we'll be getting with the presentation in a few minutes. Anybody here for public comment other than presentation? I'm depending on the presentation. I'm Mari Pratt, I'm a resident of Duxbury. I'm also on Duxbury's select board. My concern with this project is when the close that road down, I live at this end of Duxbury. So one thing I'll be, my fire response will be lessen because more town is my fire department. That's a concern that I have, along with the fact that the Stevens book is going to become a flow through. At that time, we're still going to have a flow through from River Road with the Waterbury constructs. And even though it's not an official detour, it's used. And I'm very concerned with that because we have a mile of Stevens book that we own. And I think you guys have like a mile and a half, but that's all roads going to be used more. They're dirt roads. And those are my concerns with this and how it might be addressed. Okay. Thank you. This is my agency of transportation.  We're here tonight to do a presentation on Vermont 100 feet. We have a bridge that you're aware of that's been reduced to one lane. It's been in our program and I did a presentation with J.D. McCarthy, winter of 2018. That was the scoping phase of the project. We've now developed final plan, final plans. So this is another opportunity that we want to go out and kind of give you an update of where we are with the project and to get any more additional comments. And we just had a great one right here already. So I'm glad we came out. So I'm here tonight with Fiona Baros. She is the design engineer for the project and Jennifer Zorn. Folks may have seen or heard her. She's our public outreach contact. The public information consultant is the title she has now. And we've hired her to basically get the word out about the project. So folks won't be surprised and they can be informed about what's going on as we proceed through our process. So just a quick highlight of the agenda. Well, Fiona's going to talk about the existing bridge condition and the proposed replacement structure. So we'll talk about what the site or what it would look like in the future. And I'll talk a little bit about the project schedule from this point on. And this will be a bridge closure. So we have some detour routes and we'll talk about that and some maps for you guys to take a look at. And then any other questions or comments folks may have, we can discuss it at the end of the presentation. So with that, I'm going to come up and she can talk about the existing bridge. Hi, I'm Fiona Beros and I'm here on the project. And as you can see, this is an overview of the bridge. It's on 108 going over the Madd River. North of the structure, you've head right into Moortown. And south of the structure, you head toward Sealed. So the existing bridge was originally constructed in 1928. It's structurally deficient at this point in time and it has a less than desirable roadway width. Also, the bridge rating is five for the deck, the superstructure and the substructure according to our bridge and section team. And the overall solution to the rating is 63.6 out of 100. So as you can see, this is the existing bridge before the concrete areas were put in. And the travel lane width is only 10 feet wide and there's no shoulders. And our standards, we would typically have a minimum of 11 foot travel lanes, both of them. And also have four foot shoulders because what we need by it's two-nearrow. And currently, because the barriers were deficient, we put in concrete barriers in the traffic lanes. So we have only one lane altering the traffic at this time. And a lot of the concrete and the curbs, the facias underneath only these T-beams are spalling and cracking. And also the substructure, you can see the cracks in the face of the abutment, the spalling, and it's starting to lose connection with the ledge that is sitting on, the bedrock that is sitting on. So also as you can see, this is if you're looking towards the wayfield direction, so you're looking south, standing in the river. And this was washed out during Hurricane Irene. And these blocks were placed there to the team of Phil in the roadway as a temporary fix. So a little bit about the proposed structure. We plan to do a concrete deck on steel girders. We're still gonna have the spread footings on ledge. The span is gonna increase from 59 feet to 92 feet. And the bridge width will be widened for the lanes and the shoulders. And we plan for it to have a safer alignment. And we're gonna construct a retaining wall where you saw those blocks. So this is kind of a typical section if you were standing on the bridge and you hop down the center of it, you see the girders on the bottom, the concrete deck. You see that the width has increased. You have the 11 foot traveling before for shoulders on both sides. And it would be changing to this boxing motor rail. So in this top figure, you can see that the dashed lines, if you're looking at the side of the bridge, the dashed lines are where the water currently is and our span is increasing and the height is increasing. So that means that the hydraulic capacity will be increasing a little bit. Also, here you can see this is the top view of the bridge and the lighter lines are the old edges of the road and the darker lines and then they want to be straightened out a little bit. And it's actually gonna be much wider. So it's safe for travel through the bridge area. So it's right now, before the concrete barriers were put in, it was two 10 foot lanes, so it was 20 feet and now it's gonna be two 11 foot lanes and four, so 30 feet. So this is kind of my way of trying to show you how the alignment is changing. Basically, this is a survey and the lighter stuff are the edges of the existing alignment. So the red is the edges of the road and you see how it swirks more than this overtopping view and the yellow is the new alignment. Basically, we're just increasing the radiuses of these approach curves to increase safety. And then this is the overview of where the retaining wall will go. So this is the front view. It'll be protected by this stone fill on this bank that if the water comes through, that retaining wall will retain that fill now. So methods for construction, we're doing a combination of accelerated bridge construction and conventional construction. And our overall goal was to mix the two and have the most efficient design. We wanted to make sure that the duration of the construction of the project was less than 60 days just to avoid the detouring of the buses. That was our biggest concern. And so some accelerated elements were precast footings, deck panels, and we have rapid setting concrete to do some connections. And some conventional components that we included are the sub footings. So just pouring concrete onto the ledge and then also the deck over core to make sure that there's a smooth ride on the top. So this is kind of what our precast approach labs would look like. They're sized so that they can be placed with a crane and then we'll fill them with rapid setting concrete, which takes less time to cure than if they were fully made out of concrete in place. We're also implementing some deck panels. So these can be installed quicker than formwork and it's also a little bit safer because people don't have to hang off the gurus to install the formwork. This kind of overview of the panels. They'll be resting on each side on the gurus and this is just an overview of the bridge deck. And then on top of the panels, they'll do a amount of reinforcing and actually pour the top of that portion. So half of it will be the casted place concrete. And then this is one of the conventional methods of our construction. And really we need to just pour concrete onto the ledge. They'll clean it off and they'll put dowels in it. And it's just that we have a really good connection between the ledge and the footing. So all the weight is going right down to that. Finally, this is another bridge that will have similar components to what you'll expect to see for the Moortown Bridge. So we'll have the steel gurus, we'll have the concrete deck and we'll have black guardrail and it'll be the three boxy guardrail. Any questions so far? The quick set concrete. I've always been taught that the quick set, even though it sets faster, it's not as strong overall. So this is kind of a manufactured concrete. It's one that's a mix design from a supplier. They have a specification where it can cure in 24 hours but it is performed very well in our past projects. So it has a set as well? Yeah, it's a 4,000 PSI, the same as a compact concrete. But it has an expansion admixture in it and so the shrinkage, they go in the past connections. When you connect concrete and concrete, wet concrete wants to shrink and you end up with some crack and so there's some admixtures that they put in this that makes it a little different than our normal concrete. What's the expected lifetime of construction? This is a design life of 75 years. 