put it out to bid, or sign a contract with whoever the major consultant's going to do. So I'm assuming that that would take a month or two. But it's intended to happen over the next few months. So the timing is really difficult. If I'm going to be mailing out 1,500 ballots and processing 1,500 ballots coming back, not to mention putting out the town report, I have some concerns about whether or not our staff can handle that. On the other hand, I keep thinking, why are we paying $3,000 to Central Monterey Regional Planning Commission? We already pay them money. I mean, it just seems like it's more cost on top of that. But I don't know, because I haven't managed one of these grants. I've only managed a FEMA grant. I do know that it got increased today from VTRANS asking if we had certain policies in place and questions about that before they gave us any money. So I don't know. They were very vague about what money we were. It wasn't seem to be tied to any particular grants. It seems like it's a little cart after the horse, that they're already talking about VTRANS grants we're already supposed to get. Do we have the policies in place? So that's just a perfect example of how these things can get complicated, mucky really fast. So I've been on too many Zoom meetings today. I apologize. So in terms of cost for the town, Sandy, just to be clear, if we subcontract with the League of Cities and Towns to do the administration. The Regional Planning Commission. Regional Planning Commission, I'm sorry. Does that count towards our match, since that's money out of our pocket? Yes. OK, so it really doesn't matter. One way or the other, the administration is part of our match. It just depends on whether we want to sub it out or not. And I guess my feeling on that is after hearing from Sarah that if this is all going to start up in the next month or two, that is not the time to put extra work on our shoulders. And I think we need to consider subbing out the administration. Can I just add something here? This is Theo. Can I add something here? I appreciate having us on. And your comments about creative use of the financial person makes some sense to me. I mean, if there's a flexibility on the grant tour side at all with the timeline, we would want to look at that and not have to be undue burden on the town and have it work better in that regard. I mean, not to say what Sandy said earlier, but one piece about this scoping is it's kind of a chasm between the municipal planning grant money that we already got and any future other grants that are ever going to be possible. You have to do this. Maybe folks remember that, but you have to do this scoping step to get to the next step. And this isn't, I would say it's less about a sidewalk, a physical sidewalk as defining a place and a destination. And that's kind of the way the Desvoys and Kings Project threw itself out. The reason we land with sidewalk or crosswalk is it was within the face area where you didn't have to take control of the road. So if you have that portion of the road still not within our control, there are limited infrastructure things that can be done. So that's the thing I would say to, I hope, segue to Sandy briefly saying there's something also exciting about this and that planetary matters really has kind of stepped up as a partner as an outgrowth of the what's next, middle sex economic infrastructure. They weren't the only ones there, but they want to kind of help. It wouldn't count toward the match in this grant, but there are other funding opportunities that could wrap around. Like I just don't want to, were you going to talk about the demo project at all, Sandy? So I think it's worth the select we're knowing, I think, however, that tied to this possible project, which we already said we would get. And by the way, congratulations on the other budget planning grant, that's great news. But for this thing, there may be the possibility to get other monies to do a demonstration project where it would kind of be a little build out at the crosswalk between the development across the street. I don't want to get ahead of my skis too much, but I think there's a lot of interest to make it better understood by the community and more welcome because even though there was a recent survey that perhaps didn't put this at the top of the list, there was a lot of enthusiasm work over time through the what's next, middle sex. And the committees that came out of that kind of all converged nicely around this nest. If there were a trail that did kind of a circumambulation of the town center that would be tied for trail work or the open space endeavors by weatherization town buildings. So I just want to thank you for letting us come on and really hope that you'll reaffirm your commitment. And if I can do anything, the last thing I want to say, I would offer my time, but I'm not an employee, but to help shepherd this once we had it underway because I really has to be meaningful. I just don't want it to be a cookie cutter step. It really has to make sense between what the design phase was and what the kind of pre-positioning for grant will look like. And to me, there's a lot riding on it. So I wouldn't want us not to be involved. And I say us, me as intimately under your direction and the planning commission's direction as possible. So those are the thoughts that I had and thank you. Thanks, Theo. I do have one under question and I don't know whether this is a Theo question or a Sandy question. But when I talk to Steve today, he asked to me to ask, is there a possibility? And I think I already know the answer to this, but is there a possibility to include what he called the bike lane option versus the sidewalk option in the scoping grant? Or have we already crossed the river and this is pointed just at sidewalks? I'm not sure I know what the bike lane option is, just so. Well, Steve's idea was that he expressed a couple of times through the process was rather than to have a sidewalk to have a bike lane on the side of the road, which could be marked off and could be, I mean, it could be a walking lane slash bike lane, not just a bike lane. Yeah, I mean, I think that those have been focused on keeping them separate from traffic more and part of it is through the village to try and slow traffic down and have dedicated space. It's not in the traveled way as a bike lane, walking lane. The bike lane is just a wider shoulder. And I think that that was looked at a little bit as part of the walkable middle sex study. And while it, that it would not really accommodate and address the safety concerns for pedestrians in town. I would just add to that, in order to get that broader width that might have accommodated a walking path, whether it's paved or not on a bike path, at least through the more narrow stretch of town, it would have meant that the project we would have had to take over that stretch of the road, which was a wholly other scale of financial model. Yeah, I understand that. I don't think it wants to be in a position where we take over the road. Right, so that's why we foreclose the bike path initially. There's a section of the road that's quite narrow as well. And it would not be able to physically accommodate a, you know, the additional width for the bike path through there. With its current ownership. Yeah, I mean, it's just a little ironic to me that we're gonna create a sidewalk and space in between the sidewalk and the road, which are surely gonna take up more space than a bike path would take. But anyway, we don't wanna take over the road. I get that totally. Well, the easement that's there is a lot, just so that we know, because it's important, is kind of already a pedestrian travel path and you wouldn't necessarily need to pave that. And I think a lot of the butters, I mean, there are four butters who want this, the planetary matter, but the other ones, anyway, I just don't know, I don't think there's any broadening. It's just kind of going on an existing path that could be paved. And I don't know whether we would ultimately need to be, but it certainly can't be understood until we scope it out. Okay, and I guess this, so here's the second part of his question, which is also one of my questions, is when we talk about a sidewalk, I think of sidewalks in Montpelier, I think of the sidewalks in Moortown, I think of, you know, I basically think of poor concrete sidewalks with granite curbs and everything that goes with them. Is there any option not to have it be a concrete sidewalk, which is gonna frost heave and fail over time and need to be maintained and et cetera, et cetera. In other words, can it be, can it be what, for lack of a better word, I would call a stay mat path separate from the road? I don't know the answer to that question. It's certainly something that we could explore. I do know that we're looking at doing this within the V-trans right of way. So they have a lot of say on what it looks like, feels like, so on. And something tells me V-trans wants a concrete sidewalk. Only request would be to have them look at options other than the concrete sidewalk, if that's possible. Concrete sidewalk to me is kind of a nightmare, but anyway. Take care. Yes, Sarah. If it's within the V-trans right of way, does that mean the V-trans will maintain the sidewalks during the winter? No. Too good to be true. And that's a big part of the concern. I would also say at this point in time, having thought about this a lot over the last two weeks. And as I said, I talked to Steve today, Steve has come around to the point of view that we should go ahead with this, that we started down this path and that we should follow through and do this next step to at least put us in a position to go forward. And I guess I am in the same place at this point of time, which is a little different from what I was saying what I was saying two weeks ago. So I don't know how everyone else