I'd like to call the meeting to order at 6.30. Do we have any additions to the agenda? We have one. Larry, your work did send a written proposal for County Road celebration, so you have that included in your paperwork. We'll fit that in somewhere. The next thing is the review of minutes from December 19th. There's so many minutes here. I don't know how they're going to survive a review. But they look fine to me. Do you have a copy of me? Yeah, really nice job. I think. Yeah, I think I do. I used to have to do these when I was first time manager in Ardwick and then I unloaded them as soon as I could. Somebody else. So I know how difficult they are. Actually, I had to troubleshoot them out. Somebody else wrote them. And first company doesn't troubleshoot them. No. No. No, we're very lucky to have. Yeah. Are you all right with those, Carl? Fine. Are you all all right with those? I'm very satisfied. Are you feeling OK? Do you want to motion, Judy? Do you want to do a motion on the minute? Hello, hello. Hello, hello. This is Deb. Deb. Yeah, hi. It's dog barking. I just wanted to mention that I didn't say that the cost of the repraisal was going to be approximately $85 per parcel. Ross said that was what the cost was in 2009. The last time that we did a reappraisal, that wasn't a projection of what it's going to cost going forward. But that was all part of what it was last time. We have about $145,000 in our reappraisal fund right now. So just to get that straight, it probably shouldn't say that I estimated it's going to cost $85 per parcel. I did not say any such thing. And secondly, the language in the report that I gave last week about the gully jumpers, that wasn't proposed as the language for the article. I sent that to Gina today. She put it into the warning that you have there. That was a quote from the minutes, from the last time it was voted on. But what I wrote today is a little bit more in the style of a warned article. So I think it's going to be OK, but you're welcome to change it as you see fit. I think that's it for me. That last bit isn't a recommendation for change in the minutes, is it? Yeah, it doesn't sound like it to me. I'm not understanding that. Well, there was between what you guys said at the time and what was written in the minutes here, I wasn't sure if you thought that we were suggesting that wording as being the wording for the article. That wasn't what we were doing. We were just making aware of how it got voted on in the past. OK, so let me just address the first thing you brought up about Miss Philly and estimated it will cost approximately $85 per parcel, totaling over 100,000 the whole time. So that was actually Ross Hazel said that's what it cost in 2009. Yeah, it should be some different. You're right. She knows the time should be anticipating reappraisal soon, to hear regarding how much the full appraisal will cost. And you could say Ross Hazel. Are you going to say it was it was stated? It was stated the last time it cost about $85. Yeah, let's let's get some attribution to it. OK, let's attribute it to Mr. Hazel. You can. And Mr. Hazel said that it costs approximately $85 per parcel and was it $2,000,000? I think it's for the last spray. At the last spray. Yeah. Yeah. OK, I just didn't want anybody to misunderstand that we thought that's what was going to cost going forward. No, that's true. It's a good cat. OK, now. You were saying. Oh, just. When it said she recommended this article be added to the warning, I was not recommending that the wording in my memo was what be added be added in those words were actually from the minutes of the 2002 town meeting. So I drafted an article today and sent it to Gina and she put it into the warrant articles. But you should read it and make sure you change it as you want to. OK, so you're talking about Ms. Second Paragraph. Yeah, you know, the wording, the intention of the article, the voting agenda must be reviewed every five years. That's right. She recommended this article. You're saying that the wording is going to be changed. That's fine. Yeah, I mean, it's the article in principle. Right. Yeah. It's fine. We said that. Well, which is why we got it. Yeah, right. And then it's fine. Yeah, fine. Yeah. OK, OK, so when you read the article today, just know that I made that up based on what we've done in the past. But if you think it needs to be changed, go ahead and change it. OK, OK, definitely do that. Yeah, OK. That's it for me. OK, so we just changed that one sentence. All right, anything else with that? Thank you. So with that change or amendment, I move that we approve the minutes for the December 19, 2022 select board meeting. I'll second that. We also have a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. The ayes appear to have it, they do have it. Amy's not voting, right? I don't think she's listening. I guess. OK. Intensely. I'm sorry. Yes, I'm listening intensely. Intently. I am. You know what I mean? I don't know if you're voting, though, just for a matter of. OK, I'm voting. If there's if there's something that's, yeah, I mean, I can turn myself back on if there's something really interesting. But yeah, I'm just listening. Oh, nothing's interesting. Everything's interesting. Come on. Well, then you stay on. I'm on. OK. Why vote for the affirmative? I'm here. OK. OK, the next thing is public comment. Do we have any public here? I see names. Devin Scott. Devin Scott. I don't hear any public comment, so I'm going to move on to the next item. Discussion on FY 2024 budget development. Oh, what's that? Scott shows his face. Oh, no, I'm just I'm just. Are you are you trying to say something? Are you just. Just tell us how it's all. Is it the same? Oh, yeah, but her speakers are working. Oh, yeah, you might not be saying. You're right, you're right. OK, so we're going to move on. Discussion on FY 2024 budget development. So last time we looked at these pages, the only thing that has changed is to Deb's point about the increased cost for printing. Yeah, as I bumped that budget up to sixty five hundred, but that's the only change. Any any more news on the highway? But Guthrie has reviewed this, so I'll have his changes are in here. OK. So my hope is to give this a final scrub. I'm not sure when you I think at the next meeting maybe is when you consider it. So any comments, questions you all have, let me know. I'm going to be scrubbing it in the hopes that the next meeting we will consider it. Then or for a older piece. Yeah, so it's going to be our best estimate at that time. Sometimes it would happen if we had a controversial expense that or you wanted to add or make, we would figure out what that is the tax rate. OK, so, you know, if there's a big ticket item and we're thinking, oh, should we do it? Should we not do it? How's this going to affect the tax rate? OK. So, you know, could add a penny or whatever. Yeah. So that's some things that do fit. OK. Just help us make some decisions about some things that maybe we could tweak. OK. I know a lot of things we can't tweak. Yeah. It's almost not. Yeah. Our real drivers right now are stopping. And exactly. And then I saw that two people are signed up for Blue Cross Blue Shield. That is no additional cost. No, because they're caring. Yeah. Yeah, we the town is funding the MVP rate. The employees are paying the difference between that and the Blue Cross Blue Shield. But that's not going to be. No. No. OK. No. Was there any follow up on the Sheriff's Department or anything? There are these little bills here. You know, we decided, somebody's going to be decided we were going to go to the Sheriff's Department, so the state police, would we have to make any changes in how this is approved to tell a meeting? Would we just say police services? And the. We never worried about that. You're saying would you change the wording? What do we have? The article? That's all in the budget anyway. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who we could switch to someone else. If we want. Yeah, yeah. Or we could add a code for watching tomorrow. I'm sure it can. Or what? Watch it in Washington County. Yeah. And really have a storm on my mind. And I break it out then, but I would probably say in the future we would just rename that to either police support or law enforcement support, whatever it may be. Law enforcement service. Yeah. Yeah. OK. We have plenty of money, I think, in that budget to expand our services. We haven't been using that with Vermont State Police. So that will be the topic. It's a bill when they come. So, you know. But we did solar the budget for it because we hadn't budgeted in for 40 hours or something. Now or 20. Yeah, it's yeah. Yeah. And we were using it. So now we're still not. You're walking in their defense. They haven't had staffing to. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. So there is money there that we haven't used. Yeah. And we probably don't want to get overboard with that. I mean, it's a lot to see what we need, but it's mostly speeding as well. Yeah. Beating enforcement. So that's not going to cost us a pile of money. Law enforcement is expensive right there. Yeah. So you went up a thousand on that, right? Looks like, yeah, 17,000. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anywhere just, are these the budgets? Are this budget here when we complete it? It'll be posted in the town on the tele-website? Or do? Second, I need to draft it. I'll tell you all. Yeah. So don't put a site on it. Yeah, we haven't. So people should know. No, I see. Yeah, yeah. So what, so people can have an opportunity to look at. Okay, at least they don't go to debt. For the, to go on the town report as well. And if they, I just figure if they get a chance to see it, there'll be less questions at town meetings. Oh yeah, most definitely. Maybe. Well, that's always good to have a question. Yeah. Right. Well, yeah, I would say it's nice to answer their questions ahead of time if you can. If they get too better, then we have a lot more to ask them. Yeah. Insurance, you know? No, not insurance. Yeah. And so sometimes the town meeting, if we get a question on the budget side of things, and Gene is there, we let him answer the question. I just wanted you to know that you're not completely off the hook. So, you know, we've all looked at it. You know, we haven't crunched the numbers as much as you have. So we might, I might say, you know, we have the town administrator here. She's here to answer your question. Yeah.  So we should ask any questions that we have of you right now. So we're prepared ourselves. So the nice thing about what you've done here is you've made little notes in here on some of these. That's those are great. Now, are you going to include those in the town report or? Oh, no, I don't know that Deb has room to include these types of notes in the town report, but it will be included in the final final budget that's posted to the website. Yeah, we will. I will, they will be very similar to this format. I like their notes. Yeah, they're very nice. Yeah. Those are partly for me as well in the future.  These are, these would be good for any resident to look at people because they're like, oh, OK. Of course, a lot of people understand how inflation affects us, but you know, kind of no rain or. All right, I don't have your stuff.  You know, if you have any questions, Amy. No, thank you. And so nothing here, sorry. Yeah. OK, so I'd like to move on. Everyone's discussion on 2023 town meeting morning. So I started to remove the yellow highlight. Yeah. So I'd like everyone to definitely read Article 15. This is the language that Deb mentioned that she sent. And then I did add the Article 16 as well, the transact other business. I can't remember. Maybe that was. Looks good. I don't say anything that jumped out. So there's only one question that's being voted by Australian ballot or one article. Is that correct? Except for the. Offices. I did. Article three and then Article five. OK, sorry, I missed article cover. Yeah, I missed article five. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Those are the only two. Those are the only two or must. Well, this is a decision for the select board. So. This is going to be over 25,000. Yeah. OK. The one, too, as well, right? Correct. Oh, yes. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. So there's three articles. I'll show you now. The officers. The town budget in the Kellogg Hubbard. Kellogg Hubbard, OK. If you know anyone interested as well in running for office, Rosie put together a nice little collection of documents and write up that we put on the town website that just provides people everything kind of they need to run for office. So let's see, you know, that is there. So that was something she and I talked about that we would be helpful. Well, I'm not sure who we have. Planning Commission, I'm not sure of the select board. If there's any we have. There are usually a couple of them. There's always two right. Yeah, I think it's three and two and students. I mean, for sure. So are you running unit? There is that two personal question. It's right now. That's too personal. That's fine. No problem at all. I think somebody saw her, though, at Staples getting her. Yeah, there you go. My placards. Yeah, her placard. I don't know what else. Great. And OK. And Lister. Oh, we hear Lister. Order planning commission three. Is that include the one that we appointed? That position is one included in one of the several once again. But she, yeah, she indicated that she would be running. OK. Oh, I think we're good. It's good to me. Yeah. We'll be reviewed again next meeting, so. John, you don't want to say anything? Kind of make a meeting with one. No, I'm not. I actually be seeing this budget quite a few times and it's gotten easier every time I look at the budget. I mean, the, the, it's gotten easier every time because there's a lot of things to worry about. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so OK. Very well written. OK. So the next one is development of 2022 select board report for county board. And I have not read this. I should have. Yeah, I think it's well done. Yeah, I appreciate the quality of writing that you bring and also what you said. I appreciate that. Obviously, the budget information will be refined. I figured that's why that was in the yellow. So I'm sorry, we might have discussed this before. The board, should that be capitalized? I say yes, but that's just me. I'm flexible on that here. Whatever you all want. It might be replaced with a slight word, right? Mm hmm. Yeah. OK, sure. Yeah. Those flight boards capitalized, right? Yeah. Yeah, and the board is really the same thing. Yeah, yeah. Do we want to mention the one day, the morning closure to celebrate the road project? I mentioned it with, well, I've just called it the temporary closure with the county road piece. I see, I see, I see. Yep, yep, yep, I see that. Sorry, Mr. I like what you said about Rosie. Why, we can't leave. I mean, this is a, you know, this is a big impact to Rosie, and I think it's important to recognize that. So very nice. And then she supports her team well when we come to her with questions. I think it's great. Looking at it again just now, I have a little bit of a question about the final sentence about COVID, but I don't have some wording for it yet. I know, wait, I would appreciate that. I wasn't quite sure what to say, because, you know, we're going to in person, but everything on the news is, you know, yeah, COVID's exploding. So it's a tough. And we don't have a choice. Yeah, I know. And it's a tough way to. Yeah, the second, third to last paragraph. The MFD experienced a change in leadership during the year with Larry Brown be voted as or voted as or. Yeah, yeah. Well, how do you want to be voted with Larry Brown? Well, it should be just voted voted as she. Yeah, should just be voted. Yeah, or voted in voted in. Yeah, that's unfair. Okay, voted in. Okay. And sorry, just on this paragraph, I think it's a third sentence. Larry Brown brought 50 years of emergency services experience. Singular. Yeah, he had a lot of experiences. Yeah. More than 50, though, I'm sure. It might not have been good. More than 50 years. And Larry says, on that last sentence, he's my failure fire department, continues to be evolving process as closely monitored by the board. Is that by their board or by a select board? I mean, by you guys. So I'm a select board. Yeah. Yeah, I have a suggestion for the final sentence. Yeah, okay, that's here. So leave the first sentence alone of that paragraph. As we look to 2023, the select board looks forward to the first in person town meetings since 2020 and then continue it same beginning clause while the COVID-19 pandemic continues and then say the select board is thankful for vaccinations and masks that mitigate the risk of virus transmission. The town? I'm saying the select board is thankful. Oh, okay. I don't want to speak for the whole town but speak for the select board. Okay, yeah. And... Well, is the purpose of the second clause of that sentence to say that we're encouraging? I guess I'm not sure what the purpose of the second clause is. If it's to... I'm sorry. For me, I think it's kind of what Carl is saying. I mean, I felt like thanks to vaccinations and masks, we feel like we can't meet because people could come and mask. We know they work. So that's where I was going for with that. Was that it? Kind of gives us an opportunity to meet safely. Okay, so Carl, you'll continue with the rest of that clause. You weren't just finished. I apologize. I thought Carl was just kind of finishing it. Could you just read that the entire sense how you perceive it, Carl? Strike the whole last sentence and then revisit with while the COVID-19 pandemic continues, comma, the select board is thankful for vaccinations and masks that mitigate the risk of virus transmission. But the purpose of the second clause was to say that we feel it's safe enough to gather as opposed to just a general statement that we're grateful for masks and vaccines. Correct. So you didn't have that connection? Well, the connection is implicit in that it's in the same paragraph as a previous sentence. I guess I would just. Well, how would you like to say it? Okay. I'm blind. Sure. Let's see what she says. Why don't we just say the select board? Let's keep while we're... Leave off the COVID-19 while COVID-19 continues. No, no, no, that's fine. That's fine while the COVID-19 pandemic or although the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the select board is grateful what Carl said. And is, which allows us to gather in person or something like that. I like all though. Yeah. I like all though. It sounds a little better, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. But the rest of it, I'm not sure it's necessary because it is in a fair round. Yeah, I think it begins with the first sentence. I don't really care one way or the other, but I understand exactly what you're saying. But I know what she's saying too. She's trying to tie it together. So whatever everyone feels, it doesn't matter to me one way or the other. All we're trying to do is say, yeah, we're happy we can get together and we feel comfortable getting together because we have actually been there. How about this? How about adding to what I said that mitigate the risk of virus transmission and then add in public gatherings? Yeah, that's right. Sure. Sure, okay. Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah. Would you, do you have that? Do you want to read back what it is? I do not see that wording. Okay, actually it's your job. I have. Although the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the select board is thankful for vaccinations and masks that mitigate the risk of virus transmission and public gatherings. Yeah. I think that's good. That was awesome. Yep. Yeah. Thanks. Very nice. Yeah. Written very tactfully and. Yep. There's a lot of people credit which we're trying to do. And it also it educates the public a little bit about what's going on in the office. Yep. And, you know, some explanation for the increased cost which we have. Yeah. I like it. Very nice. Anybody have any other comments or corrections? Do we want to go ahead and agree with us tonight? We can. So are we going to do something with the yellow? Yeah, the final language. Yeah, yellow will have to be revised. So I'll do the fresh copy to the next meeting. Right. So we'll then match the budget report that you asked. So assuming all of that gets approved next meeting, then essentially they would all go final at that point. Yeah. 3.7. I think they kind of have to. 5.7. That is a big jump in our tax rate. 5.7. Yeah. That's a big jump in that year. Usually around a couple of cents. Yeah. Ugh. And what's going on with the education tax from the state? That's always the big thing. I haven't seen that one yet. Because the last year they were down, which makes the tax rate go down. But I don't know about this year. It's always like hard to figure it out. Check in with Rosie and see if she's gotten anything that I haven't seen it. If he had, she would have given me a copy. So please. That's probably going to go up. Doesn't have that something to do with the CLA, too. Common level of phasal. I think it does. Yeah. If our common level of phasal has dropped, then we get less money from the state. If, you know, a ratio has less in the profits are sold for more. So we're like at 91% said 99%, then they give us less money. Yeah, it's inverse the way you think. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah. It's a way complicated formula that I tried to understand a hundred times. There's so many figures and way it works. We, none of us really understood it. No. No. Yeah. All right. So that's nice. That's a great report. We'll find out like that in our next meeting or if we can. Town Treasure Report. There's a town treasure. You have a town treasurer. Hey, Michelle. Hello.  We can't hear you. He's working on it. Hi. Hi. Hi. Sorry. All right. Town Treasure Report. Did you give them the memo, Gina? Yes. No, I did not give them the memo. But I put words in there that you sent me in their memo. Okay. So just a few updates, I guess. I haven't really been to one of these in a while. The November financials were held up. We were having, I was having a problem reconciling it on the deposit side because November was so busy with deposits coming in from every direction possible. So, but good news. It is reconciled as of today. So we actually, I got it figured out. So that's good. So they'll be coming soon. Year end duties, calendar year end duties, W2s, 1099s. We're working on that. We're waiting for the forms to get those done and completing some year end reports to the state while not regarding payroll. And as of today for delinquent taxes, we are higher than last year. We're at 112,000 last year at this time we were 81. So we are a little out there a little bit more than last year, but late taxes for the current year for the first payment, we're actually a little bit less than last year at this time. So, yeah, that's about all I have. So delinquent taxes are the ones, they're not the late taxes, they're the ones. Right. Yeah. Those are the ones we need to look at at some point and discuss taxing stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I would like to see that. Okay. It's gotten people interested the longer they wait for pay. I know it's just various, you know, you have to take it case by case basis and figure out, you know, where each person's at to figure out what to do. Yeah. And a lot of it is just, it's the same people that have been. Right. I know. But there's, you know, there's a different strategy for every person. Some people you have to bring in tax sales, some people, you know, you don't, some people are tied up in the state.  At least offer them a contract to pay out. Not the people that say you can't do anything. No, I'm talking about the ones you can't. Yeah. Well, we've done that before as we've taken payments, you know, from people that I just don't know. I don't know what the people are at this point. Right. Yeah. Are we ever, are we gonna see that from people? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think we should start the process. I just don't know what the timeline would be, but we'd start the process and send out letters, you know, telling them to call in and set up a payment plan by a certain date. And if they don't, then it goes to, you know, we'll start following the procedures. Right. Have we sent out any letters at all yet or no? No, I haven't. Okay. Okay. So I don't really know what the timeline is supposed to be. I thought that tax sales were usually done in the spring. Well, the thing is just to get a tax sale going takes months. Yeah. Yeah. You know. So I mean, this is something we can start doing soon if you want. Yes. Okay. We need to look at the list of people soon. Okay. I can get that to you. Okay. And if you provide that letter to them, you can, maybe you can discuss it with Gina and find out what the past release process was and provide the same sort of opportunity for those people to sign up and pay under contract and get them in that whole flow. So we know when we can go to tax sale and everybody's got, we're going to meet all requirements. No, we have that process set up. Right. But I can't remember when we pulled the trigger on that, but I think it's soon. It has to be sooner than later because it takes forever to get the whole tax sale thing, the people that go to tax sale. We used to do two a year. Yeah. We've done a few. Because we had water and sewer or so. We've done a few. Yeah. Yeah. Most of them to pay off by the time we get to tax sale. You know, about a minute. But it cost, every month they wait, though it costs them more money. So if we can spur them along, they actually will save money. Of course. Some people just don't want to pay it. Right. I know several individuals on that list. I mean, I haven't seen the list, but every year, it's like they, they could pay it, but they don't want to pay it until you say it brings it to tax sale and then they pay it, right? Right, right. Yeah. There are a few that, there's a few estates on there. Like you said that, you know, I don't know how they're going to be handled, but... The estates you really traditionally can't do anything about. Really? Okay. Yeah. I mean, there's a lien on the property.  And the people know that, whoever's handling the estate, but it has to go through the process before we get our... And you don't lose any money because there's interest in... Right. You don't lose any money. There's nothing you can do to hasten the process. Right. This is what it is. Okay. Okay. Sorry to interrupt you. I can get a list together though. One thing Michelle is also working on is as it relates to banking, just so to give you guys a little history on some of that, the bank reconciliation has become increasingly difficult with the M&T transition, partly because wasn't it 74 fraudulent checks today, Michelle? Yeah. 74 fraudulent checks attempt to be cashed today. I guess we get them every day. Today was the biggest. I think the biggest day we've had before this was about 12, but today at 74, we both almost fell out, but it was 70 of them, I think, were one person with a $47 and $22 check or something crazy like that. So it's not fraudulent checks being sent to the cash? No. People... We have had a number of checks that have our physical signatures on them that have been in whatever format they have. Some of them look like our checks, some of them clearly don't, but yet our signatures will be transposed. These didn't even have our fake signatures on them. The 70 of them was all one person, the same name. So thankfully we have good fraudulent precautions in place with our banks, so we have positive pay. So they come to Michelle because the bank gets it, it doesn't match up with what she's uploaded and said that we cut. So it ends up coming as a positive pay exception and we have to review those and determine whether they're real or fraud. Sometimes it can be a real check because sometimes just, I don't know, an extra space or something, it won't translate. We have to say, no, it's a good check, but unfortunately like these 72 checks that came in on December 30th, they are gonna end up affecting her bank reconciliation for December because it will show those checks as if they were cashed on December 30th, but obviously then they'll be reversed in the January. So she doesn't have to do a journal entry, but it's just reconciling items.  The bank rec was it last month, eight pages? Yeah, and like probably five of those eight pages were just checks coming in and being reversed back out again. Wow, so that person did the 74 checks.  So we've been called, I don't know that it necessarily goes criminal for one reason. They never managed to actually cash it. So we do note that these checks are fraudulent. When you return them, you have to pick a reason for it and we always pick that it's fraudulent. We have been called by Wells Fargo, who all has chased, I can't remember all the things. Bank of America. Both have received calls from banks because people set up accounts and then they see these checks and some of them look very similar. So you know they're fraud. So they've called us to say I've received a check from your towns. One of our customers is trying to deposit it. It appears, we just wanted to verify if it's good or not. So we give us a check number, give us a payee. Obviously it's fraud. So then it helps those banks the reason they're making these calls is because they have people that have set up accounts in their banks that are clearly people trying to pass fraudulent checks. So they're trying to... We think that again, they would be arrested. We keep hoping this will slow down but this morning the 74 threw us for a loop because when we get like two, we're happy but it just seems like we can't get out of this. So one option is to close the account and reopen a new account. We're already wanting to look at other banks anyway and we've already met with some Vermont banks. So we feel that if we're gonna go through that effort we need to go through the effort to just go ahead and change banks. That sounds like a good idea. So that's where we're going but just I just wanted you guys to know that's one reason. I mean, this is kind of what Michelle's been dealing with. It's a pain, it's been a pain. And if we either change accounts within M&T or change to a different bank then the problem may continue. People might continue to forge our checks but then they wouldn't come to us, I would guess. They would, the bank would stop. We would still have positive pay with whatever bank we will maintain that we do have to have that. Let me try to ask you the question again. Right now we have account number 12345 at M&T and we change it to account number 56789. So next time M&T gets a check written on 12345 will they even bother us with it at all? No, no, okay. No. We'd like to know. Oh, okay. So, okay, so one of the questions is is because M&T is the national bank or is the international bank? It's national. Okay, does that heighten your exposure to fraud? Would we have less fraud opportunity if we're the local bank? Not necessarily, if you caught this ring you could still be caught. We just, we feel like we were partly targeted because of the transition with M&T and that's why our account's got to be covered. It didn't happen before, did it? No, this has been something that we've had, thankfully, Don set this up though.  We haven't had a dime exit our bank account because it's caught by these processes but it's, I mean, there's many reasons why we want to switch from M&T but it's just, we both agree that if it's worth the, for all the effort that it's going to take to change banks or to change accounts even let's just go ahead and change banks. Yeah. Unless we get 70 a day for the next month. Yeah, I know, we keep discussing what are we, we're both pretty quick at going in and reviewing these and determining what to get through the town meeting preparation, the budget. That's what we're wanting to do. Yeah. We want to get through town meeting. We just want to keep, you know, we're both still trying to get, you know, kind of. You don't really have to get through town meeting. You have to get through the town report. Yeah. Which is, you know, through January 20th after that February is kind of dead. Yeah. You know. Yeah. We can do it then. Yeah. We have proposals from the banks. Okay. Good. Yeah. So I think we're going to move those to you and get a go ahead to move forward with one of the banks. Yeah, I think it's going to take as long as it takes. We were also pretty happy because when they came in, our fees should be lower when we switched banks. They were all kind of surprised that even the fees that we are paying today as a municipality. They have a few things. And there's, I think, some good opportunities for other investment ways still to kind of make a little bit more off of the money that we have in the bank. So. Yeah. So we had some very helpful meetings with banks. Great. That's a direction that we'd want to move into. Yeah. Okay. So is that it for the report, Michelle? That's it for me, unless you guys have any questions. I don't have any questions for you. That's good. Anybody else? No, almost that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, bye guys. Talk to you tomorrow. Yeah. Bye. Bye. The next item, we're running two minutes over. Not too bad. John, you've done well tonight. Thanks. Appreciate it. I want that in the minutes. Well, John would like his name in a minute. Remember, we discussed it last night. Discussion is kind of made for the light of COVID-19 is the next item. Gina? Well, we're at low, but as Carl would say, I mean, for any of you. For any of us. Well, just read the news or watch the news. It's, you know, a lot of COVID around. Yeah, there's a lot of everything around. Look around the table. Who's not here? Yeah, there's a lot. So I guess one thing I'd like to raise is the possibility of asking people to wear masks at town meeting because we don't. I'm not calling for a decision on that now. I think that should be made at the time of town meeting when we see what the situation is. But that is one. We can't require masks because it's a public meeting. We can't keep people away for not wearing masks without passing something that the governor would veto or whether the health commissioner would veto. But we could ask people to wear a mask. And I think that's consistent with our last statement done on COVID as a select board. So I just want to throw that out as a possibility. I think, you know, I think if you tone it down, said masks available to door or something, and we have masks there, I think that's pretty appropriate. Asking people to wear masks, I think it's stepping over a little bit, overstepping, I guess. When, how would you propose it? Would it be masks recommended or what, what are you suggesting, Carl? You see a lot of courage. Yeah, I see that. Courage, yeah. Encourage. The door, perfect. Yeah. And we could say something about vulnerable people who, why? Yeah. Who, you know, for medical reasons, cannot get vaccinated after, after we want them to be able to participate in our democracy. Yeah. That didn't hurt. Okay. So we can work on some language. Yeah. Anything else on talent management and COVID-19? Sean? Oh, Sean's not saying anything. We have warrants. We also had a different agenda. Oh, we have the addition. We have the addition. I have a question. I'm sorry. Are we getting the warrants or the addition? Sorry. Let's do the warrants, as I already said. There was a, I just didn't understand what this was. Walsh welding, a fabricated plate. Yeah, that's the welder up in Worcester, I assume. But what's the fabricated plate? It's something made out of steel. That was for some piece of equipment for the town. So they do fabrication there, which means they take these to steel and they weld them together and they make equipment there. And I know they made the screen force for our sanding gravel, which is piece of metal placed at various widths. So rocks don't go down into the, into the sand that we spent on the roads. I don't know what that plate is, but it was a piece of a, it's something for one of the pieces of equipment. And they do fabrication at the welding shop. So I guess we could look for that receipt. Did you look at the receipt, Judith? Yeah. Oh, I can look that up, actually. Yeah, you'll have that. Yeah, let me, okay, it's right here. Fabricated plate for standard discharge materials. More $80. Is this some kind of storm water or something or? No, it's for the sander on the truck. Oh, sander. I'm sorry. I was going to talk to Guthrie about this. So when they discharge the sand, the sand has a whirling thing that goes underneath the truck. It puts the sand and then they come back with more sand. But what I noticed on some of the roads is there wasn't enough sand on, you know, one side of the road. It's like, okay, where can I get sand? Cause I was sliding backwards down one of the hills around here on my tractor. So I try to bring the generator for the tiny road. It's like, oh, I'm sliding backwards into the ditch. Not much sand there.  