75 years. It's a guidance from our AASHTO design that all new bridges that we design have a 75 year design. But they did anything better with expansion joys? Yes, this actually has... You're gonna expect that question. No, it's a good one. I think you read our last meeting and we talked about their debts. So this is what we call sending interval design. So what it is, the pictures that you show of the bedrock, you're familiar with the site, the substructors will be founded on bedrock, but the bearings will actually hang over the side on both sides. So rather than all your expansion happening at one side to having a metal joint to maintain, we split it on both sides. You reduce that amount of expansion and you have a much more maintainable joint. So they're better than what we put in when we did the interstate? We hope so. We hope so. There's still metal joints on the interstate though. Some bridges are pretty big. I can't believe that. This bridge is not as big as those. So the new layout, I'm anticipating the traffic is gonna go faster through there. And I was just wondering if you considered that in your design anywhere when we approached the village of slowing down traffic? Well I guess it's, we really match the, even though we are straightening out slightly, it's still an S curve. So it's, it is gonna be still a whiny curve and I believe there's another curve before you get to the village. And so it's still a curvy road, I guess. We're not straightening out so folks are still gonna have to. The other curve is gonna stay where it is. Right.  That's the same. It's just after bridges slightly different. So the project schedule is we're gonna advertise this in October and we'll have a phone factor on board through the fall. And we expect them to start work in probably April, May time frame and put mobilizing to the site. We're gonna have another public meeting so folks, you know, right before construction, we'll get an update on the contractor's schedule and just get to meet the contractor and see, you know, let them participate in the public process as well. It's a little bit closer to the closure. So we'll get the word out about the project a little sooner. A little closer to the project. So that'll be in April, May time frame. The contract, we expect the closure to start in the third week of June and continue the third week of August during the school summer break. And then it's really a traffic will be open at the end of August but the contractor's still gonna be around to do a lot of the vegetation and working on other activities that will affect that. I don't anticipate that. I imagine there's gonna be deliveries where yeah, they may, you may expect flaggers before and during after the closure. Probably more likely to put up signs and mobilize and that type of thing. So the detour. Folks are probably familiar with 100 and 100D, are close to parallel to each other, both and on route two north of Mortown. The detouring traffic from where 200D intersects route two and middle sex. They go west on route two to Duxbury and Waterbury area and you try to move 100 south back to just below the village. Example of the sign sheet that the contractor will get. So we have all the signs prepared for him to order. And it's a sheet showing the complexity of the number of signs that will have out there to let people know that the road's closed and they need to follow the safety for it. Can you talk about the new road for us? Sure. Pretty massive wait speed. Okay. Other one, Meadow Road. Meadow Road? Meadow Road, which hooks into North Road, Pony Prime Road. Okay. That's gonna be the other one. People familiar with the valley are not gonna use that. Sure. They're gonna go right by my house and quite a few others. Sure. What is your plan to control traffic? So we understand that when you have a state group and you disconnect that state route, that local folks are gonna go the distance that's easiest for them. So we understand that local folks are gonna do what they need to do, use the local roads, because those local roads are not signed for trucks. So we can't put state route traffic on local roads. We understand that. Yeah, and so the trucks need to follow that state route. But if you're a vehicle, then you can use the local roads as long as you're having the... Now what's your plan?  So, yeah. Look after the local town road. So what we have is a grant. I'm gonna work with the town for some of the construction. Once we have a contractor on board, it's called a local bypass grant. And we issue it to the towns. And we can discuss what you think a local route would be that you think would seal out traffic. And we kind of use the mileage. And if that road is gravel, it's gonna likely need dust and ice control, general maintenance. But a big one that we could include in the grant for a calculation is enforcement. So tractor trailer is going down your road, not supposed to be there. So you have enforcement present, so they don't do that. So it really depends on the route. We've had local routes that go from two different towns. And so we have to coordinate with two towns. If you think there's a local route that just stays in one town, it'd be one town. But we wanna work with the select board to kind of pick that one local route to develop that route. Well, it is the... Okay. The shortcut. The shortcut? Okay. If it's really clear to everybody, that's great. Then we know what it is, and then we can address it pretty easily. Okay. That'll be easy to calculate then. It's gonna take a lot of work to keep it smooth. That's right, and that's what the grant is for. You'll have another meeting before when the select board open meeting like this? We will that month before the closure. Okay. Yeah. Rob, we have had some issues in the past, like the bridge, as you brought it toward the middle sex. And the signage wasn't good at all. And we definitely had some speeding issues up on more kind of common and so on. We want, we do not wanna go through that again. Sure. So I'm just mentioning now, I want as much control from the state as possible. I wanna see more enforcement out there because we don't have any, we don't have an extra sheriff. And so I just wanna make that normal. We need more than we've done in the last time. And Rob, I'll say one thing. People do not read songs. That is true. You guys are wasting your money on signs, I'll tell you. I wish so. That's why, but they do follow speed feedback signs and blue lights get people's attention. Oh, well, that's a different story. And so we can elevate the presence to get people's attention. So I'm a cyclist in the Newstop Road, Ploney Farm North Road a lot. And I can attest to that. Right now, people are taking that road to avoid the traffic light. Okay. And the speed is ridiculous that they drive. Just to save that one minute, whatever it's like I'd say. So yeah, I mean, enforcement is gonna be key. Especially for the people who live on it.  Good to know.  And including out of town, as you know about it.  And the speed lily by there was 40 miles an hour. He said the average was 55. And I'm sure he was busy. He was busy. Okay. Yeah, he caught people before the village that were doing over 60. That same day. Yep. And again, with the part of the public outreach piece, you know, we let folks know that there's gonna be a police presence. You know, that's part of it as well.  You know, we want anybody to slow down. And I'm concerned over people using our driveway, which happens already and we're fine with local people using the driveway may put that hard turn on the funny farm road and the increase that that could bring to our driveway area as people try to, you know. So does that make it turn around? Well, it's a sharp turn for people already. And we took a mailbox out and it's nice for people that can now kind of use that as a little bit of extra room. Because it's narrow there as you kind of go up the hill. And we don't have a problem about it. I think if the increase of that happening, that could be a lot of wear and tear on our driveway. And I'm concerned over that. Thank you. What is, what, you may have covered this in the beginning, but what, will this change the character of where the water flows through that area? And if it does, how will that change it? There was, go up the fire. Go up on it. Right, I thought I heard all the people who were dead guys. And I thought it was the thing that we don't like if you move from there. It's right. In fact, the stream in Morse and Miller, we expect that instead of it pulling back when we're in, you know, trying to not work, it's going to flow from here and then come over to the next thing in the middle instead of being stopped up at the bridge. So it is getting slightly wider, but the, is the configuration of the site is that it's, the bridge is very hot off the water and the bridge is narrow. So this line actually is the top of the water. So it is very low. So when it does have the flag elevation, we're giving it more capacity just out in front as it is now. The high point when you saw where the stones were, it was kind of like the high point where it tends to erode. So the intent is to minimize that erosion and maintain the structures of the vent as much erosion around the structure as we can. But the volume I guess isn't really going to change. They may not have dynamics of it. So it will keep flowing through the, the mill which has the structure? Right. So we are, we're really not constructing below the footings. It's still going to be bedrock below that. We're actually, the bridge would be quite high because that's the configuration of the site. The water is basically the slotted line.  