figures. Yeah, Phil. Yeah, Peter, I agree. You know, I think we should move forward. And again, thinking about contracting out the management of the grant, as long as we've got to spend the money anyway and it's part of our participation, part of our match, it takes the burden off of Sarah. And as she said, I think we know we've got a lot of things on our plate, at least right now. We're headed, I think in the direction of hiring the financial person who eventually will be able to do these kinds of things. But we're not quite there yet. The timing isn't great. So I think the subcontract makes sense. I agree. That's Liz, Mary. I agree with Phil's comments and yours. And does it, I mean, does it fall in line, the pricing of the match fall in line with what it would cost to manage it through the central government regional planning commission? Or is it gonna be like they're gonna bill us for like $10,000? No, I mean, the administration costs are like limited to 10%. So that has to be only for $3,000. And then they can do it for that, Sandy? I think they can do it for that, for the administration of it. And I think we can add some of the other administrative costs, reporting and so on into what the contractor, the consultant themselves are doing, so there's not additional work. And I know Du Bois and King is fairly, familiar with these requirements that VTrans has and that the, you know, has for these sorts of grants. So it is a more complex grant. I'm not sure I knew that going into it, but you know, sometimes you figure these things out as you go, but I think that having, with that, having the regional planning commission who has familiarity be able to manage it and administer it would be really helpful. Anything else to anybody? We're ready for a motion. I wonder if everybody looks sideways at once. I'm looking to see what the motion is. I'm trying to find my agenda. I move that we approve the VTrans project commitments for the bike dash head scoping study with a required 20% town match. I'll second. Can you add with the intention that the administration will be set out? Yes, that was implied, but I can certainly say it and, I think it would just be good to have it in a minute. With the condition that the Center Vermont Planning Commission will do the administrative work for the grant at the cost of no more than 10% of the grant or $3,000. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Okay, thank you. When you're going to the discussion that the select board already approved applying for the grant, you provided a letter of support. What's before the select board now is signing the letter that would move forward the grant agreement with VTrans. And I provided a copy of that letter to Sarah. No. Okay, so then I withdraw that motion and say, I move approval of the town signing the VTrans contract to do the bike-ped scoping study with a 20% town match to be administered by the Center Vermont Regional Planning Commission for $3,000. Before we go on, this grant says- Hold on just a second, Sarah. So do we have a second to that motion? Yes, thank you. Okay, go ahead, Sarah. Well, it just says that the name full-time municipal employee and responsible charge and responsible charge of this project, regardless of any additional contract and management services, Sarah Merriman, select board executive assistant. I think we can take an executive, but do you guys still want to, that's still my name, responsible charge, Sarah Merriman, I'm the only full-time employee. Oh, put me on there, Sarah. You can't. You're not a full-time employee. You're not a full-time employee. I have- I am, these days I feel like I am. Well, I am here. That's not going to, in other words, it's not going to be the new road foreman. They're only two full-time employees. I mean- Yeah, that's gonna be you, Sarah, congratulations. Unfortunately, it has to be you, yes. Okay. And who's gonna assign, you guys also have to authorize the municipal official to sign this. So who is going to be authorized to sign this? The chair. The chair, okay. We don't think we can have Sarah sign it? No, I can't sign it myself. I'm the author of the municipal official. All right. Thank you. Good. Okay. The fund just goes on, doesn't it? Okay, so are we ready for a vote? Aye. Aye. Aye. Liz, meet me. I say aye. So I think we've done it, guys. Here we go. Down the road. Thank you, Sandy. And I had- Thank you, Theo. Thank you very much. I was wondering, I had passed along a contract for the central Vermont regional planning commission to work with the middle sex planning commission on zoning as a consultant to work on zoning. And that is money that is within our budget for this year. And we've already begun that work. And that contract also needs to be signed by, I think Peter, so. I didn't see that in our packet. I sent it. It's, it is just a real, it's just all you need to do is just making you aware of the money. But yes, Peter, when you come in to sign the scoping grant, you can sign the study. Okay. The zoning up. Perfect. Okay. Thank you. Thanks very much. Have a great day. Have a great day. Have a great day. Bye. Bye. Before we go into our budget workshop, I would just like to acknowledge what has already been brought up that we received our other grant, which Liz applied for. Congratulations. Yeah, I was going to ask about it in the other business because there's, I mean, and I can ask it right now, I guess. Sure. We have 45 days in which to approve it and I don't need approval to approve it. Do I, I can just go in and, because there's only so many of us can go into the database into the grants document to approve it. So. I don't know the answer to that. I don't think there's an, I think it's not an approve it. It's accepting it. We don't, do we need to vote to accept this? I don't think so. If we apply for it there. We applied for it. Right. Go ahead and see if you can do it. I'm just going to go ahead and accept it. But then we really do need to have a conversation in January at our, you know, at some point about starting this process. And I'll get in touch with, you know, my contact that helped us out with this grant and have a sort of offline meeting with Susan, get in touch with the people who are interested in sort of participating in this. Because, you know, we're going to want to have a chair of this committee and all that. I'm not going to want to be that chair. So how much do you get? How much money did you get? You know, $9,000. It's mainly hiring such from our regional planning commission to do the work for us basically. But help us out. And it's got a, I think it's a 10% match. So $900 is the match that we have to give. So, but the idea is that the person that we're going to be, I think it's Claire actually from such from our regional planning commission she'll be, you know, working with us, helping us lead the meetings, as well as, you know, giving us, you know, sort of, you know, how we create this whole capital plan. And it's going to be over the course of a minimum of 12 months. So this isn't something that gets done quickly. It's 12 to 18 months when we'll have a finished product. So anyway, I'll kind of start that, get that ball rolling. And I know Susan's sort of thinking about some people that might be good chairs who have this sort of experience with this kind of thing. And that have already expressed interest, like that filled out the survey and said, yes, I'm interested. So, and, you know, we'll be putting it out there again, but we are going to, you know, we're going to need representation from the select board and we're going to need someone who, you know, is sort of in charge of this. And it's not going to be Susan. I can tell you that. But hopefully it can be a volunteer as opposed to, say, me who wrote the grant. So anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there that that is sort of another thing that's going to be happening. And of course, from our budget committee, we're going to want representation as well for this process. So, anyway. Here we go again. Here we go again, exactly. Be careful what we wish for. That's exactly right. But I believe those were your exact words to me in your email. But, you know, we did tell the town that we would take it seriously and we did. And so now we have to actually do the process so that, you know, we are as transparent as possible with our townspeople about what our expenses are going to be over the next 10 years. Right. Well, thank you, Liz. And thank you for all the work you put in. Yeah, Susan too. Susan did a lot of work on that as well. So. Oh, I know she did. I already thanked her off. Yeah. I don't want to take credit for this. Oh, we'll give you credit. You'll get credit and blame both. I know. That's the beauty of it. Okay, thank you. Oh, and one more thing too. I think we just so everybody knows, I drew down the last of the money from that previous grant from the Sandy's group. So they were approved and that should settle that. So now that we have a final report we need to submit. No, it's already done. It's all submitted and the check is done. Great. Great. Thank you. Good work. Thanks, Liz. Well, I didn't do it. It was Mitch who did it. All I had to do was press the button and push the button. The button presser gets the credit. You made it happen. No, Sandy and Mitch got it going and all I had to do was do it. So, okay, great. Plus, when you get a compliment, just accept it and shut up. Okay. But Sandy's still on. I don't want to take credit when she's still on to listen. No. Okay, guys. So I think that we're going to interrupt our regular meeting and move into our, into our budget discussion. Peter, before we do that, if I end up not staying for the whole meeting, the EV charging station issue, I'm trying to work through WECC to find out how this all happened. So can we postpone that till the next month? Our next meeting. Possibly we can, but I would tell you, and I don't know how