Cause, you know, the thing discharge the sand like on one side of the truck and then we just come back and boat it. On the other side of the truck. So maybe they fixed that with the plate. Okay. That same. Yeah. Thank you for that explanation. Well, who knows? There you go. Or theory. Yeah. So that's the war and we've got the addition. We're going to talk about the storm at all. Yes. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to do the addition? Yeah. We can do the addition with that. Right. Don's almost done reviewing the war. So we're all good there. What's done. So I got a letter from Larry Gilbert requesting for six Sundays in 2023 to host a similar event for the County road celebration. But he's essentially asking a select board if the select board is comfortable closing the road. He's asking, no, this time to close from Barnes road to Templeton road to minimize that impact. And obviously that would keep more clear Cummings road clear as well. I checked in with Guthrie and Guthrie said, fine with him if the select board is okay approving it. He would likely get a collection of signs that he would just get to Larry. And say, here are your signs to use. So then they're not trying to deal with coordinating because you just never know what could be happening when these events come up. So he said he could just have a supply of signs that he's kind of ready to go. So. So that would be an additional expense. I'm not sure if he has them already. He said I would give him his own set of signs. So I don't know if Guthrie has them or if he would need, but there could be an expense. And then obviously the request to have state police involved as an expense as well to the town. So the people who are actually like volunteers are they staffing the barricades that blocked the road? Are they in the road or are they, or is it the state police on? Yeah, these would be questions we could bring Mr. Gilbert into. Well, I just, it's a little bit concerned that by having volunteers in the roadway, we're giving them approval to be in the roadway. They're in a roadway without any training whatsoever on flagging operations or anything. Our own staff have to be trained in flagging operations. I just wonder if maybe they ought to find some training that relates to flagging or to being in the roadway that they properly clothed with vests or whatever so people can see them that they don't stand directly in the road, they stand off to the side of the road because when you're flagging, you're not supposed to be directly in the roadway, you're supposed to be in the side. And that sort of thing. I just, there's a lot of things involved in that and we're giving them permission to be there. What happens if somebody gets run over? Who's responsible for that? And I like to say, yeah, I think it would be good for Larry to come in and present it to us so we can ask some questions about that. And I think we could vote on it after it's been warned so that if there are any common residents, particularly common road residents who want to come and speak for or against it, that they would have a fair opportunity to do so. And I brought this up just so we can think about it too because there's an aspect of that. What do you think about the warned? What's that? This was in addition to the agenda. It wasn't on the warning. I would like it too. Oh, I see. Oh, I'll say, yeah. Yeah, I see what you mean. I didn't understand what you meant by the warning. Go ahead. Other things, it might be helpful to like get more of the logistics out of what happened. Like how many volunteers were they? Where were they placed? What did they do? How did they deal with cars approaching? What if people were residents of, you know, that segment of the road? How did they access their home? And how did that work? Also, I'm wondering since Callis is, you know, further up the road, do we want to get input from Callis on the, what, if any impact the road closure had on their residents commuting into Montpelier or even East Montpelier on the road? Well, they probably have some idea of how that did impact the town. Well, I mean, these might be good questions to ask Larry and if he can come forward with that information or we might just want to touch base with our neighbors and ask them if they notice, they might not even have noticed anything but it might be good useful information. I just have one more thing. I do know, I just want to mention that coin drops occur in a lot of towns and I don't believe most of those people are trained to be in the roadway but they are given approval by the town to be in the roadway. Yeah. And I believe that when we used to do them in Hardwick we would set up the signs to give forewarning ahead of time at certain intervals and I'm sure that Guthrie would know what those intervals are for the signage and that sort of thing. So that would make it a little more appropriate but it'd be nice to just know what they're, how they're doing this. Is that something that we would benefit from checking in with passive or VLCT and that? I was wondering about that too. Yeah. They must have something. Yeah. Right? Asking what they think of it because their roads are closed for different events. That's what I was thinking of doing is just asking and saying what advice, guidance could they give? What's on policy cover too? Yeah and I just had a question in terms of funding for the roadway and original funding for the roadway whether there are any limitations and if we do close the roadway, if it's for something other than transportation or carrying people, motor vehicle traffic does that impact us or future funding opportunities et cetera? It's all. So I think VLCT would be helpful to consult with. I can't doubt the strings attached to the state funding as far as people being on the road. No. Any comments at parades all the time? What's that? What's the parades all the time? Class one roads and class two roads, class three roads are supposed to be open for seasons of the year. I mean, that's the statute so. Yeah, but temporary closures are allowed. Happens all the time. Yeah. But this is a planned closure six times a year, not a one time a year parade or so we just need to be mindful that we're changing the use of the road we're scheduling change uses of the road and do we have the authority to do that? Maybe we do, maybe we don't, maybe I'm making too much of this but those are questions to think about. Doesn't hurt to ask. Yeah. Okay, so we probably want to have Gilbert in and there's some questions that we can add reach out to VLCT when we get a chance and we can bring Gilbert in anytime we feel we have the time. We have a lot of time between now and May, but yeah, it'd be good to do it. Yeah, don't forget about it. Okay, so that was the addition and you might as well continue with your administrative report since you have before. Well, the only, I mean, there were no permit applications. So the biggest thing was the storm. I didn't call it out as a separate agenda item because honestly, this is a hardy group of people for the most part. I didn't know how much, how big of a deal it may have been for people, you know?  It's fine. It certainly seemed isolated to me. I know in speaking with my neighbor across the street who told me she had never been without power for longer than eight hours. We were 34, so we were one of the lucky ones. I got it back relatively quickly, but I mean, still that was a fair amount of time and my neighbor, certainly I was keeping tabs on her because she was without power. We were operating off of some generator, but so anyway, we didn't get a lot of calls to the office. We only received two after the storm. One was really just about trees in the roadway. And then another one was a resident asking for some help and our chair did go and help that resident out. And then I did get two emails from people that just basically said, what a storm, you know, either have lived here for 45 plus years or native Vermonters that said I had never, I never experienced anything like this. And essentially the comments were consistent, just why was the power out so long? You know, it just seemed, and the only other thing, I mean, I can say that I did hear as well is that just there wasn't an incredible amount of communication coming out of Washington Electric for anyone. I happened to get the Green Mountain Power emails because this building is Green Mountain Power. They were sending emails. There was a little bit more information coming from them. And so I thought the same thing. It felt a little in the dark. And that was the one comment I've gotten from the two residents that did email me was, I didn't really know what was going on. 36 hours. Yeah, it's like, you know, we didn't really know what was going on, you know? And there wasn't a lot of information there. I got an email from a resident who wondered about more information from Washington Electric. And I said, hey, I mean, they're putting out one or two updates a day on their site about what's going on. And I'm really hesitant to bug them when they're trying to put the electricity back on for us about more things than that. I got the same. Right, but I talked to her afterwards. And she said that where they are, apparently email works better on their phones than the web does. And so they couldn't go to the website for Washington Electric very easily. Now, it was badly formatted, at least for my phone. Did it bounce on here? It was very hard to read. Most of the screen was this banner stuff saying, hey, this is Washington Electric co-op. And hey, this is a number that you can follow for an hour today. A little tiny bit that I could read. And yeah, it bounced back and forth. So I could often, I had a hard time telling, OK, what's the date of the time for this latest update? So that was the problem. But what she said is she would have appreciated someone putting those updates on the front porch forum, because then she would have gotten them in her email. And that's an easy thing to do. Or even email your customers. Like I said, bring down power with sending email throughout the process. And that, I'm sure, was just, it was very generic, blanket emails. But did the office down here even have power? That here? What do I call Washington Electric? Oh, Washington. They're on Green Mountain co-op. Oh, so they had power. They had power.  