That's the pre-existing rock and stuff that the water's going to float. There you go. Okay, so. Yeah, this is water where it's straight. That's just a point because the surveyors couldn't get down there. Because the velocities are so high. So, but this is existing bedrock that we're giving in time. It's the same parts that we put in there so that they fall, you know, somewhere around this mat, it's not going to be that. Sure. And I guess the, the idea of making it a little bit wider the tent is going to reduce velocities. Right? The, when you make narrow, let it go through a pipe, when you have a hose, when you make it narrower, velocities get higher and it cause more erosion. So by having more, having more bridges up higher, we'll hopefully slow that down. But one of the benefits of bedrock that it's a very strong foundation. Right? We're going to cast concrete right to the bedrock. So it's essentially going to be rock in the end so that it's a very strong structure. Where it is now, because it's a corner there, the stream has a corner right there. And that's actually where it wrote it before the bridge. Yep. So it is, it is getting a little bit longer. I don't know if you can see here. I don't know. Let's see. Is this thing about me? Is this dashed line right here? And the new abutment is here. So you can see where it's shifting over. And this is the area where we had the erosion before. And that's now replacing that with a wing wall. So before, actually I don't know what was there before. I think it was just a hold up laid up stone wall. So not a whole lot of engineering was putting that original retaining wall. Our new retaining wall extends quite a ways around the corner. It's pretty long. So it hopefully will be a sort of as good environment for people. Back to the vocal roots around the bridge again. Okay. Our prior experience was depending on the weather during the time the track is being directed. Okay. Those roads could get significant wear not just because of that. And just the provision of the granite covered that. Right. So it's both like dust and ice control is more of a convenience. And I'll keep the dust ice down. But we also have a maintenance item in that as well. So for potholes and anything that comes up that that's all part of it. I'm sorry. I apologize. The notice I got with the meeting started at 6.15. So apparently I missed it in the front porch floor. That's what it was. But so I might have missed a little bit of the beginning obviously. Is the bridge from just seeing that it's going to be a wider than it is now. A bit wider. Yes. Than it is now. So that'll actually accommodate one of those little sort of side lanes for the cyclists to use. Four foot shoulders. Yes. And 11 foot lanes, existing one of those two 10 foot shoulders was very different. And I believe that's consistent with the 104 more. Is there an idea of the cost? I'm just curious. Is there, there must be some process that's up there right now, right? I don't know how to talk my head around 2 million. I don't know. Around 2 million. We can look at that one more time. Jennifer, I don't think I got a chance to come up here yet. I want to introduce Jennifer Zorn, our public outreach. Yeah, hi everyone. So my role on the job is to keep all of you informed the absolute best way that it can. Email is a great way. If you want to send me an email, I can add you to our email updates. If you can unsubscribe any time that you want to, you can also get me by phone. I do have an 802 phone number as well, which I will email to you this. I work in a couple different offices. That's obviously an office in New Hampshire, but I work out of our South Burlington office also. So we want to keep you informed as much as possible. I'm really just going to be the filter. If you have questions, reach out to me or concerns, or you're having problems, I'm going to be in direct contact with Rob and Fiona on a regular basis, as well as the contractor who is eventually hired. So I should be able to answer most of your questions and solve the problems quickly, but I have access to everyone else on the team immediately. So we'll have contact probably every day for the two month closure period. So I'll be able to get back to you immediately. So you can send me an email if you want to be added to the list, or you have a question, but also you can write your email down here if you want to. Lots of ways to get a hold of me. Also, I've been working with Sasha Elwell. Is Sasha here today? Thank you for everything. You've been so wonderful. Sasha also has my contact information. So if you don't want to be on the newsletter tonight, if you change your mind, just reach out to Sasha if you wouldn't mind and then you can just give them my email and we'll just get everybody added up. So someone from the town already reached out to me as well, which I'm sure they got my email from you. So thank you. Yes, I'm really looking forward to working with everybody and we'll do our best to make this as smooth of a project as possible. And if you're on that list, once the construction starts, we'll also have updates. So even if you don't have a question, it'll be emails saying how the contractor's doing, how much progress he's making, and you can kind of follow the project as it's built. Has it gone out a bit yet? Probably not. Not yet. I'll talk. I'll talk. I'm really curious, can you put that initial diagram and show the structure of the bridge? We're a first target. Do I sound like you? Yes. I guess we'll just start about five minutes early. That's the one. And the diagram will show the width and the center. This one? Yeah, maybe. Do you have a question or are we just... No, no, I just wanted to... Oh, oh. I guess some people that came in after we started, if they had any specific... The existing structure is how it was concrete. It was very typical in the past. The casting place was a large section of concrete. It was very conservative. It's pretty standard now. We can get precast concrete sections for shorter spans, for a span in the probably 70 to 150 foot range that you can use to seal. But you have a concrete surface for your trucks and piracy trucks. Was there much ledge on the southern end of that bridge? All those ledge on both sides. I know, I ain't worried about this side, but on the southern end, next to the cemetery, there's quite a lot of ledge there. It dives down very good. It's steeper, isn't it? It is. You're going to take more concrete at that point. Yes. Yeah, the retaining wall is not on bedrock. The retaining wall is kind of up on, by the way. It's curved down for a great few more, but it seems like it's going to be in the same area. It's like rotated slightly. It was a lot more before.  So it's really just kind of rotated slightly. I think maybe you have a better picture. You know what I'm saying? That's kind of now in red, and that's the new one, yep. Oh, that could be. I mean, yes, the previous Scoping Report had three or four options that we printed out here. This was the final one. I understand the utilities are going to be pretty soon enhanced, so if you've commented on that, and if that's going to impact the road, the closures, and do you know when exactly that's going to get done? Yeah, so the utilities is kind of ending our railway process. Once we obtain the railway for the project, the utility companies kind of get the green light for that, and that hasn't happened yet. That'll likely happen in September, October timeframe. So when the contractor gets awarded, it'll only be in the fall, but he's going to take the fall to do all the prefabrication and everything he needs to get ready for the closure. That's also the same time that utility companies also have to move utilities. What, Jamie, correct? Yeah, Jamie's talking about, and when you get to show up here, remember Jamie several times that this property is affected by the utilities. The existing one come around on the north side, and the new proposal will have one new pool on the south side here, and then it'll cross on this side. So there'll be some, you'll see some trucks and utility trucks. There's several utilities on the lines that are going to make a presence throughout the winter, so don't get nervous. They're not about to close the bridge in January. They're just working on utilities. I get that first property as it comes up out of the village. And over the last five years, it's gotten to be about 10 feet wider than it was. I've been there 35 years and the road has gotten, I don't know, we're addressing this to the town or whatever. I've just noticed a gradual increase in the width every year of the road. In this last year, my driveway actually used to go down to the road, now it goes up by almost opposite. So the water and the snow is draining a lot worse into my front yard. Is this a kind of a temporary thing, or is it something that's going to get corrected after all this happens? I'm John, you and I have talked about this for way too long. It's