Good evening, I'd like to call on Monday, March 18th, 2024, Brolin-Slickboard to order. With us tonight to my left is Flo Smith and Joe Staub. To my right is Tora Nelson, our acting town administrator. And I am Brad Town, and the first order of business is Slickboard Reorganization. I nominate Brad Town to be the chair for the year. Second. Any other nominees? If not, all those in favor? Aye. OK. Motion passes. Vice chair. I nominate Florence Smith to be vice chair for the year. I second. Any other nominations? Hearing none, those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. And secretary? I nominate Joe Staub, the secretary. Second. Any other nominations? Hearing none, those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Additions or changes the agenda to order? I have one I'd like to add, appointment of the Fire Department's Merger Steering Committee. OK. Dan? Dan? Of course, with Janice here for it. No, OK. Public comment? Hearing none. Anything? If I might. I just wanted to ask, and maybe it's good that Tim's here, if there's any plans this summer to have more commercial trucks parked back here in addition to Lucas. I don't know, like any of the big contractors that are coming for the pipeline and whatnot, if they had asked. I'm just asking if possible that we keep it to a minimum. What pipeline? Oh, there's one going in out here out Scott Hill Road, for a water system. Oh, that's nowhere near even. Well, maybe a year or two, you think, is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's what you're talking about. Year to a way, and that's going to be up by the airport, trying to think. And I thank you for when the big over-the-road trucks come with the sand and dirt. When they got their jake brakes on, it shakes my house. Now I get it. They're loaded, coming down there. They've got to make that corner. I'm glad that going out would be nice if they switch them off.  Ours aren't very loud. And I thank you for that. Thank you. Any other comments? Hearing none, select our goals for the year. Just want you to think about what you want to see us accomplish for the year. I'll go over this again on reading it to you, but think about what you want. Don, everybody's got their ideas. They want to see the board do it. I want to make sure we capture them and get them on the agendas for the future meetings. Excellent. Thank you. OK, Green Mountain Power right away permit. So this is in your packet. Green Mountain Power doing work on Addison Drive, Bellavance Land Works would be the contractor. There's a map of the project, pretty extensive description of the work they will be doing. Tim, did you get a chance to look at this? Yeah. Any issues with it? No. Pretty much see the little patch throw back in where they cut the black top. It's only one. Sorry, I didn't tell it's only one crossing in the black top. The other one's down in the dirt section. So they're going to concrete it anywhere so that it crosses the service. Because down below, it's going to go over the sewer line. So this is buried? Yeah, very cool. I make the motion to approve the right away permit for the Green Mountain Power Addison Drive. And basically, in terms of which side, et cetera, it says Addison Drive on the left-hand shoulder headed north, crossing Addison Drive near Poplar Street, continuing down behind BSHA on Addison Drive on the left-hand shoulder and crossing below to feed the existing pad mount transformer and repairing the existing primary underground, replacing and repairing. Exactly. Any further discussion? If not, those in favor? Motion carries. OK, loader purchase. So Tim has obtained some pricing on the loader. But three benders he's looked at. One is the Caterpillar 938. Cell price of $264,000. Traded in a $55,000. Total price of $209,000. The John Deere 624. Cell price of $276,857. Traded in a $59,000. Gives a total price of $217,857. And the Kamatsu WA320. Cell price of $251,500. Traded in a $50,000. Gives us a total price of $201,500. I know you've had the Kamatsu out here for the last week or the week before looking at it. Your recommendation is the Caterpillar. You've had a good experience with cat products Yeah, we're going to get the greater and everything else. Well, I see that the Caterpillar is mid-range on the hours, but they have a two-year more on their warranty. A better warranty, right. Now, do they offer any extended? I believe that's as far out as they go. I can ask. Because I asked them for, that's the same warranty that we have on the greater. When we bought the greater, that's the same warranty that we got there. I almost think that might be as far out as they go. He didn't say any longer than that. The machine you've got now, how many hours a year do you put on it? Off top of the head, I would know. I'd have to look at the computer. But I mean, it's the 2008. It's got almost $7,200 on it right now. So as far as repairability of the Caterpillars, the