Washington Electric, just kidding. I was like, they'll show up. Yeah, they did. We were first, we were first. I never called them safe enough there. Yeah. And we've never been without power for 40 years. We're more than probably an hour or two. And so we were up for 36 hours. And I knew when I was something. I just came home when you did, yeah. They drove in like seven times. It was like a parade and they all drove out. I said, they're going to figure it out sooner or later. That's what happens, yeah. Yeah, I know. It was, it was sadly funny. Oh. But so I don't know if I'm on Washington Electric. I don't know if they have my email. I don't recall getting emails from them. I didn't. I didn't get emails from them. Do you? I was only up for 12 hours. I was out for five and a half days. Yeah, I know. All right. I know what I'm telling you. So it was, one thing that I had proposed this item to Gina, one thing that may be helpful, and you're right, this was an exceptional event. But unfortunately, I think in the future, we may be getting more of these. And what to do? Like for example, on our road, if you have two large trees fall in the middle of the road, whom do you call? And if our trees on fire by the electrical line, it may be helpful to have on the town's website. But if you don't have Wi-Fi, you can't find it. But this might be something to kind of print off and put on your refrigerator for the next storm event. Trees on the road, contact X. Or if you, a line is down, contact Y. Or if you need help getting out of your driveway because there's a tree down, or it's been six days and you still don't have power, who to call, things like that. Or two of your rooms were flooded and you've got to start from scratch. Do we have a list of town folk who do that kind of work? And maybe we can help them out? We can help our neighbors out? We can help our souls out? All of those things would have been helpful to me. And still are helpful, because I have to. Anyway, so much of me. But I think that might have been helpful. That could be helpful. Necessarily, but contractor, because that's us referring people. Yeah, but short of that, short of that. But everything else, do you call Guthrie? Do you call the road crew? Do you know, things like that? Well, you do call the road crew if there's a road, if there's a tree in the road. Well, you're answering that to me. But acknowledging we had a major storm event, knowing that a lot of people may have had questions. Here are some questions that you might have had or wanted to know whom to contact. Here's a listing. And then we can provide people with that information ahead of time. You just said a key word, which is ahead of time. And I think for me, that's because I know the elementary school is the emergency center for us. But if we don't have conversations before a storm is coming, I wasn't sure what to do. I was sitting on all the emergency calls that happened. They did not have one Christmas day, but they had one Christmas Eve. And Calis opened up their elementary school as a warming center. I'm not sure if anyone ever actually went there, because they had mentioned on the Christmas Eve call, because they actually took that meeting from there. And they said no one was there at that time. So what happened in Calis was they worked very quickly. They did not plan for that ahead of time. But they decided they wanted to put something together. Our area's designated shelter is over in the Berry Auditorium. But Calis Emergency Management said, let's get something quick together. And they did put something together. I called them on Christmas morning to find out how things were going there. Think about going over there. I needed a place to take a shower. I had an offer for neighbors. But I thought it would be good to check out the shelter and see how it's doing. And they told me they didn't have permission to use the shower facilities there. But there were several dozen people who had used it, including like half a dozen who'd stayed overnight that night. And they were looking for volunteers during the day and to stay overnight. So I volunteered to show up late afternoon and stay overnight. But then I got a call back before noon that day saying, we've decided to close it down at noon. And the Berry Shelter was closed down at noon too. And I've talked to Red Cross people in the past in Vermont. And they've said, regardless of the scale of the disaster, Vermonters are very resilient about finding others in the community to help them out. And so they decided, or they saw that people stopped coming in. People needed it right away. But then people stopped coming in. So they closed it down. But they are interested in doing that again in the future. So planning for the next event. They are planning for the next event right now. And Betty Copeland, that's C-O-P-E-L-A-N-D, is a member of their emergency management team. They are looking for volunteers who would get shelter volunteer training ahead of time. And her email address is uchiac2, that's the letter u and then kaiac, and then the number two at gmail.com. So I wanted to make a couple of comments. The call that Jean is talking about was somebody who was in trying to die of stress and needed a generator. So I brought a tractor over to the generator. I did reach out to emergency management in state. That was not helpful. We reached out to the fire department. They were not helpful. We reached out to the town garage. We don't have a generator up there. So I brought my own generator up. No, good to do. Put it to bill and blah, blah. So that was fine. But it does bring the point, couple points. One, I thought we had a generator in the fire department that we could use. Jean had called, no. We don't have a generator to help people out. So I do that myself personally. And I have a new generator I'm putting together. So I'll have a loner, so to speak. But the town should really have something, or the fire department or something, because there's people in dire straits out there that have to have power. You can't hook it up to someone's household if you have some electrical knowledge. Well, you're not the only, but you might have to fail. I'm not the only person to the meeting right now, and I'm going to go.  Yeah, fine. I know how to do it. I think that that's OK that we do that. I'm not worried about that. I'm not worried about doing that. But I'm saying it seems like the town should have a generator to that we own that we can help people out with, because that's what we're going to do. Or we can just rely on our own resources, like myself, to help people out. That's fine. That's what Vermonters do, and I'm not worried about doing that. But this seemed a little frustrating to reach out to the fire department, and they had nothing. That didn't seem quite as kosher to me as I thought it would be. So I'm interested in the move of using town resources to help out individuals in their home versus in a shelter. I don't know what this person's dire needs were, but would they have been met by going to a shelter? No, they couldn't move. They were dying. They were going to die. And they had hospice in there and they needed power. We were actually called by the caretaker, you know, but it's actually not even the residents. The caretaker was concerned. That was providing hospice care. To me, that's the emergency. Yes. Yeah, we were not equipped to deal with that. Somebody could be equipped to deal with that, then. Well, I did. It was an emergency meeting that helped out, too. I called them, and I got nothing. They had logistics team that's supposed to be able to find generators and find things of use for people. Especially a lot of people froze their homes up. They did. And had significant damage. But so the other lag here is that because we have changing climate and we have emergencies like this, people should get generators. And we need to encourage residents to do it. Right. And they're available. It's not that expensive. There are a lot of ways that you can do it. And I think we should put the message out. And they just need to, we also need to let them know that they need to have. They need to do a proper installation. Even if you don't have a switch gear to switch everything over, if you apply electricity through, say, an outside circuit into your house, you've got to break this. You've got to pull the breaker at the pole or the breaker on your panel. OK, so that's what I do. That's a leave. That's a leave. Because it's a liability. Right. I would want to put that out in public.  No, I'm just saying that all you need to say is you need to do this in an appropriate manner because you can risk somebody's life. Well, you can do it. You can get this next switch put in, right, electrician. And then you're fine. So I think it's important to, you know, that people are aware that this is going to continue happening. Yeah. And it's going to, you know, and it has been getting worse. And it probably will continue to be getting worse. I'm not sure we necessarily want to take the next step and say you need to get a generator to, you know, make a plan, think about it, and, you know, have a generator as part of it. Yeah. I think for all of the reasons that John just said, I'm sorry, I can't hear you. You're getting lower. So I didn't really try to get closer to the microphone here. I didn't hear you. So I think that, you know, I was OK without a generator. And I have a wood stove, a well-insulated house. I've got candles and a lantern. I had a roast that was going bad in my refrigerator. And I finally took it over to a neighbor who had a generator and used my crock pot there. But, you know, that was easy for me to do. Washington Electric has told me that they are going to be putting together in one of their next issues of currents, a special section on residential generators. So people will see what the options are out there. So they're already covering that in terms of writing information to people. They actually have some pretty decent information on their website as well. Yeah. But how do you, how would you react to a resident that got to have power? Yeah. And we do not have to make sure. It's clearly an emergency. And I don't know if it covers it. I know.  Yeah. I don't mind doing it for people. I do not mind helping people out at all. We asked, like, emergency management with the state. I mean, they were set up in Waterbury. They were able to. They were functioning. They were open. Or what's their role? What's their role? But Judith was right. Sorry, Judith. Sure. Two things. One, regarding the generator, I think for the reasons that John identified that there are some hazards to how and when to install a generator, I personally would be one of those people who has no idea how to do it. I think that preparing is the step that we want to recommend. I would be in support of the town purchasing a generator, whether that's or the fire department purchasing a generator. But I would encourage folk to prepare. But three is Washington Electric and whatever influence or in cooperation with them, what we can do to encourage or facilitate or look towards long-term planning of underground power lines. Because regardless of the storm, every year, every year since I've lived here for six years, I've lost power. It's every winter. It's never been like this. But because of where the lines are, where the trees are, it's going to happen. And I wonder if that's something I appreciate that it's expensive. But I think as a long-term plan or a long-term goal, it makes sense. And maybe this is a longer conversation, a longer-term conversation. But I think it's one that Washington Electric should be having and we as a town should consider whether we want to encourage Washington Electric to have that plan or to have that conversation about the plan. And I was out for six days. And I've incurred a lot of damage to my house. So I'm one of those people. So, Lala, I'm dealing with power. It would be really nice to have power lines that were invulnerable to storms. We did look at bearing power lines here in the village in construction with the sidewalk and all the other construction that was going on there. And I think for these are rough numbers, but for a quarter mile or so of bearing, it was going to cost around $100,000. Is that right? That sounds right. Yeah. In a project where the road was being dug up anyway. I don't see undergrads that all is happening. But whatever. I mean, you could have a conversation of the way, see where they are on it. Right now, I'm just wanting to get a little bit of an action plan. And I think we should ask the fire department if they have a generator. And what do they think about having a generator? We could just ask that question, right? And we could ask. And I can ask Guthrie the same. And we can ask them to remote home health in hospice. Yes. I mean, if you have people on hospice, do you have a generator to get out to them? Yeah, I bet they don't. But the problem is that what you run into is then you've got to wire it in. Right. I was going to say it's that liability. And that's what I did. Even if you have it. I wired it in. I wired it into the people's house because I know how to do it. But not most people are going to do that. You don't have to do that, though. You can just put in an extension cord and people can connect their freezer or whatever it is. But the problem is, anyway, have one thing. Yeah. And if you've got someone that is going to pass away, they need more than one thing. And then in the people in the house that they're 80, 90 years old, which is one of this case, they can be running the extension cords around plugging different things. So it's just it's a little bit of a problem I see. Yeah. And that's why I have told to some people that a generator is a good idea. But I do encourage them to hardwired into the house just like we did here. The automatic starts every week. You know, blah, blah, blah. We work on cocaine. It's a good backup. So I'm not saying that people should go out be wiring generators into the house like I do because most people don't have that knowledge and they could get hurt. But I'm saying that if we move to encouraging some people to have generators, it's not a bad idea. As you get more prepared. But anyway, my first move would be to find out if anybody has a generator in town, even the other thing is just to know who has generators that could lend one out. Yeah. So. The standard from emergency management is be prepared to be on your own for 72 hours at least in any sort of emergency. And raising people's consciousness about that would be important for us to do too. And that plays in the same thing though.  