getting worse and the dust is awful. I can barely sit on my porch this summer, so bad. So is there any mitigation out there for, again, how much traffic is allowed up Coney Farm Road? So I guess as far as our project is concerned, it's temporary, the grant is for the bridge project. So after the bridge project, it's whatever the town is maintaining as well. In the last year and a half, I've been noticing that road getting wider constantly. Is that a permanent thing or is that a temporary thing? All right, maybe we should take a look at that. Sure. It's like my property line effect. I've lost about three feet of a property for the last 10 years there. Okay, thank you particularly. Thank you. Is there any resurfacing going to be done in the village or anything at this time with the state? There are many times since we've had a new asphalt from that bridge up through to the corner. In many years. You asked all the great questions. You asked all the great questions. So the Paving Department is separate from structures. Are we using bridges? Well, I wondered if it would be included or... It wouldn't be included. It would be nice to have it all done at the same time. Yeah, I think that might be possible. We are working with our Paving section. There is a section of 100B that is in the Paving program. And so we're going to coordinate with them. We're not sure if it's going to be right after. Maybe it's the next year. It may be in September following that. We talked about the signs. So Paving project and the bridge project that may be confusing to folks if you got both going on at the same time. But there is one planned for either later in the fall or the following year. Something about that bridge. The old bridge, you know what I mean? They put that up on horses. And that cement was all mixed by hand in the 28th. And think of the amount of weight trucks out today that still go across that bridge. Amazing. In the old days, they built things mostly to last. And today they built things so we can build them again in 20 years. It's a fact, isn't it? Right. Yeah, several projects are going on at the same time. So Paving through the village is going to be happening also. As well as the sidewalks. Yeah, the sidewalk will be going to water, John. Pardon me? Yeah. Did I just stare at the floor next summer? Yes, the sidewalks and the pavements. The sidewalk and the pavements. And keep your fingers crossed because that's dependent on bids for the sidewalk project. Because we don't want Paving to happen before the sidewalk project. There's some drainage going on in the road. So Paves have to happen before the sidewalk. And this is to our math folks, the sidewalk project that's in the state. Are you going to do that on your own? No, it is. Okay. So that's three projects to coordinate this. There's no fabric you're putting on bridges. Is that really doing good for you compared to asphalt? You have a new fabric on a lot of these new bridges compared to asphalt always. We used to put all asphalt, but we've got a new fabric now that seems to be working quite well. There is some bridge with some new type of pavement or better designed pavement. But this bridge will be concrete. There won't be any pavement on the bridge. So this is concrete? Yes. And it will be really correct. I mean, just getting back to three projects. And I'm used to that. I don't see how you're going to be able to pull that off. Three projects at the same time or something. Just for the construction of the line. High traffic is the actual work. We can now send you a car and we'll move it 100. Maybe, I don't know. Well, the painting project wouldn't happen to the sidewalk. So it'd be two projects. So concrete trucks and machinery. Jeff, when you say grooves, does that mean you're going to be able to hear it? So the grooving now, we've changed to longitudinal grooving. I don't think we had many projects that did transverse grooving. If you travel through a lot of states, you know, in the interstate, you hear a high pitched kind of vibration when you go through that. Vermont just started using bare decks at a time when longitudinal grooving was just coming out. And so we've kind of adopted longitudinal from the beginning. So the grooves go parallel so you don't have that in them. So the question would be, is it similar to being stooled? Correct. Yup, exactly. That's the idea, when you put it transverse, you just have the angle, the tires, makes a noise. You have the same friction, but not the noise. The bridge down by the common on 100B is already one of those grooved bridges in the same aspect they're doing. And it's not two. Doesn't mean you have to do it a couple years later. The one right by the common? Yeah, four. Quite a thing, it's a dam. Yeah. Yeah, it was an IV. There was a discussion earlier about emergency services. I also want to talk about, in addition to the public meeting, we also have the contractor meet with all emergency services. So that's a big part of the public outreach and the coordination. So everybody knows when this bridge is closed, so they have a plan, you know, where the routes were originally, they need to change their routes so that you know when that happens. So we'll have emergency services meeting, usually about two weeks before, maybe a month or four before. Not any other questions? Everybody for coming, please make sure that you have forwarded to sign in. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Very good presentation. How you doing? Very well. See you tonight here, Mr. Smith. Thank you. You guys are okay? You're welcome. I'll post if you want. I'll leave you in the camera. If I'm like so, I'm dressed like this in public meeting, she would not be happy for the sake of me. I would hardly have suggested that the TV show take a station break at this point. So there are two items that I'd like to have forwarded very, very, very quickly. Number one is there is a... the link that I've been submitted from the Shepherd property, which is across from Southstone Road. It's right on the river. This was long approved. They're just renewing their permit that had lapsed. And because there's going to be three buildings there eventually, it will require a naming of a private road versus a address off of Route 2. So the people don't have to change their station area a year or two from now. I'm suggesting that they name the driveway now to save them some trouble later on. They have suggested three names that they would like for the private road. Rock Bridge Road is their favorite because I understand this was the name of the family of business that existed there in the past. So that is their number one preference. Rock Bridge Lane is their second. And Shepherd Drive is their third. I researched and rejoined games of roads and I joined the counties. And there's no road that I think would be a conflict with the State E-9-1 Commission. There are several roads in the Basin County that have rock and several that have bridge but none has a combination of. So I don't foresee any confusion whatsoever. For the pleases I would like to register the name with E-9-1 as Rock Bridge Road. Is that the motion? Rock Bridge Drive. Rock Bridge Drive. That is their first preference. One word or two? Rock Bridge Drive. Thank you. Is that a test? Only a minute. I move that we accept your recommendation. Second. Any more discussion on that? Is that where like the old apartment or something like that? The old motor cord. Right down by the bridge. Right down by the river along there. So a business? It's a business one in the area? Three separate apartment buildings were put here. Three buildings, three units each. When they resubmitted their application nothing was changed and just expired. So they just removed it essentially. All in favor say aye. Aye. And second time is permit fees for zoning applications for the tearing down of the buildings. Now I will say that this is the first issue that I differ respectfully with the previous zoning administrator. He did not enforce permits to tear down a building. My reading of the zoning is any change of use requires permit, and if you're tearing the building down you're changing its use from whatever it was to nothing. I'm not just being technical here but there is a practical use for enforcing people to put in zoning applications and that is the vehicle in which the listers get the information that there's been a change. Either up or down in terms of tax. So I would suggest this like where it sets the fees I would suggest that a minimal fee required for this activity I would suspect it would on average take me less than an hour to do this and if we're prospect of making fees be equivalent to the expenditure of the town then I would suggest $20 fee for this activity would be appropriate with the $15 recording fee for the clerk. So just as a hypothetical what happens if there is no such enforcement what is the route that that information eventually gets to the listers body and what effect does it have? There is no vehicle that would formally give that information. So people continue paying higher taxes based on the presumed use of the building? Correct. Maybe complain about this why? I'm not complaining about it but I'm