others feel, but my answer to that request is no way, Jose. I mean, why in the world would we ever want to do that? So, I wouldn't spend a lot of time on it, Mary, is what I'm suggesting. Okay, well, your answer is, we're not going to assume it, then you can vote on it. Well, is anybody else thinking it's a good idea that we take on this? It's a great idea, but I am saying it does align with our town plan to have these kinds of services available to our towns people. And so, you know, I, so in some ways I'm like, you know, do we have a certain obligation to at least somehow consider this or maybe do some sort of concession where the school pays for half and we pay for half? I don't know. I do have a problem with like, even though nobody uses it and it's, it doesn't mean that people aren't in the future and it goes against, getting rid of it goes against our, our, the energy part of our town plan. But I understand the cost and all that. Well, let's table it, let's table it for tonight then and have a more. I want to understand, I'm on the WEC board and I don't understand how it happened. I don't know what kind of contract the schools, you know, signed with them. I don't know how they didn't know this was an expense that was coming up and. They did. Of course they knew. Okay, so if your role is no, we're not going to assume the debt. That's one thing. If you want to discuss sharing it, then, you know, I think we should table it. I think we should table it. Okay, well, I'm, I'm, I'm saying, I'm ruling, we're going to, we're going to table it. I couldn't, I couldn't believe it when I got that letter. I just about blew a fuse. It took two of, two of Dorinda's special drinks to calm me down before I could read the rest of the letter. Anyone. I just think it's, I just think it's outrageous. I, I was, I was so upset that I had an email, two thirds written saying that because we were going to be taking over the cost to this charging station, that no sand would be available for Molly Super Hill Road because after all we couldn't, we couldn't take like they're saying they're going to take precious money away from their students if they keep this charging station. Well, we might be taking special sand away from the access to the school, but I thought better of it. You'll be glad to know. Anyway. I just feel like we need a little bit more information and that we need to, like there, there could be some actual like opportunities to make money. Like it could become a charge point on the map. Right now it's not because of the bank. It's free electricity. Oh, it is. You understand that? Well, maybe we can charge. Why would they do that? Maybe you can get a charged one where you pay. Well, Well, I said we have to work with WEC and I want to find out. We're tabling it. We're going to table it. We're going to table it, guys. So let's, let's. You check the school Liz and I'll check with WEC. I want to, I want a picture of Liz's Tesla plugged into that jar. I don't use it. I use my own electricity and I pay for my own, just for the record. Well, and that's what I say. The only person who would use that charging station is someone who worked at the school who had an electric car. There's some member of, we've tabled it, but some member of town going to come and leave their car parked in the school parking lot overnight charging on that charge. Sometimes they do, yes. They do if they're desperate and the power's out, they do. But very, very infrequently. I tried to use. The power's out. The power's out. Oh, the power's out. It's broken. But it's on there. It's broken. It's broken. It's broken. Sorry, I brought it up. Your point's a good point. Anyway, we're tabling it, no matter what. So now we are into our budget discussion. Thank you all for your patience and understanding. So Dorinda has prepared, let me just say something before we get into the nuts and bolts of this. So I think our approach should be to what we want to talk about is the relativities in pay that are here and how we want to go forward with those, not make a decision tonight about pay raises. I think pay raises we should discuss at our January meeting. How did you get a copy of that? I couldn't download it. I couldn't get a copy anyway. Dorinda Senate, not printed it. I couldn't print mine. I just couldn't print it. Anyway, that's, I've got it on my little tiny iPhone. I'm going to send an IT consultant over to visit you with you, Mary. That would be a really good idea. Anyway, I don't know why you're, something's got to be wacky that you're unable to print this stuff because everybody else seems to be able to print it. So I don't know what the issue is, but anyway. So with that, Dorinda, you want to lead us through this? How are we going to proceed with this? Well, I basically, I just listed all the positions, what the current rate is. The spreadsheet, as I said, just shows a 2% placeholder there and so the spreadsheet, when you work with it, will just automatically calculate your taxes and your workers comp and all of that. So it's just every time you make a change, that's what it's going to cost you. The bigger thing is, you know, we, if you're going to replace the bookkeeper that you currently have, you know, I think you need to go from the 21-22 and forget about the 2% increase and figure out what number is going to go in there. And I think that holds true with if you plan on changing any, you know, person that, you know, if you're going to look at what they're doing, the other thing that's included in here is, I also put in the number of hours that they're budgeted for. So maybe, you know, the pay's okay, but you would need to increase or decrease the budgeted hours. But this is how it's all based on and has been based on. Yep. So I think that's exactly it in a nutshell. I mean, what we wanted to look at rather than just say, okay, everybody gets a raise, is first of all, figure out whether the hours, whether the hours are appropriate. And second of all, we've got to design some kind of pro forma for our financial person and potentially a pro forma for a road commissioner position that we're not really prepared to talk about tonight. We will be in January, but what we're looking at here is a compensation system where many of our employees have just been getting, you know, incremental raises and a lot of them just have sort of a kind of standard rate that we've been living with for a long time. And does that make sense or doesn't it make sense? Or do we want to move it around? Obviously the heavy money is all in the full-time or almost full-time employees, but I would say, first of all, overall, the compensation is suspect on the, potentially on the inadequate side, unfortunately. And in some cases, we've limited the hours and many people are putting in a lot of volunteer time, which is never intended or really, really fair because they can't get their job done in the time allowed. And with the exception of the road crew, I think almost everybody else to one degree or another is putting in volunteer time. So I don't know how we attack this. I don't know what we're thinking. Any thoughts? Would it help if I go away so you guys can talk freely about the full-time employee who's sitting here? No. Not for me, Sarah. Everything I have to say, you're more than welcome to hear. No, I don't think that that's a problem. I think the way we have to approach this is, what do we want to do? Do we want to talk about an overall increase? Do we want to single out the bookkeeper and or the road commissioner? And if so, we should start with the bookkeeper. When I look at these, the estimated time of our current bookkeeper is 625 hours. Is that twice a week, Dorinda or Sarah or whoever knows? It varies. That's not per week. That's per year. No, no, I understand that. And that is, I mean, at times, it's like two days a week. Other times when you're getting into end of year, tax time, things like that. It could be more. I mean, that's just a, you know, so it's like, there is, that's one of the things that we would like to see with the new bookkeeper, that they're in the office for set hours. And, you know, that we know the bookkeeper is always going to be there, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Monday through Wednesday, or whatever the days are and whatever the hours are. But these are just, you know, and I think it's true for any other than the full time. I mean, the hours are pretty much, they work the hours that they need to work to get the job done. Well, I mean, what I would tell you is it seems to me the parameters. When we're talking about a bookkeeper range from the six 25 that we now currently have. To eight 16, which is what Sarah works, which is 32 hours. And for two hours, we have the assistant clerk and he's putting in. So do we want some on two days a week or four half days? Okay. First of all, Sarah is eight 16 plus 848. So that is not. Full time is 1664. That's 32 hours. Eight times 52 weeks. So that's, I don't understand, but I'm just saying, if you're looking at truly what for us as a full time person, it's 1664 hours. Well, then the question is, do we want to go from six 25 to 700 for two days a week or four mornings a week or four afternoons a week? I mean, I don't think that's a good idea. I mean, I don't think that's a good idea. I mean, I think we should go from six to seven hours a week or four afternoons a week. I mean, I don't think that's enough, like 600, it's 700 hours. I mean, like do you think 25 hours a week is too much during it for the bookkeeper job? If to extend it to this greater grants administrator and all that. I think a lot of it's going to depend on, if you look at the ad, we drew up, we, you know, we're going to have 24 to 30 hours a week. Once you go to 32 hours a week, and I'm not begrudging anybody this, but you then get into the benefits side. Right. So we started out hoping we could get somebody for 24 to 30 hours a week. The problem is going to be is. If you're going to find a qualified person. And to get the person you need. So that's, so our take in our meeting that we had with Phil and Sarah and myself was, we said, let's put together this basic ad looking for everything we want, throw it out there, see what kind of response we get. And so that was kind of where we were starting from for you to make this and think, say, yes, that's what we're looking for. I think then the person would come back and say, I need this much money in order to do it. And how much do they need? Like what, what, what's a reasonable hourly rate for a bookkeeper for municipal stuff? 