Do you need a generator to get through those 72 hours? Yeah. The prep ahead of time is, I mean, again, Floridian. So I approach this just like I did a hurricane. And when we lost power, we approached it just like we did a hurricane. I mean, it was no different. I mean, it's really no different except I was outside trying to secure a tarp and slipping on ice and snow. I've never done that in a hurricane. The winds felt the same, but yeah. So I agree with you, Carl. That's what we always have in our mindset. It's always three days, enough water for every person for three days, enough water for the pets too from three days. You know, it's like that's what our mindset is. That's been ingrained in me for the time I was born living in Florida. So. I think that to Judith's point though, as far as having phone numbers listed somewhere, personnel that can help on these various problems, that's a good idea. Yeah. So, I mean, we do network in our own ways anyway, as neighbors and our friends and everyone else. We all like to help each other and that's a good thing. So I don't think that even if we find out the emergency services doesn't have a generator and don't want to have one, we can still deal with it. Yeah. So, but I am going to talk to God to be about it sometime. See, you know, and I think we should talk to people. Yeah. Well, Tyson left the office and somebody needed some help had gone into his wife's cafe and it was a neighbor and they were in trouble and needed some help. And when he came and taught, I said, go help your neighbor. You know, I mean, that's, that's what we need to be doing right now. So, you know. And that's probably the biggest resource is that help each other. Yeah. Some of us are in addition to what we can do there. Anyway, so another question that I got from a resident was about the trees down over the roads and why they weren't cleared out faster. And he was specifically pointing to some on North Street and Cummings Road that I knew were on power lines. And I said, well, they aren't going to touch those without WEC there, making sure that the power lines aren't charged. And he said, well, could a supervisor from WEC just go out and help out the road crew with those? I assume that Guthrie was doing everything he could to cut them down as safely as he could. Yeah, if there are any lines in it whatsoever, none of, yeah, none, no one on our road crew will touch, will touch the tree. So I know it's been cleared, you know, the line's been cleared out. So what, so no one on the road crew will cut the tree if it's physically on lines or if a WEC person is there and said, hey, the line's off. Well, I think if a WEC person is there and they knew it was clear that I guess that would be a different situation. But yeah, without that knowledge, they will not, they have Guthrie told me he has very strict instructions with the road crew that they are to not touch a tree. Even if they are sure that line is off, they do not touch the tree. Yeah, yeah. And on North Street, it ended up being kind of a comical bypass of the road onto somebody's lawn back onto the road again. And I don't know if she was not home or if she just let that happen. But I was, it was- How beautiful those spring comes. Right, right. I mean, generally speaking, no one's gonna cut a tree off a line unless it's power, unless it's whack or anything. What about keeping the road open? Like for example, that Cummings Road? I mean, I was afraid that someone was gonna get hit by that pole. I mean, it was a pole that was hanging on a line for about four days, but the road was still open. And I was worried, it was like Russian roulette that one day someone is gonna be the unlucky person to be driving underneath it when that thing fell. Is there a protocol or how is it determined or when is it determined that a road should be closed because of the hazard? I think that's probably the road crew, but I mean- You should have seen Room 14. I mean, I didn't even know how they could even get trucks through towards the school up here. Yeah, I think in an emergency situation like that, you are gonna take a chance by driving the road, but sometimes you have to. So I don't know if the road can be driven through, they're not probably gonna close it. I mean, I know there was a same situation on Dodge Road. There was a pole broken off and it was hanging by the lines right over the road. You know, WAC was doing everything it could, but further up the road, trying to get power to everybody and they were just, they got to it finally, but you know, it's just like, they're just trying to get it done as quickly as possible and get power back to people. So that was low on the lift. Could I ask a question? As someone who's had a tree fall on her property, that wasn't her tree. Like what, like, am I responsible for getting rid of it? Like, or does the road crew crumb? I'm just, I'm just wondering what happens. Oh, if it's in the town right away, that the road crew is gonna move it out of the way. Yep. They're not gonna take it off your property, but they'll get it out of the right away. So it's not a hazard to people driving through there. So any... What's that? I'm sorry, I didn't interrupt you. Go ahead, sorry. But as far as the ownership on the tree goes, you could work it out with your neighbor, but they probably still own that tree. So are you asking who owns the tree or is it whose responsibility to move it? There's half of a tree on my property that the road crew has cut up so that they can move it. But all of that wouldn't debris. The owner, I don't think, is going to deal with it. So... Right. Okay. If it's in the town right away, the road crew will move it. Okay. But you... They'll move it off the road. They'll move it out of the right away also. She's asking them to move the tree, though. Although... She doesn't want to move further onto her property. Yeah. Right, but they can take it away. You might have to ask them to take it away. I apologize. I really shouldn't be taking up our time with this, but I was just, we're on this topic, so I just thought I'd ask them to take it away. Yeah, no, but the road crew will take that tree away. Okay. And the brush is what you're saying. Yeah. They'll take it away. And if it's a good hardwood tree, then they'll bring it to my place, so I'll use it for firewood. Well, that was the other thing, is who's firewood is it now? Okay, so your neighbors, it's your neighbor's firewood. Even though the tree fell on your land. Okay. He owns the tree, right? I see. Okay. Got it, thank you. Another thing I'd like to bring up is reporting outages to WEC. You said you never called it in because you figured they knew. That was my attitude at first, but I talked to a board member and apparently their smart grid is not as smart as they would like it to be at this point. And it is helpful for them to get actual reports of outages and their system is automated. So you aren't bothering any staff member. Yeah. Well, and they lost the data there for a while because I thought everybody, right around when I came up, I thought all of East Montpelier basically had come back up because I was closely, constantly watching that outage list and come to find out their data had gotten messed up. I didn't realize that was why someone, because there was a truck on my street that I had seen and he was clearly writing down and he was writing down addresses of all of us that didn't have power because they lost all that data. No, I think it's probably a good idea. Yeah, my friend on the board said he was calling in every day. Yeah. You typically, speaking coming from Florida, you keep calling in it when you're out.  No, we're not. Call them back. So. Yeah. Yeah, you always call it in. Yeah, I didn't call mine. I got, shame on me, I guess. I called mine out. How'd you do with your kettle and all your milking? I have two generators. Three generators. Three, yeah. 15 minutes after the power was out, we were back. There was a middle milking, but I learned a long time ago I could not afford that. Right. It's a lot cheaper to buy generators. Yeah. Yeah. Now we have three different entrances too, so I had three generators. One generator didn't run, so I had to use two, but I made it work. Wired up, made extension cords, blah, blah, blah. And it all worked. Great. That water, everything's perfect. But you got to run tractors. You know, take a lot of fuel. Yeah. Yeah, a lot. 24 hours a day, you're running those tractors. Are you running them all on PTO? Yeah, PTO generators. Yeah. And I did that in the county road too. That tractor was over there. Running two days straight to keep the generator going. Yeah, but it worked. Anyway, so we have some good ideas, but we probably ought to move on. So for moving centers for the future and leveraging Barry, should that be kind of our first? B-O-R is where we're supposed to go. Yeah, that's the designated one. Yeah, it's not the elementary school, which I thought it was, but our elementary school. But it's a B-O-R. Right. Yeah. Does the elementary school have a backup generator? I don't think so. They do. But according to our... So we could have done what Callister did with our elementary school. Was that? We could have done what Callister did with our elementary school. We could have done what Callister did. And we probably should. They have backup generators. We're cooperating with them. We have to... Right. If there are a lot of trees down and roads closed, then maybe people can't get the lightning rich road or route 14. Well, something to think about is the school. Yeah. I mean, if it's gonna be out for a few days and people don't have any heat, I mean, it gets kind of serious. Yes. And if we don't have generators to lend out to people, it's not gonna do something. They don't have wood stoves. They have pellet stoves. And pellet stoves don't work with no power. Right. So, all right. Well, the lesson I learned was to have a generator that could lend out to people without using my tractor. A gas generator that you can bring to people, which I have, but it was broken down. I'm gonna get fixed. It would be better to have something that was more affordable. Anyway, anything else on that front? I do think we've got a few things to do, so we'll reach out to them. Yeah. Okay. Anything else on your report? Yeah. Okay. And we did the addition. Did anybody else have anything at all? Eight o'clock. We're running a little behind. I'd like to make a motion and we close. Nice meeting. We usually say adjourn, I believe. I'm adjourned. Second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Oh, aye. Amy. It was me with the very low voice. So, in the midst, it could say John moved to adjourn the meeting. First name basis. Comparatively. Mr. Duke. Like Powell, John. Yeah, I'm like, no, no. Can't say that. Okay. I guess we're good. Thank you. Thank you all. Yep. Thank you.