pointing out that I reading the law says I have to enforce it and it requires a permit. Now I don't charge the fee if you don't want to set a fee you can ever permit with no fee. I would like to propose a permit with no fee. Is that a motion? That's a motion. I would like my motion to have a de-construction permit with no fee. I'll second that. Further discussion on that? That's good. The zoning regulations for both zoning permits and DRV applications have penalties for either construction before the permit is applied for or before the DRV is approved of double the fee. So in this case two times zero is zero and just want to point that out to you. So there's not much incentive to put in the permits but that's what you're... I think the incentive is they probably will reduce their taxes when they bring down the building. That should be their incentive. Okay. Do you want to say hi? Hi. Thank you. Do you want to say something else? That was a bit of a cheer to hear about that. So it's... Oh, okay. So yeah. He talked to me previously and I proposed this instead of... It was going to be like, you know, not an incentive but not a money to do the permit. So he was like, this doesn't seem right to me. I'm going to try to see if we can get a change. I'm going to try that. So thank you. Okay. Announcements? Do you have anything? I have nothing. Jason? I have nothing. Right. Only following up from the last meeting. So yeah, I spoke to Martin about the owner of our room. I think that got taken care of as well as I believe she talked to Robin. Yeah, I did, but some of the grounds already come out. It's actually already being knocked out again. So it is... It's just any time you have that with the pavement, the way the pavement ends in the gravel, it seems like that happens. So I don't know what can be done. I mean, it's not as bad, but there's still a dip there. Okay. Well, that's what we were just discussing actually. Perhaps that's a good place for you know, especially with you know, the upcoming bridge. So, Mark, should we look at it again? Yeah, I guess so. And I will expect something like that so it needs us all to face for it. Well, I don't think the state's going to look at it for a short second. But it would be good to take a look at that with Williams again. Yeah, I've not been opposed to the pavement.  That was reasonable. And the same went over by the Skripman firm. We extended that payment through there and got it at the same rate because of the painting project. All right. So it sounds like there's just going to change it. Yeah, if you had to guess what would dispense this. I couldn't even guess without measuring it. I'm not sure how long the distance we're talking about. Okay, so we talked about the grant. That's independently now. And then I also have been back and forth with Doug Henson regarding the long pine. Seems that the state would like to take that down as part of the side work project. I suppose it's the last piece of puzzle. So I got in touch with the landowner Rachel Niltner and she has mixed feelings about it. I also basically said to Doug that it's a mistake right away too. So I guess the state would have a final word. I just wanted to see how Doug pressed the board before I gave the okay. It's a great tree but it's in the wrong place. Yeah, that's exactly how actual about it. But if it is still sound I think to take it down. I mean I know the people of you know complain about it hampering visibility I don't necessarily see that it does. If anything I think it makes people a little bit more careful there. That's why we haven't had any excellence. I think the main impediment to that actually is in the winter when the general store plows there's a pile of snow there I never remember to bring that up but this came up. That is dangerous but not the tree I don't know. But it's in a very dangerous place it really is. My guess is the tree probably won't last more than ten more years anyway. It's a kind of an expensive operation. Everything get that down so I think to get the state to help pay for it. Right. That's the thing. That is a good point. It's in their right of way would they have to pay for it anyone or not? Only if they wanted to take it down. That would be the deal. So this is the second time it's come up but the last time it came up was when we were doing the repaving and my understanding at that point was that they were going to fix that whole intersection a little bit. Which they never really did. They decided they didn't need to have that tree taken out. Right. I mean can we wait all things considered with the fact that the sidewalk is going it would be to me it's an opportunity to do something about that intersection a little bit anyway. Anything is better than nothing. They talked about moving the pole and they never did that. So Yeah. I thought something would be a big help would be large convicts in there. They decided it was good. Yeah. Never followed up on that. Right. Because when I got back to Doug I mentioned that a few years ago on the Hill's Repave there was also talk of creating somewhat better visibility at that intersection. That never happened. Is there any chance that the tree would be removed that there could be overall improvement? You didn't address that at all. The tree was in the 100B right of where I cannot say with any certainty that removing it would increase visibility at the intersection. And it was actually I guess that's the other question I said is how come this is coming up now why it didn't that wasn't mentioned in the third beginning when we were talking about the whole project. And he said that it was I guess a new person. Oh, it was when they retired he's the one who just retired. From the state? Yeah, from the AOT Shill's contact. Lahore the name escapes me when I put Doug Not Doug? No. No. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Lahore? I'm sorry? No. Well, at any rate I didn't print that either I guess his replacement she's the one who brought it up. Yeah. Well, it's her name. Actually, I don't think you even mentioned it. Alright, well What do you think you're the tree guy? Well I mean personally, I mean I've always defended the tree but you know, a lot of some of that had to do with you know, cutler's as well but it doesn't seem that Rachel is overly concerned and I mean this is holding things up I think in terms of any of the final plans I think I think personally, I think the tree should go Can they think about it in the e-mail? It's causing you pain. Well, I know. It's causing me a lot of pain too. Do you want to how much time do we have? Do you want to think about it and make a decision about next meeting? Do we need to get more input from you? Yeah, I mean I know that we're going to be starting committee meetings. So let me let me get back to Doug and see. I appreciate the expertise. Yeah, yeah. I really said it perfectly. It's a great tree in one place. Right, yeah, exactly. Okay, and then the last piece was the communication regarding that letter from John Martin regarding the issues that he's having with Eric Titrud. Everybody has a chance to look at that? So I don't think it's not a stock board issue. In the end I mean, he's complaining about public records being accessed essentially. So I'm missing I mean, if Eric is doing that as on the development review board I don't see that that should be okay. Well, I don't see necessarily that he's doing it as someone on the development review board. Anybody who's looking for records? Well, that's true. So I don't you may not have the whole story here, but I don't see any action he's taking as part of the development review board which then might be questionable. Right, right. Am I missing something? No, I mean, I guess if he's talking about not putting dirt next to the brook and things like that to me that's because he is on the development review board and he knows he's not supposed to be doing that. Everything else here just seemed, to me it just seemed to be a neighborhood thing. Do you think John Riley is still a chairman of the DRV, right? Is he aware of this? Is there something else going on? That's not a bad idea. That doesn't make sense. I'm just having a problem with the logical flow of events here. There may be a problem. It's almost like we're brought in in the middle of this thing. What's the story about him going through records and things like that? Or how does John Martin know he's going through records? Right. As far as requesting paperwork in the records, but we're not. So is he saying I have no idea? Yeah, you can't just can't say. I'm sorry they're not going to go along with this. Why don't we do it with Sasha? Why don't you copy John Riley? Send that over to John Riley. Or I can and ask him for, well why don't you do that and ask for his confidence. That's all I had. So the minutes of 7.15. Yeah, I wanted to correct one thing on that. When I met with Steve McGill I only met with Steve McGill. After talking with him I didn't feel it was necessary to talk with their youths because I felt that there was no issue and they could go forward. It says Ray had spoken to all involved and everyone was happy. I think I didn't speak to everybody. I spoke to Steve and I didn't really