25. Well, I, I don't know. I mean, I, I have to be honest with you. I really don't know what the municipal bookkeepers, a lot of them are tied in as clerk, treasurer. You know, they're not necessarily separated, but you're also looking for somebody to handle grants. So you're throwing that in there as well, which may or not may not be what a normal bookkeeper does. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Liz. I was just going to say, I would think, you know, I'm just thinking about like our finance people at Capstone nonprofit, you know, I think that they're making like, we have a grants administrator. My guess is she's making between like 55 and 60, which is like 25 an hour. Right. So, I mean, I think that's a reasonable amount of money that seems, you know, I think that's a reasonable amount of money. I think that's a reasonable amount of money. I think that's a reasonable amount of money. Of course, she gets benefits and stuff. So this is someone who's just flat out getting 25 an hour. But if you, if you're doing 25 an hour for 25 hours a week, that's like 30 to five or something. Is this is what we would have to budget, which is, you know, 20, a little over $20,000 more than what's in the budget now. It's also the, the, the, the, the sahaja and the. Barry and that was circulating around here. So there that's a full-time position. And granted, it's Barry. It's the town of Barry, not the city of Barry. And that's a full-time job and that's 70 to $75,000, but that's also, I mean, That was more of a financial director position, I believe, or a financial manager. It's pretty heavy duty and it requires some advanced degrees and five years. So it's kind of above what I think the town is looking for, but anyway, that would be the maximum it seems to me. All right, I'll get out of here. It didn't look like the town just say they wanted to get a finance manager too, or I remember reading about one town and I didn't think it was very town. It's much, much bigger. They've been ads in this in seven days and there's been stuff going back and forth. Amy's been keeping track of it. And she said that the, you know, they've had some, she suggests that we advertise this in seven days because it's much more, it's a much better read classified section than the Times-Argus. Well, even if it's 27 an hour, it's 35,000 a year. So, you know, we are talking about what we've already budgeted, which is 13,000 adding another, you know, 22,000 into this spreadsheet that you've done. So here's all I have to say on this and I am really conflicted on this because this is a potential budget buster, I think. But I just think I am all for, I like the approach of casting our net out and seeing what kind of fish we get in the net. I think that's gonna answer a lot of these questions. I really do. But if I was looking for what the ideal person would be, it would be somebody in something like half time but full time. In other words, four mornings a week. So, town people would know that they could reach this person during our normal business hours in the morning, any day. Right. Now, that to me is important. So, whatever the hours are, if it's less than the full 32 hours, all I'm saying is I understand why somebody might say, well, I can do that job in two and a half days. So, I wanna work Monday and Tuesday until noon on Wednesday. That is not what I'm looking for. I mean, who knows what we'll be able to get but having somebody there when the office is open, at least a good part of the day on those days to me is important. And I guess the other thing is, I wanna be sure, really sure. And I believe Garenda feels the same way and hopefully others do that we need a person who can really do this job in a responsible way. And yes, they may need a little training on the vagaries of municipal accounting if they don't have municipal experience. But I want a real accountant. Somebody who understands accounting, somebody who can talk to the auditor in the language she understands, someone who can prepare reports for the select board, take some of this stuff off to Renda, which she really shouldn't be doing. And at the same time, grow into the grants administration position. So, who knows what we're gonna get? But for at least this phase of the budget discussion, I'd like to put a good chunk of money in there. And I think, and I don't know if we put in the benefits or not, to get the right person, we might have to pay benefits. But that isn't necessarily the end of the world either. So we get the right- Paul, may I just jump in here for a second? Yeah. I just wanna kind of, I don't know, waste some groundwork to let everyone know to not expect a unicorn to pop out with regards to maybe some restrictions with hours or set times. I think we all know how hard it is to find good qualified applicants and having someone who's qualified in order to be able to do this. It may be a tough stretch to expect only, either half days or two days or something to that degree with that kind of responsibility. And you never know what you could ask of that person to alleviate pressure off of other administrators in the town role too. Maybe to justify a position that's worthy of either more money or closer to the full-time spectrum. Yep. Yep. Well, I think, unfortunately, in a way we're putting the cart before the horse because we don't know who we can get for candidates. Hopefully we'll know more. The ad is in the paper now. No, that's for you guys to look at tonight and approve that's what you're looking for. And then we will get it published ASAP. Well, look, do you have something to look at? We've sent it out. And out. Yep. Read yourself or whatever that is, please. I just, I think it's Bill, I just muted him. Okay, thank you. So, why did you send it out? Dorenda, when did you send it out? I wanna look it up. I sent it out. Oh, Sarah. I'll send it out again. Mary, just hold on. It probably was Wednesday or 30. We met Wednesday, right? I sent it out. I think I sent it out Thursday. Thursday, yeah. Well, it was Thursday would have been. That's okay, Mary. I've got it. I can just, I got it. If you just hold on, I can just go into my folder and send it and just send it again. Thank you. It sounded fine to me as a starting thing. Okay. All I'm saying is, when we meet in January, and I don't know the January calendar, when is our first meeting in January, Sarah? I think it's like the fifth. Just, all the 2021 calendars are back ordered. It's driving me nuts. Tuesday the 5th, right? Yep. Okay, thank you. I mean, by then we should have at least some initial response from the ad is all I'm saying. And that'll let the very least drive some of this discussion forward. Ultimately, from a budget point of view, we just have to sense the belt around our throats and throw a bunch of money in there and see how it all comes out. I mean, we're not gonna have the, we're definitely not gonna have this person hired, let alone really have our arms around what the final job description is gonna be by the time we have to have the budget in. No, something we talked about was our goal was to get the ad out, see what we got for a response. And ideally we'd love to see him come on board for March. Right. Something like that was our kind of our goal. Yep. And be ready to be ready to take on the job single-handed by June 1st or July 1st. Right. I mean, Amy is ready to go anytime we're ready to have her go, right? Well, she's more or less said she was willing to stay on through the end of the current, you know, the fiscal year. But I haven't really had a discussion that if we got somebody and got him up to speed ahead of time, if she, you know, was ready to go early or not. But that was the date she gave me, you know, in our discussion. I just don't think we need more than a couple of months of overlap. So maybe I'm wrong, maybe you feel differently about that, I don't know. No, the problem that we had when she was doing the training was you had a bookkeeper who was working, you know, again, certain hours, they couldn't coordinate hours. They, one would be available one day, the one wouldn't, even though we started on Amy, like I think three or four months in advance, I don't think she even ended up with two weeks worth of training when all was said and done because Patty went to Florida and all of that. And a lot's gonna depend upon what kind of experience. They had. That's exactly what I thought. We just got to cast the net out there and see who shows up, you know. And this may not be enough to entice somebody. I don't know. Right. What did you say in the letter in terms of salary or did you say salary commensurate with, didn't say anything about it, you know, just that. You're, I keep trying to send it to you and it keeps bouncing back. So I don't know what's going on. Yeah, you said the other day that you couldn't get an email to me, Sarah. To you, to Liz and to Larry. Yeah, something's gotta be wrong with your email. But Senate other people. I know, but I'm getting all my email. You're the only person who tells me you can't get me email. Anyway, that's a different subject. Yeah. I'm looking back trying to find Thursday and I find the agenda and I find all this stuff but I don't find the one about the letter. Well, okay, I'm just sending it to