Introducing CESAW Lessons, a new library of learning experiences that are standards aligned and ready to teach right in CESAW. With power blocks, students join the lovable cast of CESAW characters to master power, ELA, and math standards. I think words that come to mind and I make sure that they really arrive. SEL stories are interactive read-alouds that support social-emotional learning and writing skills. Fun phonemes and alphabet treasures make building phonemic awareness and letter knowledge feel like play. In STEAM, student scientists from around the globe join doctor science and doctor discovery to investigate fascinating facts through technology, engineering, art, and math. In History Today, Scoop the History Detective explores real questions about the past and today. And there's even more to explore! Every semester, there's new lessons added to the subjects you care about most. Each lesson is multimodal and cross-curricular, blends hands-on and digital learning and forms powerful home, school, world connections. With CESAW Lessons, students get more ways to succeed with learning experiences they love.


Spring is a time for new beginnings, a time where fresh buds bloom and people come together to enjoy the beauty of nature. Here on Yakosuka Naval Base the gates have opened to share in this ancient Japanese tradition. Spring means to me the warmest and nicest time of year. Also we get to have a nice big festival here on base and we get to bring a lot of Japanese nationals and a lot of the U.S. sailors and our families get to interact with the Japanese nationals and it's actually a really wonderful thing and something even more special here in Japan is we have a cherry blossom season so we have these things called Hananami parties and this is kind of Yakusuka's big Hananami party. We invite everybody to come see ours so it's kind of a really fun time. Like the newly bloomed cherry blossoms Yakosuka Spring Festival brings together fun, food and entertainment for all to enjoy. I love both of base festivals because I get to hang out with a bunch of great people and entertain and just do our thing it's really fun. Headie Officer Brian M. Brooks, Yakosuka Naval Base, Japan.


Hello, my name is Tim Reed and I'm an extension of Modest with Auburn University. Today I want to talk about scouting for insect pests of cotton. If we look at the different insect pests that tend to be issues in cotton or have historically been issues in cotton over the last few years, we see that the first pests that show up in cotton are cut worms and and then thrips followed by aphids and spider bites potentially. Sometimes aphids and spider bites develop good populations in cotton because of its outside applications made for thrips control. Then once cotton begins to square, we start seeing plant bugs moving in the cotton field and start feeding on squares. We have, after the cotton begins to bloom, we can start to see bow worms and then when cotton sets bows we'll see stink bugs and in the past we have had issues with fall army worms. They have not been as serious a problem in recent years as they once were with the BT cotton and then lastly we can see why fly problems develop in the cotton fields. With cut worms, these are greasy large worms that crawl around beneath the soil surface or under the soil plant residue that is left from weeds or the previous crop. They feed on the stems and the leaves.   What we see here is the kind of symptoms you may notice in the field when you've got cut worm damage. They will sometimes cut off the stem and pull the plant down in their hole and feed on it. Sometimes they'll feed on the cotyledon leaves and damage the plant. This is cut worm feeding damage to corn so you can see kind of how the feeding may look. You manage cut worms by applying a pyrethoid at planting. Growers should always apply a pyrethoid when planting into pasture grasses. However, the cut worms can also show up in fields that were planted to peanuts or cotton the previous year in corn. Cut worms are more difficult to control when cotton is planted into a heavy residue left by a previous crop and therefore you may have to spray twice with a pyrethroid if you're starting to see stand loss after the cotton plants emerge. Light to moderate cut worm problems can be serious if the stand of plants is on the thin side to begin with. Cut worms can slow to reduce the cotton stand over a two to three week period and growers should be checking the seedling plants regularly for cut worms. Another occasional pest of cotton seedlings is the vegetable weevil. This insect is extremely small as you can see here where it's being pointed at with an end of a knife. It feeds on the leaves and stems of seedling cotton. Damage can resemble cut worm injury and you may have to dig around the plants to find them. You can also sometimes find vegetable weevils associated with weeds such as cut leaf evening primrose. Here's an example of a clipped plant that a vegetable weevil fed upon. You also have feeding on seedling cotton plants by slugs and snails. Slug feeding damage is shown here. It looks a little bit like the damage you see on soybeans by bean leaf beetles with respect to the holes you may see on the plants. Very difficult to control and expensive. You have to use baits and a lot of times farmers where they have real serious issues will just have to replant after they have slug damage. Also the slugs can feed on the stem of the plant. This is a soybean plant that was thought to have slug damage because we did have a lot of slugs in the field that were feeding on the leaves. Foschenschberg can also be a pest of cotton especially in droughty conditions. Here we see a plant that's been sucked down by large numbers of Foschenschbergs during a dry period. The Burr bug has been an issue on occasion in Alabama. This insect will move to cotton plants if you don't have an insecticide seed treatment on it they can suck the cotton plant down as well. Grasshoppers were a problem this year on seedling cotton in Central and South Alabama especially. The immature stage is fairly easy to control with a pyrethroid. Once they get wings you have to use a pretty good rate of orthane to control them. They'll feed on the stems and on the leaves. They like to feed on the crook stage. When the cotton first comes out of the ground they'll clip them off right below the cotyledons and can do a significant amount of damage especially around the edge of the field. Here you see an adult grasshopper that has been feeding on the cotyledon leaves at these seedling soybean plants. Thrips are one of the most serious pests of cotton from an economic standpoint in terms of the amount of money we spend to control them each year with preventative treatments plus foliar sprays that we often have to apply. The tobacco thrips is the primary species that is a pest of cotton. It usually constitutes 90% or more of the total thrips populations infesting cotton two to three weeks after emergence. They generally rank right behind plant bugs in terms of the amount of economic loss in North Alabama and in South Alabama they'll rank behind stink bugs in terms of the pests that cause the most economic loss. Here's some of our thrips plots from 2017. You see the untreated plots. There's four rows of untreated plots to my left and then there's four rows of treated plots on the right with the insecticide seed treatment that was a combination thymothoxanomidic local treatment. These plots were planted on April the 14th. Plots that were planted on April the 20th also sustained significant thrips damage especially the untreated plants. When we're looking at the thrips damage to cotton we rate the damage based on the level of feeding that we see on the cotton seedlings the first true leaf and then the subsequent true leaves that appear usually through the fourth true leaf stage cotton is susceptible to to yield loss from thrips feeding. The plant on the left the damage level would be rated a four. The plant on the right would be a zero since we see no damage. If you have no damage and no thrips present the rating is zero. Here's another slide that shows the damage rating scale we use of zero to five and this is not a perfect set of pictures but it does give you an idea of what types of damage we we might look at and rate them at a certain level particularly I want you to concentrate on number three. This is the level of damage that one might want to give serious consideration for making a thrips foliar application. When you see two true leaves on the plant and there's a lot of disfigurement of the true leaves and thrips are present and then on number five is what you may run into shortly thereafter if you don't treat it thrips but continue to move into the cotton field where they will kill the bud the plant the plant will sometimes die. The faster cotton can grow off after developing the first true leaf the less likely it is to have serious damage by thrips. The best time to spray cotton is at the first true leaf stage when thrips are attacking cotton and research done by Alana Jacobson has shown that the eggs of thrips are laid primarily on the cotyledon leaves. You can flare aphids and spider mice with thrips insecticide sprays. Last year we we've flared spider mice with two seedling sprays of orthoine at the pravil station. Sometimes insecticide seed treatments are not uniformly applied to seed this is very common and there can be some plants with damage symptoms and others without damage. In this situation a North Carolina recommends treatment when there are two thrips for planting 25 percent of the plants are damaged. This is a slide from Phillip Robertson's Tifted Georgia where he looked at the long-term effects efficacy of neonicanoid seed treatments compared with timic or aldecarb. This is a combination average of 20 trials and he found that two weeks after planting he was getting 60 percent control with his seed treatment versus 80 percent with timic in three weeks after planting it drops down to 40 percent and we normally assume we'd get two to three weeks of efficacy of a neonicanoid seed treatment on cotton and this is from the day it's planted not from the day of emergence so if you're planting dry conditions and the cotton plant doesn't come up then for two weeks then you'll probably will see some significant thrips damage on cotton that's planted before May the 5th in North Alabama and maybe May the 1st in South Alabama but that can vary from year to year depending on the weather and planting insecticides must be taken up by the roots and translocated to the growing point to provide effective thrips control. This water solubility that is required for insecticides to work also allows leaching of insecticides out of the root zone when rainfall is heavy thus the insecticide treatment becomes less effective. I also need to mention that the good entomologist over at Mississippi State are reporting they're getting about another week's residual activity out of inferus sprays versus neonicanoid seed treatments. Last year at Balvina we had fairly decent damage from thrips in our research plots the yield range for insecticide treatments was about 4,200 about 4,000 pounds of seed cotton per acre there were nine insecticide treatments some were foliar some were seed treatments some were a combination of both. All had a