feel I had to go any further than that because the issue was at that point a new issue I felt. So do you have a correction? Yeah, the correction is Ray I want to correct that that Ray did not speak to all involved but I was satisfied after talking with Steve that the problem had been resolved that's what I would say. Okay, and then also when I made the motion to go and do the executive session it was not for labor relation agreements. It was reason number three and I did read the entire thing out so that correction was made. Is that correct? Any more discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. In the 29th, Sasha did a very good job of the way to make that motion for reason number three and because it was for the appointment it was for the evaluation of a public officer for employee evaluation under reason number three. So I will move that we accept the minutes of 729 Second. Any discussion on those? All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. Any old business that anybody wants to bring up? Did you use anything? Not that I say. So we still haven't just to remind you that you have made a motion to write the opinion that was open? Correct. Where did I see some way that we were going to discuss that again? So it sounds like we need to have an article to do that in town we need to ask them whether to consider paying to preserve the amount of our own. That's a weird which minutes was that? That's a 715. Right. Yeah. So why would we need an article rather than just included in our budget for next year? I don't think we don't need the article. This is why we wanted to discuss it. It seems like we're looking at articles that we would just put the whole thing in our budget. I suppose either way as long as we do not explicitly have a meeting we'll just stop. Right. But as a line item in the budget we'll take up during budget time. Mm-hmm. It's just something that at the finance committee we thought we should use transparent as possible. Right. I think I would accept that purpose. Right. Well, can you Sasha, can you put that on the agenda for the next meeting when Tom's here and we'll discuss it more? Mm-hmm. Okay, any other old business? Any new business? A resignation from Michelle Beard for the Wreck Committee. Probably. And Duane Pearson sent an email saying that Chuck Brook has showed some interest but they don't have another meeting until later in this month. So they haven't really had anybody really yet. Okay. Okay. To the Moretown Select Board please accept this letter as my resignation from the Wreck Committee. I've truly enjoyed my time on the committee and I'm proud of how much we've accomplished over these past few years and how much the committee has grown and involved. There's a wonderful group on the mission of being mindful of the recreational resources and opportunities of Moretown as all groups do, our group has shifted over the past seven or eight months to one that is much more focused on the land and the trails. This is not a negative stuff. The land that is gently owned by the town and the school has much to offer in terms of mountain biking, hiking and skiing. Many people utilize this land for recreation and would like to see it continue to be maintained. Although I use the trails and very much appreciate them I don't have the driver expertise to further this cause or add anything particularly useful. I'm sure you will have many qualified candidates that will be ready and willing to take my place. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to be a part of the startup of the recreation committee as always I appreciate the Board's willingness to support issues that contribute to the health and well-being of Moretown's residents. What do you think of that? I mean the Wreck Committee should be doing more on the recreation of the fields and everything. I mean that's not joint property it's town property. Yeah, certainly a lot more recreation than just the trails. Yeah. Is she implying that they are not doing what they should? I didn't really do the exact way. I just started through the emphasis. Okay, I've handled this. Now we're moving on to the next thing that needs work. That was my interpretation but if we wanted to check in with her and see what she meant. Good. Yeah. Well, can we invite her into our next meeting and talk about this? Yeah. Or invite the whole Wreck Committee and talk. Yeah, that's probably not a bad idea. Because she is a pretty valuable person to have on the committee that takes a lot more. Right. She's kind of after that. I think I'd like to try to work things out a little bit. Yeah. Okay, that's a good idea. I would say it makes sense for the whole Wreck Committee to be a little hot. It might be better if we just ask Michelle to come here. Okay. Yeah. And again, the way I understood that is okay, we've done working with the stuff that was my priority and now we're working on other things. Yeah. But it's better to check. Yeah. Because, I mean, their budget isn't just for the trail. Okay. Okay, and then the other one from Dwayne says, hello all, I have received an email from a gentleman who is a Morton resident and a parent of the elementary school who is interested in our open seat. So I guess that's the open seat on the Wreck Committee, which is an open seat. His name is Chuck Burr. I will bring his interest and then the others to our meeting in August. Just keeping everyone informed. Anything else, Sasha? There's a concern about the bleachers that were supposed to be taken down at the Wreck Field. What? Bleachers? They're not safe anymore and they've been roped off for quite a while and Dwayne was wondering if it could be the road crew that could possibly do the disassembling on them and receding them. Okay. Who is supposed to take it down? Well, I don't know if the committee would like to do it, but Okay. Anything else for us on the orders? There is the state has one more land owner to deal with. I'm not sure which project this is on, but they have a hearing and they're inviting you guys to it September 9th. And when he came into the office, he said that he's hoping that this person is just hoping that this hearing is going to just go away. Because it's just pretty difficult. If the project manager is Rob Young, he seems to be the bridge. First project, that's what it is. As soon as he says that, I don't know what it is. Alright, well there, the site visit is Wednesday September 9th starting at 11.30 am. The hearing will take place immediately upon conclusion of the site visit at the more downtown office. The hearings take evidence on issues of whether there's a necessity to require a certain land and or rights of property for this project as opposed to a copy of the pertinent plans for the project. So I'm not really in the process for this. Is this essentially a state function? I believe so. We're just a part of that. It's a state function. We get the right of a name. Okay, and it's scheduled at our time office because it's a different time. Okay. Yeah. They just ask for the space. Okay. This gentleman that came in said that he thinks it won't be an issue. It's just he's had history of this person and this is a formality, I think. Okay. So no one can select what he needs to do? No, it doesn't mean to. They're just extending an invite to everybody. So better it was more likely to sign if someone goes? Better than an idea? I'm sorry. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't make the assumption to land on her, but I believe you just hear it, right? Okay. Certainly been present before, like with Pat. It might be. Absolutely. No, that's okay. So we're going to go down this with pencil today. It is fine. We have the same light here when we're doing the town office. I'm totally reading this. Second. One favor.


Welcome everybody. My name is Saskia Hilteman and now I will give you a very brief overview of metagenomic sequencing in Galaxy. So let's start with why we study the microbiome. So there are different reasons to different applications. One big application is healthcare research.  