you again. Let's see if this goes through one more time. But we did not address salary. We more or less wanted to see what we got for response and then, you know, kind of see where we landed with it. I just think we wanted to find, we need to just plug in a number what we're willing to do, I guess. I got this, Sarah. Okay, good. So I'm gonna suggest, I'm gonna suggest and I consider it very much a plug number but I also consider it an aggressive number that we plug in 50,000. Okay. Well, we might as well start high because I only want to copy right there. Okay. So we'll put that in and then that I'll work with the numbers to make the hourly rate and four days a week or something like that. We wanna keep under full time or how do you wanna approach that? I would say our initial goal would be to keep it under full time, but, you know, fall of a sudden, I mean, I know this isn't supposed to be legal but the fact of the matter is it happens all the time. If you need to hire somebody with benefits, guess what? The hourly rate needs to be a little lower but they get benefits. Right. You just gotta be careful how you say it. Very careful. Right. But if we put that, so I could put in 50,000, so you want 50,000 without benefits or with benefits. Without. Without, okay. And I'm just throwing that number out to people think that's too aggressive. Maybe it is. No. I wanna make sure we get a good person. So I think that takes care of that question for tonight. The second question, which is the road commissioner thing, I hate to say between the devil and the deep blue sea, but there's all kinds of stuff potentially going on on the road commissioner front. Are there, as much as we've had select board members in the past who have always been willing to do this job as a volunteer, is it possible to find somebody in town who would continue to do that job as a volunteer? I don't know. Peter, may I interrupt? Yeah. What was our conversation last week after the meeting? What did I tell you? I think you're being a little disingenuous. What did I tell you in the spring after the meeting? What did I? No. Go ahead, Victor. What did I tell you? What did I tell you? You indicated that you might be interested in doing it. No, I told you I would. And I told you I'd do it for nothing. Yep. No, I heard you. Okay. That's why I'm saying what I'm saying. I also heard from your son. You told me the same thing. That's right. So anyway, I think for the time being, we leave that one alone is what I'm suggesting. All right. I did hear you loud and clear. I don't, I just... What is it? Just what? What is it, Peter? What is it? What's holding you up? I mean, from being, I mean, being transparent, that's all, that's all I'm asking you. I'm sorry to say that again, please. I was just wondering what's, what's holding you up from being transparent? Nothing's holding me up from being transparent. Okay. Well, you said nobody... I didn't know if it was appropriate for me to say right now that you and I had had that discussion, but... I think that's... I didn't say there was a potential for a volunteer to do the job. No, I think there's a lot of things in, and Randy Drury said this last week that there's a lot of things that are talked about out of these meetings that should be talked about in these meetings. There's a lot of things that are decided behind closed doors, and that's not changing. Now, I disagree with that statement, Victor. I have conversations with people all the time, and I don't necessarily tell a select board what all the conversations are, and I don't expect them to tell me. I wasn't trying to... What all I was trying to say is that we have not made the decision about how we're gonna go forward with this road commissioner position. No, but do all the rest of the select board people know that? Know what? The our conversation? First time ever. They know... Right, so how can they make a decision if they don't know, Peter? Victor, Victor, I'm not trying to give you a hard time. No, no, I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but just like... I feel like you're giving me a hard time because you're sounding like I should have brought up you offering to do the job as a volunteer, and I brought it up. I just didn't mention your name. And... Is more about sort of letting things shake out a little bit and see what's... We have not had any kind of conversations outside of this meeting about around anything related to the road form, and except that we know that there is no... Let me finish. We know that Steve is not the road foreman. And so... You keep saying road foreman. I'm sorry. I know, my husband gets me so mad about that. It's not the road foreman, it's a road commissioner. I'm sorry. I take that back. Everything I just said should have been road commissioner. At the road commissioner is not Steve and that Peter's acting in this position right now, but that it's my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, Peter, is that we as a select board, it would be some discussion that we had as a select board about how we move forward with the road commissioner. And so we haven't gotten that far, Vic, in terms of having a discussion as a group about how we did in this. Many towns, the road commissioner is the road foreman. There I said that right. That might be a route that we take. That's the way it was in the past with us. And so I think that we're sort of letting, just allowing ourselves to have some time to process how we wanna have it go forward. And I think that if we do make a decision about who is going to be our road commissioner, we wanna ensure that that person is someone who obviously knows the town really well, knows road well, gets along well with the community members and can work well with the staff who are our road crew. So all of those things get, even if it's a volunteer, that doesn't necessarily mean we're just gonna choose the first person who says, hi, I'll do it. There's parameters around who that person is. You might be the right person. I have no idea. Your son might be the right person. Paul Cermanera might be the right person. I don't know who the right person is. I know I'm not the right person because I know nothing about roads. So I just wanna let you know, Vic, this is in some conspiracy like, oh, we don't want Vic. We haven't even had this conversation what our next steps are. Let me just, hold on one second, Victor. Let me just say one other thing to be clear and again, to be totally transparent. The concept we discussed was that assuming we did not have a road commissioner in place for January 4th, which is almost tomorrow, that Steve would resign as of January 4th, which is Shane's first day. So I am not the acting road commissioner now as there are a chance that I might be for some period of time in January. Yes, but not yet. Right. I understand that, Peter. And in no way am I trying to push Steve out and or anything like that. It's just that from what I understood is because of the fact that he is, it's been explained to me because he's Shane's father. He can't be the road commissioner and be instructing him on what to do because that's against town policy and that's fine. Well, it is, it is, but that doesn't happen until Shane becomes an employee, which is January 4th. So anyway, Victor, I'm sorry if I got you upset, I didn't mean to and I appreciate it. No, I'm not upset. It's just, yeah, it's not upset. I had a conversation with Matt in between and I reserved from saying anything when you said that there's any more, if anybody wants to say anything because I was gonna let it filter out like Liz said, but my son said that we had a commerce talk with him and that it would be appropriate for me to speak up. Speak up, so I spoke out. Victor, you're always welcome to speak up. Thank you. You've never been shy before, Victor, either. Yeah, that's one of my good character qualities. Thank you. Getting back to the subject at hand, I am proposing that we not at this point in time consider putting money in our budget for the road commissioner position. I don't think we're ready to do that, that's all I'm saying. Okay, I agree with that. So the next thing I think we wanted to talk about, which is maybe not necessarily, I mean, it is definitely germane to the budget, but in a way it isn't germane to the budget. And that is just the whole methodology we have for paying people, how we determine what their rate of pay is, how we adjust their rate of pay over time. Our practice for a long time has been when we hire somebody, whether it's a member of the road crew or a select board assistant or somebody who gets appointed or elected, a Lister or whoever, that there's an initial rate of pay that gets set and then we give basically across the board increases over time and that's what we've done for quite a while. And I think in doing that, some of our rates of pay may be out of whack, maybe not, but maybe they are. And I think part of this was to have a discussion about two things. Number one, if the hours allowed are correct, which we know in many cases they're not because people are working way more hours and then if the hours are correct or we adjust the hours, then does the rate of pay need to be adjusted? Hello, can I just say, didn't two years ago, we have a real soul searching, so to speak, about salaries and we actually raised them and it was like, wow, the salaries are now 15% higher than they were last year. So we did recently, I think adjust our hours, like the Listers and stuff to be more market hours two years ago. Lister last year, wasn't it? Yeah, or even last year, but I think more to the point is are the hours that we have allotted them, not the pay per se, but the number of hours that we've allotted them, are they sufficient for the job that we're asking them to do? I think it's both Liz. Okay. I think it's both. Well, I just wanna say we did adjust it and I wanna have that on the back of my hand. We did, but we did, we did all I'm saying is we did a, we said, okay, we're gonna increase, everybody on the road crew up so much. We never said, one member of the road crew is working harder than the other member of the road crew putting an extra time doing this and that deserves a different rate of back. We just said, we'll get the whole road crew. Yeah, no. What you did was you raised all part timers up to a minimum of $20 an hour. It was straight across the board that if they didn't work full time, they got 20 bucks an hour and that was what happened. Okay. And that was like at least two years ago because these part timers are now at 21, 22 an hour. So it had to have been at least two to three years ago. Okay. Right. That was a result of just inflationary increases after we went to the 20. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Do we have merit? Like I don't think we do have any kind of merit that's built into like our overhead, right? No. And I can tell you as much as I love the concept of merit pay, trying to decide who gets the merit pay and who doesn't is an unbelievable challenge and it's scary. And every time I've tried to do it in my own, in my own businesses, it's always turned out to be a nightmare. No matter you can, you can do a valuation worksheet. You can do check offs. You can do, it basically comes down to who thinks somebody's doing a better job than somebody else. Well, what about the bonuses? Yeah, but bonuses. Never done differential bonuses either for the same reason. We did a bonus once. We have a bonus, yeah, a two list. Don't you remember we have a bonus in this? No, sorry. Never mind. It's in whack. I was gonna say, we did give bonuses one year when we had a tough winter where there was no winter. And I believe we gave them bonuses because of a lack of overtime. Right. But again, that was an across the board thing to the road crew. Right. I mean, we've done all kinds of things over the years, but what we've never done is look at individuals and say, this is somebody who should be rewarded versus this other person who's doing a good average job, but they're not doing an exceptional job. And I'm scared to think we would try and do that. I'm just throwing it out there. Well, Peter, I see- For instance, just for example, and don't get me wrong, I do not focus that much on the part timers. I'm not saying that their compensation isn't an important part of their family income or however you look at it, but the people I worry about are primarily the full timers. And then we've got people in between who are maybe not full time, but that's basically what they do. And that's, anyway, I don't know. But I mean, for instance, so here we are, the smart board, 662 or 827 a year, that works out to about $0.15 an hour for me. Do we think that's fair? Of course we do. I would like a big fat raise, please. Thank you. So we're not worried about the select board. We get what we get, or at least I'm not worried about the select board. No. I'm not worried about it. I'm not either. In terms of the road crew, Steve's feedback is that we're better, but we're still not where we need to be, both in terms of comparing ourselves to other towns and certainly comparing ourselves to the private workplace. It's been interesting talking to these people we've been trying to hire. You know, and this has been my experience over the years. People basically don't value the benefits. Like, you know, look at what we contribute to the retirement. People say, oh yeah, that's good, you know, but I'd rather work for a contractor who pays me $35 an hour in the summer and I cut wood in the wintertime, you know, and I have no benefits. That's a problem. Yeah, it's a problem all over for people that they don't, especially if it's a younger group of people that you're hiring, they don't, the benefits don't mean much. So Peter, what are you leading up to? You're leading up to, we need to do something. Well, I think we need to think about this. I was in such a blue boot after our last discussion that I was ready to say, you know, in light of the pandemic and everything else, a 2% raise is a pretty damn good raise at this point in time. And this isn't the year to be doing anything special or spending any extra money, especially when we're gonna be spending some money on that financial person. The more I think about it, the more I think that might not be right for relatively small money. We can make people feel better about working for the town and pay fair wages, but it's a little, I don't think we should, I'm not suggesting at all that we finalize any of this tonight. I mean, we can ask Darinda to put in some plug numbers so we can compare at our January meeting, but it's really at the January meeting where we really need to decide about this. And I really hope by then we'll have a better idea on the financial person. Well, and I would just, you know, also caution that, you know, we're offering our foremen a specific, you know, hourly rate. And if you raise the crew members, you know, there's gotta be a strong enough incentive for someone to be a foreman. And if it's only, you know, a dollar an hour more that might, you know, then we'd have to adjust everything else. So there has to be like... Right. I have been presuming as much as we've never really finalized that are discussed, discussed it, that whatever raise the road crew gets, our foremen would get the same raise, even if he's only been here. Okay. Short period of time. I mean, we need to maintain that differential, I agree. Well, how about... I don't know where that leaves us, leaves us for tonight. I don't think we've satisfied Dorenda with what she was looking for. Should we at least look at the hours and see if they make sense? Well, I think it's a combination of everything, you know. I think the road crew is, I mean, they're in for full time and they're in for budgeted for 225 hours over time. I think that's consistently worked. I don't, you know, I don't think they've ever... And if they go over budget, so I think that's a pretty good number. That's why I sent you that sheet the week before, the last meeting or before the last meeting as far as showing how each department was, you know, leveled out. Pretty much they, like the different commissions, like your rec department, your rec person, your zoning person, they submitted how many hours that they felt they needed to do their job. So if that's what they think they need to do their job, then those numbers are in the budget. Same thing with the Listers. They provided those hours to me, not, you know, that's not hours that I created. So that's obviously what they thought they needed for hours. So, you know, I just think the biggest ones were, you know, how many hours you really want to give the accounting department because that seems to be where there was a shortfall. And if you're gonna put in hours for, you know, which the road commissioner, then that should be in there. And the one other thing while we're talking about budget is I think there needs to be line item plugged in for all these grants we're going after because there's no, we're, you know, we have a $6,000 match for one grant. That's not in the budget. We have, you know, another 900 for another grant. That's not in the budget. So these are all unbudgeted items that don't get put into the budget ever. So we need to put them in there. We definitely do. Yeah. Brenda, could you explain again why the collector of delinquent taxes is 2781 versus the zoning? Wasn't he gonna be both the zoning administrator and the collector of delinquent, you know, who's the collector of delinquent taxes? I can't remember. That's Dave Smith. That's the assistant. Okay, so what happened there was they, when originally when I came on board, I was doing both the treasurer's position and the collector of delinquent taxes. Then when you guys came with this $20 an hour rate for all part timers, with the exception, you did it with the exception of the treasurer. My pay for the delinquent tax collector got dropped down to $20 an hour from what the rate was that I was earning. Then Sarah brought it up at one of the meetings that she didn't think that was right. And then when the rate got put back on, it got put back on at the wrong rate, but it didn't matter because I didn't care. And so that's how it got there. That was what I was earning for that position when I got done, and that's how the new person took over. In other words, it was a little bit haphazard. Just a little. Yeah, but you know, that rate for doing that job is... I mean, it's not that much of a... It's not a lot of hours, but let me tell you, it's a very fast job. Yeah, it's an unhappy job. It's an unhappy job. Okay. So what you're saying is the hours of what each of the people think they need to do their jobs? For how they submit their own budgets, the different time, for the most part, that's what the part-timers submitted. And I believe how, and Sarah may have a little more insight on this, but when the treasurer clerk position got broken up, I think what happened there was somebody guided you guys into the fact that the clerk needed 32 hours and the treasurer got eight hours or something like that. No, just when I got the job, they said, the select board said they wanted me to work 32 hours, which was great. That's what I wanted to do. Well, I think, however that went, but that was when it got divided up. So I think they took your 32 and the other eight, because it was 40 before. Right, and just to be clear, the delinquent to tax collector stuff, and you used to be the trustee of public funds, which was a stupid, it didn't meant nothing. And that's what was Cindy was, so when you got hired, you said you wanted to get the rate Cindy got. And that's also what Cindy was getting for Zoting Administrator as well. So I mean, she was getting up, she was about $27 an hour. So between Zoting Administrator, treasurer, clerk, collector of delinquent taxes, trustee of public funds, she had a whole bunch of jobs at $27 an hour. Right. And it was her who suggested what my rate would have paid would be not on Kingman. We're still feeling the after effects of that. Right, exactly. But that's how they all arrived. So, you know, the number of hours. History. So what, Dorenda, is a 2% across the board increase based on the additional position? That's built into this, oh, you don't have to spreadsheet marriage, built into the spreadsheet. I know, I just, I just wondered if she had the figure because I have to move through mine. Well, I don't have with this new person in it because I haven't, I could update that. Let me try this. Let me see if I can do this. I mean, it may only be like $4,000 or something like that. It's a small amount, right? The difference in the bookkeeper? No, you're going from- No, no, no, no, no, the 2%. 