crop residue which tends to reduce thrips damage the average for all those nine insecticide treatments which would be 36 plots was just over 4,000 pounds of seed cotton the untreated plots which there were 12 had a yield average of 3725 pounds and then at economic consequences of using those seed treatments was about a hundred dollars per acre of value of value minus the cost of the seed treatment. If you're planting into a thick cover crop stubble this will reduce thrips damage in comparison to planting into a conventionally till field. As I mentioned earlier sometimes you can flare insects behind thrips sprays including aphids aphids will attack cotton once from the time it comes up until it's starting to mature they feed on the underside of the leaves they have a tremendous reproductive capacity and the nymphs are born with developing embryos already present in other words they're born pregnant one female can produce as many as 80 young individuals that mature within eight to ten days so aphids possibly could have as many as 50 generations per year and they occur as frequently as every five or seven days some of the aphids are weaned and some are not weaned they tend to really make a mess on the plants but when they start they tend to really make a mess on the plants when they start to get large populations and they shed their skins and it's hard to scout the cotton terminal especially for other insect issues when you have aphid problems leaves will start to curl up like we see here turn downward when you get a lot of aphids on the underside of the leaves you'll get honeydew on the from the aphids feeding on the leaves above the little drop down on the leaves below on the surface of the leaves below make a sticky mess and then a sooty mow will develop on those cotton leaves where the honeydew was deposited and this can cause us to have a serious price reduction or cotton because of a reduction in grade from the sooty mow predators parasitoids and aphid killing fungi are often the most effective means of managing an aphid population the aphid killing fungus usually appears by mid-july but sometimes the fungus doesn't reduce the population until over into august and this is generally the case when you have extremely dry conditions farmers tend to want to wait before they make a spray for aphids but sometimes you have to apply insecticide to reduce aphid populations to avoid a yield loss aphids scale insects and white flies are often tended to by fire ants that that want the honeydew that the aphids are secreting when aphids are on cotton plants research done at Auburn University in the early 2000s indicated that the fire ants became more abundant on the foliage as a consequence of the aphids being present there when the fire ants are more abundant on the foliage they alter the the number of caterpillars and beneficial insects that are also on the the foliage they tend to reduce the those numbers more so it's a very interesting mutualistic relationship between fire ants and aphids and how they impact the populations of other insects on the cotton plant spider mites as we mentioned earlier can be an issue in cotton pretty much season long this is an adult along with some eggs you see here the spider mites feed on the undersides of the leaves they will abrade the leaves and they will the raspy sucky mouth parts and they will imbibe the fluid that comes out of the leaf we've observed in alabama that if we we could control spider mice with bifenthrin but bifenthrin kills the predacious thrips that feed on the spider mite eggs and will seal resurgence quite often behind bifenthrin's applications for spider mite control but we still could use bifenthrin for spider mites later on in late in late season when there's not a lot of time left for the crop matures when for spider mites feed on leaves they'll leave these uh initially this yalla stippling effect as the damage starts to show up on the leaf surface from the speeding on the underside of the leaf later on the leaves will turn a redder color like we see here um tarnished plant bugs once cotton begins to square are a significant pest of cotton in alabama especially north alabama the queen islace is another excellent host for tarnished plant bugs the immature stage will show up in the cotton plant later on in the year in july if we let a lot of eggs go meet the posture of the cotton plant uh during the early part of the squaring period then later on when the cotton gets ranked we may have problems getting the insecticide down into the plant and controlling these immature insects tarnished plant bugs will feed on the the fruit of the cotton plant they will inject a toxin that will dissolve the tissue in the square so that they can suck it out and feed on it and then the square will turn brown and fall off excessively heavy feeding on the cotton plant by the tarnished plant bug and resulted in crazy cotton where the plant loses apical dominance as the plant bugs move to the growing point of the cotton plant after they've knocked off all the squares and you see a plant that is abnormal in shape and has very little fruit on it tarnished plant bugs can feed on the bones squares before they open up and sometimes they will defecate at the top of the square they'll feed through the through that square prior to bloom and they can damage the reproductive parts of the plant they can feed on those reproductive parts after the bloom opens up Barry Freeman a professor emeritus at Auburn University did a lot of research trying to quantify and just demonstrate a relationship between bloom damage and by plant bugs and yield and he was never able to develop a correlation there was no positive correlation between those two variables also we have the clowny plant bug that has the antenna forked at right angles as we see here and in this slide they tend to show up later in the year most years but sometimes you can find a few of those in the first part of July and cotton fields sometimes it's very hard to distinguish damage between tarnished plant bugs and stink bugs but they will all feed on bowls and I can't say for sure that this is tarnished plant bug damage but it is normally a problem with tarnished plant bugs that will feed on smaller bowls earlier in the year and as we go on into the growing season they can continue to feed on bowls but they they tend to not do as much damage as stink bugs in terms of the amount of damage done internally to the bowl here we see the green stink bug adult immature which tends to be more of a problem on cotton in north alabama while the southern green stink bug is more of an issue in central and south alabama this is the adult and this is the immature southern green stink bug we also have a brown stink bug this is the use use just a service species and this is the immature stage of the brown stink bug brown marmorated stink bug is moving into alabama becoming established in more and more counties we have a significant population at the practical agricultural research unit in central alabama and this insect will feed on a larger bowl than than the native species of stink bugs that we have normally what happens with cotton is that about the third week of bloom we have bowls in the field that are eight to ten days old these bowls have a seed beginning to develop and the stink bug wants to feed on the seed where the protein level is highest so it will insert its proboscis into the seed feed on the cotton plant it'll cause these abnormal growths on the inside of the bowl wall and it will cause the internal portion of the cotton plant to to rot here we see some locks of cotton of a cotton bowl that have been damaged by the stink bug and it's a very sad thing to go out into a grower's field he doesn't realize he's had any damage because the bowls are still there he didn't pull bowls and check them during the growing season and he ends up with a situation like this so the treatment threshold for stink bugs changes as we get into the blooming period but peat bloom or damage is about threshold is 10 percent punctured bowls the stink bug trapped my threshold for cotton as i mentioned is 10 to 15 percent bowl injury during the third to fifth week of bloom when the highest number of septic bowls are present use a 20 percent injury threshold for weeks two and six of bloom the cotton bowlworm and tobacco budworm have historically been significant pests of cotton whether the introduction of bt cotton however we have seen the significance of these pests decline bowlworm and budworm mostly shiny eggs pearly pearl shaped eggs on the cotton plant these will hatch in about three days under hot weather conditions and we see here on the left a bowlworm egg on the left and on the right the egg of the predator the big eyed bug and this is a big eyed bug adult uh we normally look for bowlworms in the terminal of the cotton plant especially prior to the bloom stage uh and then on we still we move our search down the plant to the blooms and underneath the leaves around the bowl as we get on into the growing season the worm will feed into the bowl and move on into the bowl and eat the inside of the bowl causing significant yield losses with respect to bowlworms we need to remember that the white-striped cotton varieties or varieties in alabama that we tend to see some damage from bowlworms but this could be managed by pyrethroid applications historically we've been able to kill bowlworms with pyrethroids in cotton alabama these applications need to be made around august the first in north alabama and central alabama around june the 20th and then in south alabama as early as due to the tense since the bowlworm population tends to increase from south to north over time the last pest we'll talk about will be the bandied wing white fly historically this was a pest that showed up in cotton fields that received a large number of insecticide applications um however sometimes these pests just show up in cotton fields in other parts of the southeast they don't necessarily have to be flared by insecticide sprays they can be especially abundant and look like snowflakes falling in the air in the south georgia at times especially in the tifton area and these insects lay eggs on the underside of the leaves the crawler stage will find a place to become established on the underside of the leaf and it will go through several instars and moat and it would it can produce honey do just like aphids can do i want to thank everybody for their attention i hope the this program was a benefit to you and if you have any questions you can call me at the alabama property safety system albert university thank you very much bye


What is quark? Quark is a term used in physics to describe the elementary particles that make up matter. Quarks are considered fundamental particles and are the building blocks of protons and neutrons, which are the particles that make up the nucleus of an atom. Quarks are known to have a property called color charge, which is not related to the visible spectrum of colors. They can have a positive or negative electric charge, similar to protons and neutrons. Quarks come in different types or flavors, such as up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom. Subscribe and join us on YouTube shorts as we unravel the mysteries of the universe. Ignite your imagination and empower you with knowledge.