They all are hosts to many microorganisms and these microorganisms can affect our health. They can affect how well drugs work and things like that. In fact, there is so many genetic material from these microorganisms that it's sometimes referred to as our second genome. These are very rough estimates and there's some debate about these, but there are approximately 10 times more cells than you containing 100 times as many genes than as you and thousands of different species. And these do affect our health. So these are important to study. Another application area can be environmental studies. So microbes in the soil can affect how well plants and animals thrive. And this study can help improve agriculture in regions that otherwise may be inhospitable to certain plants. Now there are two main approaches when we do microbiome analysis. There is the shotgun method. This is where we take all genetic material, all these different microorganisms and we sequence it all together. So you can think of this as each organism being a jigsaw puzzle. If we do shotgun sequencing, we cut all the genetic sequence into smaller pieces, into reads, and these land in one big pile and then we have to disentangle them. So you can imagine we have a lot of data so we can get more information about this process of analyzing the data and reconstructing the different genomes is also more complicated. And of course more costly because we sequence more. The other main approach is Amplicon sequencing. So this is a more targeted approach. We instead of sequencing all the genetic material, we sequence only a specific gene. So let's say in this analogy, we would look only at the corner pieces. Now these pieces are easy to recognize because they're different than the other pieces. We have obviously less information so we can't reconstruct the entire picture of each puzzle, but it may tell us enough information for us to tell things like okay this is a nature puzzle or this is an artwork. Obviously this, we have less information so we can say less about the microorganisms. It's also simpler to perform and cheaper and less complex to analyze. So these two shotgun and Amplicon sequencing are the two main approaches in microbiome analysis. So for the Amplicon sequencing, the targeted approach, often we use the 16S or 18S ribosomal RNA gene for this. And the reason this gene is often chosen is because it is present in all bacteria, but not eukaryotes or environmental fungi implants. So you really target only the bacteria that you want to sequence and archaea. The other reason why this is very suitable gene is because it has highly conserved regions so that makes it easy to target to find these genes across all bacteria. And in between these highly conserved regions are highly variable regions and these regions you can use to distinguish between different taxonomic, different microbiome microbes. So often you sequence across several of these V regions, so these V1 to V9 are the variable regions. So you might sequence V1 and V2 this section or you might sequence V3, V5 this whole section or this V6, V8. So typically you don't sequence the entire gene, but one or more of these variable regions. And this allows you to distinguish, usually you can't go further than genus level, so you can't go down to the level of species differentiation, but down to genus is very doable and for many use cases this is enough. Okay, so Amplicon sequencing some of the pros are it's very well established, it has been used for a long time. It's not very expensive. There are many tools available that can do the analysis, many reference database that can be used. Some of the downsides are that the choice of which V region you choose to sequence may bias your results. So some microbes might be easier to differentiate between than others depending on which V region you choose. And like I said, this is based on very highly conserved gene so it is hard to resolve down to species or strain level and usually genus level differentiation is the best you can do. And of course, you can only identify. You can only do taxonomic profiling, you can don't have extra functional information about maybe what these microbes are up to, or any mutations in certain genes. And the other approach shotgun metagenomics, here you sequence all genetic material. Well, some of the pros here are that you are not biased by the Amplicon primer sets of which V region you choose. It's not limited by conservation of the Amplicon and you get more information so you can also provide functional information about the activity of these microbes. And some of the cons now since you're not targeting you will get some contamination from the host set say you are sequencing human microbiome you will get some contamination from human cells. If you're sampling environmental samples you will get some contamination from surrounding plants and fungi maybe. It's also more expensive because we're sequencing more the data analysis more complex because we have to distinguish or reconstruct all this genetic material into their different genomes. So that more complex data data analysis you need high performance computing more memory and more compute capacity. Now the whole end to end. Analysis here looks a little bit like this you start with taking your sample.  And, as always, the choices you make in each of these steps can affect your downstream results. So you have to be very aware of choices you make in each step. Now the bioinformatics, in this case is a big part of your experiment so there are a lot of sequences being generated. And then they come from a lot of different genomes. So bioinformatics is really important, and it can sometimes feel like you're drowning in sequencing data. So we need some good tools and approaches to resolve this. Here's an overview of the analysis pipelines. So for amcon sequencing. In both cases we start with pre processing so this means cleaning our data and assessing the quality. For amcon sequencing, we will remove some other sequencing artifacts that may arise called chimeras. We will cluster very similar sequences into ot use this stands for operational taxonomic units, which are just clusters are very similar sequences. And then we assign a taxonomy to these clusters, and then we do some visualization for shotgun. This is very similar on the left side but on the right side you see we can do an additional functional analysis. The sequencing is very similar to what you've seen in other analyses I'm sure this is a FASQC plot of the sequencing read quality, and very typical as with other experiments is that towards the end of the read. So here is position one of the read on the left, and the higher positions on the right, the quality drops off so you might want to do some filtering and trimming of this data before we start. So I think that can happen with amcon sequencing is during PCR application here. Something can go wrong, which leads to sort of hybrid sequences that come from two different reads originally, and they're called chimeras. And we want to make sure to get rid of those from our sequence before we do our full analysis. The next step will be to cluster highly similar sequences into OTS operational taxonomic units. So often you see this 97% identity threshold use. So that means that any two sequences that are 97 at least 97% identical will sort of be grouped together. So here you see schematic of that, and using this 97% identity threshold in the case that we are going down to genius level. So these, these clusters then each represent taxonomic unit a genius unit, which will try to assign to specific taxonomy. So we take these, these clusters we take the sequences from each of these clusters and we try to assign taxonomy for this we have reference databases we can use so amcon sequencing is very established. So these reference databases are very mature. So there are two main ones, silver and green jeans, I think green, silver is a little bit more updated nowadays than green jeans so we'll be using that in the tutorial also. And for shotgun sequencing, we have the metafine database, which has a very large number of marker genes to aid in identification. But of course, again, the choice of which database you use can affect what you find, because you only find what you look for in this approach. And these databases are invariably incomplete. So just be aware of this factor. Okay, so they're different functional databases as well for shotgun sequencing to identify gene families, or groupings on other functional categories, such as keg gene ontology, and you can also do a pathway reconstruction of this. Now the final results for taxonomic identification will be the OTU table. So I already mentioned that we're clustering sequences into OTU so to use are just groups of very similar sequences. So we're assigning taxonomy to those. So at the very end, we have this OTU table. Each line represents a different OTU, different microorganism. And you see here the name of the OTU, the number of times it was observed so this can be used to say something about relative abundance of these different organisms. And then the full taxonomy. So here we see that the most prevalent organism in our sample here was cephalococcus, and then listeria, and then streptococcus, and so on. So this can be very useful, for example, in healthcare, if a patient comes in with an infection, often you just want to know which infectious agent is present so that you know what antibiotic to give the patient. So here we don't need the full functional information. Perhaps that shotgun might have given us if we know, okay, there's cephalococcus is causing this infection. That's enough for treatment plan. Of course, if you would like more information, for example, are these these micro organism, are they resistant to certain antibiotics so they have antibiotic resistant genes. Then you would need more information that amplicon sequencing can give you. So that's when shotgun sequencing comes in handy. And after all is done. It's always nicer to have a visualization. I've been looking at this table so we also show you Krona is a very nice tool for this to interactively explore these plots so you can click here on these different, these different taxonomic levels to explore your sample. And we will show that in the tutorial as well. So Finch is another, it's an online tool that is very good at so Krona let you really explore a single sample while Finch is made for a multi sample analysis. So these are some nice graphs to show how different samples compare. Okay. And with that, I hope to see you at the tutorial.