2% increase across the board. Well, that's in that spreadsheet. So you're talking, so I didn't, that number is in there right now. That is that number on the spreadsheet. So whatever, let me come out of this. Yeah, I'm just looking for it and I- So total wage, well, it's by department. I don't have it broken out, you know, like the highway department is almost $223,000. The zoning is $7,000. The collector of delinquent taxes is $2,800. The listers are $30,300. I mean, I don't know, I don't have them totaled as to what all wages come out to. Actually, I do, $358,245. And what is it now? What's the number now? That's what I don't have. That's proposed with the 2%. I don't have- Oh, yeah, I found the 358. But if you take 2%, 2% away from, you know, 1% it'd be $3,000, 2% it'd be $7,000 roughly. Right. No, it's not, you know- I'm sorry, I missed it. My son tried calling me. So what was the amount, Peter? It's $7,000 for 1%. Okay. Round, I mean, that's rounded off. That's in my head calculating, but that's pretty close. So, you know, that's $3,500 for $3,500 for 1%. So if we went from 2% to 3%, that's $3,500 if I'm doing the math right. Is that right, Dorinda? I think so. Right, yeah. Yeah, it is. So we're not talking about a lot of money. It's the principle of the thing and it's trying to pay fair wages for the work these people are doing. But again, I am not ready tonight to propose that we finalize that number. I mean, the one thing we know for real and true is we're gonna be putting a bunch more money into the accounting department no matter how we do it. And the road commissioner thing is an open question. All right, so what I'll do at this point is I will plug in a number into the bookkeeper position. I will add in line items for all of these grants and I will send out a new update to everybody. Sounds good. You went off on silent. Anything from the budget committee on any of this stuff? Guys? No, not till we see the final numbers. I saw George shaking his bottle of Tums for the tummy. That made me a little nervous. No, I was just drinking water. I should have something stronger. Not for the meeting, that's after the meeting. I think making sure you're paying people good money is really important. Yeah, I would agree. Me too, here, here. Hey, we could pay them like the school pays their employees. You wanna see some wages, look at what they pay. Benefits, I like. We better not go there. Hey, listen, I would not wanna be there teaching those masks children right now. I can tell you that. I can tell you, I wouldn't wanna be out in the woods at the outdoor classroom when it's 17 degrees. Me neither. I'll give the teachers whatever they can to keep those kids in school so parents can work. I agree, Liz, I'm not, I've got a teacher sitting right across from me here in the room. I gotta be careful what I say. You do. Okay, so are we, is that good with the budget stuff or? We got this, I'm not sure. We got something from the solid waste rascals. I haven't even looked at it, I printed it out but I didn't look at it. Yeah, I've got their number. So we're all set for, as far as the budget goes, but. I know they may be out of order but I just got an email saying that the contract with the school and Washington Electric is a five-year contract and it hasn't expired yet. No, it expires at the end of the year, I think according to that letter. I don't know. They're not gonna take it out before December 31st. It's not gonna be removed. Right, it's not being used so it's not costing anybody anything. And I know that the usage was being paid by the PTO, it wasn't even being paid by the school. Yeah. Okay, let's back into that. Are we done with the budget? As far as we can go tonight, unless anybody else has anything else they wanna discuss. Well, I missed the last part because my computer died and I had to run and get my phone. So, where are we at? Did we do make any? I don't know what happened to you. Yeah, that's what happened to me. Okay. We didn't make any decisions, Phil. Nothing, okay. Yeah. I mean, we're gonna, Derringa's gonna send out a revised sheet. We determined that 1% of pay for everybody across the board is about $7,000 just for- Okay. Without the new position. Yeah. Right. Okay. Right, right, right. Without the new position. So, if we cut everybody's pay, 3%, we could pay for the new position. But the, so, and also though, the $7,000 does not take into consideration taxes or benefits because every time you raise- Probably more like, right. Right. It's probably more like- Right, because you're- Something like that, yeah. You have the municipal retirement, you have, you know, workers comp that all comes into play. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's about, isn't that generally about three-fifths, maybe even more of the salary of the full-time employees? On what? All the benefits. No, because you only have five and full-time employees. So, you can't really just take three-fifths of the total budget. No, three-fifths of their salary. Right, but you only have, this whole budget is for the whole town. It's not, so you can't really just say that's what your benefits are because you only have five people receiving- Yeah, well, that is, somebody earned $53,000. If you took three-fifths of that, that would be the benefits. I think that's high. I think that's way high. Yeah, that's pretty high. Okay. I mean, it depends. The big factor is whether they need health insurance or not, Mary. Yeah, of course. Right. But there are only five people who get retirement. Anyway, the benefits are expensive, yes, but I think three-fifths is high. But anyway, are we all set for tonight then? Yes, sir. We are, I'm gonna say that we're concluding our budget discussion for tonight. I'm gonna put those pages aside. Thank you, budget committee. Okay. Budget committee, I'll be in touch about this capital spending plan. I've got a ban on this. That is good. I can do that, work on that too. Oh, good. Good, Mary. Good. So we are moving down then to other business. Durinda had her hand up. Yeah, Durinda. I just have to leave. So I was supposed to be someplace a while ago. I thought you were volunteering for the capital spending plan committee. No, I need to go to my other meeting. So I'm out of here. The ice cubes are melting in her drink. Not quite, but. Anyway, thanks for tonight. Bye. Okay, so we've got a few items here under other business. One is considering the Middlesex Energy Committee, excuse me, request that it's five page handout on building with energy efficiency be included with any approved town building permit action likely. I move approval. We just couldn't take any action because it wasn't an important item. So I move approval of that. I'll second. Did someone second? I'm sorry. I did. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Phil. So we are voting on the motion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? How do you want? You can tell, you can tell Larry's good. He's so happy. So the other thing, you know, the other thing I would suggest is that maybe we amend that a little bit and hand it out to anybody who applies for a building permit. Oh, good idea. Let's just get it, let it get it right there out front. Okay. I accept that amendment. Yeah, me too. Okay. Can I make a comment from the public? I joined you to just, because I want to herald Larry's leadership and work on this. This grew out of the enhanced energy plan, the energy committee, and you probably know this, but I calling in specifically to recognize his leadership and corral, no, but really corraling the people meeting. I was teaching a class I couldn't attend, but this product is Excelsior. And I think maybe we even have a chance to share it with other towns in due course. So I wanted to thank the select board, but just go on the record on behalf of Larry Sharf. Well, I thank you. Lobster for dinner, Les. Well, I am not cooking tonight. Oh, it's really great work. Thanks so much for approving. Yeah, I'll let him know. That's nice of you to say that. Thank you, Dan. I agree with you all. I read it over carefully again after our last meeting and I liked it even more than I did the first time. Yeah. Peter, good suggestion too to make it for anyone to get an application. I have a 630 Zoom meeting with a client. So can we move it quickly if there's something? Yeah, I have to get out of here too. I move approval of them. Oh, sorry. I was going to move the minutes. Well, first we have to do the Stanley Williams, John Nummy thing on a legal trail. I know that. I stopped myself. So he is applied for an access permit for access off the trail, which is the interconnection between lower and upper Sunnybrook. Steve has reviewed this with him and has approved his plan. Okay. So it's up to us to grant the permit and then I will sign it. What does he want? He has access for what? Driveway. Oh, okay. A driveway. Okay. All right. Yeah. So it's a drive. Originally, it was the thing where the lawyer presented us with an easement, which confuses because we didn't write why it was an easement. And we said he doesn't need an easement. He just needs an access permit. So this is that. And he desperately needs this to close. So move approval of it. Yeah. And I'll second. Okay. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. So. Sarah. Yes. Do I really need to sign these or can we authorize you to sign them? Well, you've got to come in. You've got to sign these two other things. So why don't I just create a folder for you and you can come in and sign those three things. Okay. I'll come down to more. You see, he desperately needs that, right? So why don't you just amend it to say that you authorize Sarah to sign on behalf of you? Can you just do that? The board, can the board just give me the authorization and I will see. Let's just do another mode. Yeah. Okay. Either you want to amend it or another motion. Let's just add it to the motion. If everybody everybody agree with that? Yeah. Okay. So I know I've got to sign those other two things, but I know he's frantic to get that. So I will sign it tonight and I will send it in. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Move approval of the minutes. Okay. Is there a second? Second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? We've approved the minutes. Orders are we all set on the orders? Dorinda's left. Yeah. I haven't looked at them yet, but I will and then I'll send my approval. I meant to say I approve them, but I haven't done that. I haven't looked at them yet, so I will look at them tonight later on. And we have tabled the, we have tabled, I'm sorry, the charging station issue. My printer for some reason cut off the bottom of my agenda, but I think the only other item on there is the letter, Sarah, from Notch Road. Yes. No, they're actually very similar. They're two. One down and I can do the penny, I can do the penny down thing very quickly. So penny down and complain that government Hill was not being adequately sanded in a letter. I mean, that's the overview of the letter. She describes sliding down the road, et cetera, et cetera. Steve confirmed to me today that in fact, not only is the road sanded, but they put down extra sand on that hill because it's so steep. Now, is it sanded every hour? No, it isn't. Could she drive down the road and find it to be slippery? Possibly she could, just like any other road in town. The comment Steve had, and I agree with it, is if the roads are bad, why wouldn't she either go out cold or road in French road and go around instead of she's up at the top of the hill? She doesn't have to drive to government Hill. Anyway, would Steve and I agree to I'm going to write her back a letter in a nice way, tell her what I just told you. And that'll be our response to that. But we're not sending a truck up and down government Hill every hour just to keep it so she can go up and down there anytime she wants to leave. Unless anybody disagrees, that's what we're going to do. No, sounds good. So the other letter, which I believe you've got a copy of, was the letter pertaining to, well, it isn't real. I always call it Notch Road, but it isn't Notch Road. But it's the road up to the town forest. And it's the problem, the problem relating to the class four section of the road where one landowner in particularly, but I guess really all three landowners want the town to upgrade that road and, of course, to sand it and maintain it. One of the landowners now plows it, but he doesn't sand it and it's slippery. And for people walking up and down the road, and he said it's dangerous. Now, Steve has been in touch with him a number of times and explained to him that is our plan to work on that road. But it's next year when that work is planned to commence, not this year. So what Steve and I kicked around was two ideas. And I want to run them by you. And I don't want to make a decision tonight because I really want Steve to be part of it. But I had two off-the-wall ideas. And Steve thought they were both worth presenting. One was to say to those three people, OK, we understand, as we discussed way back in the spring, by developing the town forest, we have created traffic on that road, both walking and driving traffic. What we also said to him back then was if you didn't plow that road, people wouldn't be driving up and down it. So by choosing to build a house up there and agreeing to plow the road for the other people who choose to build a house up there, they have created this problem as much as we have. Because if the road wasn't plowed, people wouldn't be able to drive up there. But all that said, it is definitely a safety issue. So what we're thinking about is two proposals to them. Proposal number one, which is the Peter Hood off the wall a little bit, crazy proposal, is we say, OK, we're going to gate off the road in the wintertime so people can't drive up there. The three residents will have keys to the gate and they can let themselves in and out and they can maintain the road any way they want to. But it's not going to be open to the public in the wintertime. Now, if I were them, I wouldn't like that proposal very much because it means you've got to get out of your car, unlock the gate, drive through the gate, get out, lock the gate, go on up the hill. But if they're really concerned about safety, that's a way to take care of the safety issue. Way number two is to say, OK, we will agree to pay 50% of the cost, meaning we, meaning the town, will agree to pay 50% of the cost of sanding that section of road by an independent contractor with a small truck. It is the only way the town could sand that section of road would be to have one of our great big trucks try and back up that hill and sand it, which would be a bad idea, plus the idea of, as Steve said, once we sand one class four road, we're going to be sanding them all. Right. But to say, OK, we'll hire a contractor to do that, somebody with a small pickup truck and a sander on it, basically. And the three of you, the three landowners up there, pay half the cost and the town will pay half the cost. They ought to hire the person. We don't want to have anything to do with controlling sanding of a class four road. Because then it's the same thing. It will be that all the other class four roads will, well, why aren't you hiring a sander for us? Mary, I hear you. All I'm saying is I do think that this is a little bit of a special case. Because by developing the town forest, we help create this problem. And ultimately, our goal is and our plan is to upgrade that section of roads starting next year and then make it a road that the print. And remember, this is a project that's getting funded jointly by the WMA, I believe, is the right word, the state folks up there. They're going to pay for this part of the cost of this upgrade and the town's going to pay for part of the cost. That's the concept. I think they're pretty darn lucky to get us to move that construction project ahead of a lot of other ones. And so I mean, I don't mind paying half, but I don't think we should be doing the contracting. No, we shouldn't. Well, the only reason, so let me just tell you what my thinking is on that. So my initial thought was to say to them, you hire somebody to sand it, you guys pay half the cost and we'll pay half the cost. The problem with that is we have no control over the sanding, whether it gets done or not, whether it's done properly or not, whether it's done timely or not. The person works for us. We have control over it. We're moving it from a four to a three in some ways. And that's if I were, I mean, if I were their lawyers, I'd argue that we're taking those steps. Don't you remember what happened when we started doing the plowing, Gary started doing the plowing up to Jan's house, so Ron? Yeah, but I also remember when we started sanding and plowing McCullough Road, when it was still a class four road, Mary, and you know what? That all worked out. So all I'm saying is there are times when you have to take action for public safety, and I think this is one of those times. So all I'm asking is that's the purpose. Somebody has other ideas. We're willing to listen to them, but the road is unsafe. It's dangerous when it's icy. There are a lot of people in town residents walking and driving up and down that road. And if someone gets hurt, you know, darn well, the town's going to get sucked into it. So that's why I came up with the idea of blocking off the road. That solves that perfectly. Yeah, I like this. But anyway, we're not making a decision tonight. There's the update. Do you want me to put that on the agenda for January? Yes, please. So with that, I don't have to last. There's nothing else on the agenda, right, Sarah? Merry Christmas. Hold on. I think I think Paul may want to speak. Hey, guys, sorry, hopefully you can hear me. Yeah, I just just kind of wanted to speak on on the subject of the road commissioner position. I didn't have a chance before you guys switch subjects, but just just to keep in mind, even as as volunteers come forward and things to that degree that, you know, it's still got to be a working system amongst the road commissioner, road foreman, and then trickling down to the road crew. And I think that that should be a very heavy conversation that happens with the board and the road crew, as well as, you know, obviously the incoming foreman, that that all be laid out very well, because the last thing we'd want is for something to happen to additional road crew members should a person get in there and, you know, relationships start to get strained. It would be a bad time of year, any time of year. But that right now, especially if that were to happen. So I just kind of want to echoing exactly what what Liz said earlier, believe me, we're very good. Yeah, OK. So thanks, guys. Have a great night. Happy holidays, Bob. All right, happy holidays to everybody. Am I not going to see you until the new year?