Well, every year at NAB, Steve and I like to stop by the Audio Technica booth, mostly to gush about how amazing the products are that we're already using. And so, I'm here with Gary Boss from Audio Technica. Right now, my favorite road mic is my ATR 2100 and you are hearing me now from the System 10 microphone that is a digital microphone that broadcasts to Steve's camcorder and he's got the receiver up there and as you can hear, the audio is amazing out of this thing. Yeah, it's one of those systems that we really like, not only because of the sound quality but because of the ease of use. So, wireless, we're always kind of that mystery. You had to look up on the website and put in your zip code and figure out where you're going to be and set your frequencies. Well, the world doesn't work like that anymore. We're used to turning on our phones and they work. I don't have to tell it where I am. So this is one of those wireless that literally does all the heavy lifting for you. Yeah, so it auto switches the channel for us. If I'm on a frequency that has a lot of interference, it auto-switch both of us, right? Yeah, and the beauty part is, it's silent. You never know what's happening. So when you turn that on, it does all its magic and it scans the environment and sets the frequency at the transmitter and the receiver and it will actually do that as necessary during a broadcast. While recording, it'll switch. Yes, without ever knowing it or hearing it. It has no audible switching. It just works and that's what things are supposed to do, right? Yeah, well, if this works at CES with all the interference there, this is pretty amazing. One of the things I really like about you guys is you have high-end stuff at $3,500 microphone, right? Oh, yeah, definitely. But then you also have stuff for our audience. How much does the System 10 go for nowadays? System 10 with a full system, with either a body pack and a lavalier or the handheld that you have, it's about $450 out the door. Okay, I didn't think we paid that much, but we didn't get the full system, I think. So I don't think we got the pack and such. But anyway, definitely within affordable for a road mic kind of work for doing interviews just like this. But you want to show us something specifically for iOS devices, correct? Yeah, so obviously the buzzword out there is content creation. We don't really know what that means because pretty much everything is content. What is it content? Right, exactly. Kind of narrow it down to podcast streaming, YouTube video creation, things of that nature. And we have a really unique microphone. So obviously we were very big in wired microphones. And then as the USB trend, we were one of the forefront of that with a USB output microphone, digital output microphone. Like the ATR 2100. Exactly. And so what we have too is we've adapted that with the AT 2020 USB-I, obviously with the I, not so creative on our model numbers, but it really gets you in the ballpark to know. It touches iOS. Exactly. So we have a USB cable, which is traditional, but we also have a lightning connector so we can go native right into an iPhone or an iPad and record one device into your iPad. You're making podcasts in your hotel room on the road and very high quality. Wow. So we're looking at here, this is an audio podcast, but also obviously on video here. So the ATR 2020 USB-I is $199. Looks like a super professional microphone here. Looks really nice. Dark black. Yeah. This is actually based on one of the best selling side address studio microphones in the world called the AT 2020. So it was a matter of putting the digital output on that and then making it iOS compliant. So we've got, what is that? Is that USB-B? It's a USB-B on one end. Look at it right there. We got that. And then you get. Oh, micro USB. Okay. So it comes with cables, it comes with this, so the micro USB to standard USB and then the micro USB to lightning. So you supply the cables as well. That's fantastic. Yep. Yep. And it shows up just as a native audio device in your device and this is a recording we did in the office of just a quick little speech. So he's got a speech playing on here in a twisted wave on an iPad and I listened to it, Steve listened to it, sounded absolutely fantastic. The guy doing the recording had a great voice, but it is clean. It's a beautiful recording and that's $199, right? Yep. Available kind of everywhere. Okay. So I haven't ever talked to you about headphones. Let's go walk over to the headphone side. All right. Let's do that. All right. What do we have over here? So one of the things, audio technique is a 50 year manufacturer. So we've been around for quite some time and one of the things we specialize is what they call transducers. So that's anything that takes one form of energy and translates it to another. So we started with phono cartridges. You wiggle a needle and it produces electricity. Headphones. How those worked. Yep. Headphones do exactly the opposite. You feed them electricity and they wiggle and they produce audio, right? It's moving a magnet in there with a coil. That's correct. And that's what the microphone's doing. So that's kind of our core competency. So we got our start in headphones. We're the largest manufacturer of headphones and seller in Japan. So obviously we're very big into the headphone market in the U.S. and not only is that on the consumer side of things but what we have here which is the professional headphones. So the nice thing about this is these are all monitor headphones. They tend to be tuned a little flatter so you can get a real accurate representation of your audio. And we have price points from $49 all the way up to $349 in our headphones. And we kind of have a price point to suit all budgets. And then as you go up through those headsets, headphones, you get different feature sets. Detachable cables, maybe a little better isolation, maybe a little bit more low frequency response. But they're all very geared towards that professional audio user. I see. So I'm not a great audio file. I care mostly about comfort. Right. All of ours have removable ear pads. Obviously being a manufacturer of headphones for 50 years, we know a thing or two about fit and finish. So we definitely go through a lot of iterations to make certain we have very comfortable because these are made for professional users. They may be mixing either a live show or editing audio or video and maybe have them on for six, eight hours at a time. The top of my head starts to hurt after a while from that. Well, that can happen, but these were made to have ample cushioning in the top. And in fact, the newest headphone we have here, you feel it? Squish it. So this is actually memory foam ear pads, memory foam headband. And this is called the ATH M60X. This is a little more expensive headphone. This is $199. And this is an on-ear design. So this is our first on-ear. But again, if they have detachable cables, let's see you roll over the cable with your office chair. You can replace that. And it comes with three cables. So it comes with a long cable, a long coil, and then a short one for personal listening. Oh, I like that. So I got to tell you, the reason I would unplug that would be to disentangle it. Yeah, that's a biggie. Or if you need to travel, it's much easier to take the cable off and then you can wrap that up separately. Wrap it separately. Now, there's a little wiry thing coming out of here. What is that? That's so you don't steal it at the trade show. Oh, OK. Wow, there's some crazy antenna there. No, no, that's just a security device, although we trust all of our users implicitly. Of course. Some more than others. Yeah, you shouldn't have trusted me. So this model you just showed me is the ATH M60X Professional Monitor on-ear headphones. Yeah, that's the newest member of our M series. The thing that's interesting, we have this M50. That is by far and away the best-selling headphone that we've had in our line in our history. It hits a perfect ratio of price point to sound quality to comfort. So that is being used by both consumers and professionals alike. So when we designed this M60 on-ear, we actually utilized the same driver as this M50 in there. Oh, OK. But they look smaller, a little lighter? Yeah, they are. A lot of people do prefer that on-ear design, so we wanted to give those customers an option as well. So the M60X is on-ear and the M50X is over-ear. Yeah, and technically, the technical term for that is circum-oral, just so you know. Circum-oral. I do want to be saying everything right. And then the ATH M30X is your $69 model, and that is intra-oral, no, on-troll? Circum-oral. Circum-oral.  OK, great. Well, this has been fantastic, Gary. I really appreciate it. I will come by and gush at you guys every year, especially if I get that ATH M60X for my birthday in a couple weeks. I mean, I'm just saying, it could happen, right? You never know. All right. Thanks a lot, Gary. We'll see you again next year. Thanks for stopping.