better choice. Where do you get your Kamatsu's? Anderson? Yeah, that one was a few from Anderson. Are they all comparable in size? Yes. They're as close as they can be if we were dealerships. Have you used, have you used, what are you seeing for the Kamatsu efficiency fuel? They're all pretty close to the same. They're all tier four engines now, so they're all the same. And the Kamatsu and the Cat are almost identical. As far as curious emissions, they're hydrostatic. So the Cat has the auto diff in it. So it takes the way to cut back on wear on tires. It's auto. So that one does auto. Set them annual, like the one we have now. Is there a certain efficiency by you have the Cat grader and if you get the Cat loader and you might have another piece of equipment, I don't know? Is it like you just call Milton up there and they send a service guy and they service both pieces? They do. If you have. We do all learn on the make. Even if it's warranty work, it's good to go forever. We do all learn on the make. So that's not a big deal. It doesn't matter. We've looked at all of them like, of course, like we have the Katsuhiro for a week. The guys didn't really like it. It's tippy. We've all lost a lot. It doesn't have. It's very plain. So the seat isn't very comfortable. The steering wheel doesn't. Like the steering wheel, if I said it, that the steering wheel is on my almost touch of my knees. Like it doesn't even come up. Like you're constantly bent over. Like I ran it for a few hours. Loaded the trucks and cleaned them up one day. My back hurt from just being hunched over or steering it around the yard. But I mean, they're all nice because they're all nailed but with availability. Kamatsu and I think John Deere would be the quickest because when I talked to her, they had already had their order placed in and they had a bunch that were looking to be delivered sometime Aprilish on their schedule. But they were saying it could be three months. Same thing with Kamatsu. Cat is a little bit longer by a few months. A little separate. Yes, six could be. You don't mean it all in the fans. And I should just preface, this is for the fiscal year 2025 budget. But that's why we're starting this now. In case there are delivery delays and stuff. I'm not looking to take delivery now. This until after July and it is in the budget. But I want to make sure there aren't any delivery delays or anything. We've got to cover it. So that's why it's on the agenda for tonight. And this actually does come in under what we had budgeted for. That's always a good name. Did you have all three of them to use? We went up the Richmond and looked at the tried of them in the yard up there. Berry City took purchase of the 624 midwinter. We went down, ran their loader around their yard, played the dirt file, spent a better part of an hour going over it. It's pretty much identical to what we currently own, tight deal. I mean, there's not a lot of difference there. So yeah, we went and looked at all three of them and did what we could. If it's a choice for years to make, you like that. Yeah, ergonomics and everything else, yeah. That and it's the cheaper, well, not the cheapest. But I think it's the best deal for our money versus warranty, machine, and longevity. Yeah. Like the warranty with it, too. OK, so do we have a motion? I'll make a motion to go with the Caterpillar 938 for the price, the sales price of $264,000. There's any further discussion? So regardless of the time delay in taking ownership of it, there you're going to give us that for a trade-in now in six months or so. Well, so we'll do it as long as you guys approve it now as I will contact that tomorrow. We'll sign the sale purchase agreement, set the order, and then they'll place the order, and then we'll get it. It'll be delivered. And that goes on for the sales price and not for the total price, because I wasn't sure on that. You know what I'm wondering is that once you sign the purchase agreement, if this one out here blows up, we've got to spray it over. I don't foresee it happening. What's that? I don't foresee it happening, but you never know. It's the same deal with the Grader. We had to wait for the Grader, and we ran ours. Yeah, with a string and a prayer. But I'm just wondering if Caterpillar will still honor the price if something happens to this little. I would soon, so I can text Jeff right now, I'm sure. When you have money in hand, which you will, I think by the vote coming up, that might grease the wheels a little bit. Your machine may show up a little earlier. You got the money. Do you want to know if the price is good? Yeah, if we agree to this, is it going to be good even if something happens to this loader out here? I'm not thinking of mechanical failure, but if you said the electronics were with wires and whatnot, we're getting a little afraid. No, not on that one. I'm more concerned with the Rop system than that loader than much other than the cabs getting. Tender, yeah. It leaks water in the front windows because there's no, the front of the cabs rotted down on the bottom of the windshields from all the years of old salt. You said that was leaking onto the ECM? No, not that one, no. OK. No, but the door to that side is rotted through. Does that door that covers all the electrical panels on that right-hand side, the bottom of it, is rotted right through. But just that door panel alone was almost 1,000 bucks. Yeah, for an 18 by 18 level door. Oh, god. I would have never thought that it would cost that much. Just to paint? Yeah. Going to wait for a text. Why? I think we can probably forego it and go on with the vote. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. OK, paint, turnpike, north repairs update? So Tim had checked in with the state on the availability of Bailey Bridge across paint, turnpike, version 80 to 100 grand, just to commandeer one up. And then it needs the site work on top of, you know what I mean? They said the price could vary depending on availability and availability for contractor with a crane, because they kind of line that all up, I guess, with the rental of the bridge. And then you need either the person with the crane would have the equipment to do the site work to set the bridge, or you don't even have to find somebody to do the site work to set the bridge or make the embotments. And then so it's like 80 to 100 to get the bridge. And then you would have to do a monthly lease agreement, rental agreement. What's the number? They didn't even tell me. They said that would be a longevity thing, like it would how long we'd need it for. The price goes down. They didn't give me a monthly price. He just said that it would vary on how long we'd have it and whatnot. What's a Fisher Road? How long was that down? About three years? Two years, yeah. Most of it was like for engineering. Was that for a one or two-lane? I believe it was two-lane. They didn't specify, though. And I guess I didn't clarify either. I kind of assumed, when we were talking about two-lane road, they would know that I meant a two-lane bridge. I mean, they were aware of where it was going to go, so they knew what it needed. So if we put this in, when it comes to putting in the new culvert, this bridge would have to come out first. The road would be re-shot down. And they might be able to utilize it as a temporary bridge just off the roadway. Scoot down. They'd have to show all the land in over there, and then it's all wet land on that side anyways. That was half the reason why Wayne couldn't do anything. No, on that lower side, the water line goes through there, there's a fire hydrant right there. Water line's on that side of the guardrail. Sewer line's right there. It can probably all be done with money. Well, that tortures me. So I was wondering, what if we invited somebody here to the select road meeting? And I'm not putting down Tim in any way, but somebody like that has built these before, like the contractors that built it down on, well, 302, and there's several places. Yeah. And Tim may even know the companies. I'm wondering if we need kind of like somebody that's been there, done it, can really advise us. Is that something worthwhile? And I'm not sure how it will work with Thunderleaf. I never did get an answer. Probably should have called them back today. They were gonna give me an answer back, whether we would even be able to claim this under an emergency, or we'd have to foot the bill entirely because we've already told them that we wouldn't take emergency money to do an emergency opening, temporary opening. We already said no. Berrytown had one denied the same week that I was talking to them about. They said, because they tried to do something similar, they didn't say which project it was, they just said they had said no to begin with and then changed them and they denied the project. Well, that could be the road that it's been. The project was on as well. Like I said, I think they did not find it being a major activity. They just said that it would be denied. Well, we can, if you're gonna get a hold of them tomorrow or this week, I'm gonna be filmed. We can postpone this for a next meeting. Cable it to next meeting and we'll have more information. What would you like to know for like, definitely get information about it? Well, first thing would be, of course, availability of the bridge. And then the next thing would be if the feds were gonna take in, you know, 80% or whatever they usually do for this type of thing.  That's big. Oh, yeah, it's not doable. Yeah, it's priced out too far. So just find out that and I don't know if you can, but the time period is for them to okay a project like this. I don't know, I definitely can definitely ask, but.  So what are we taking? See what you can find out, Tim, and we'll motion on tabling. I make the motion to table this until the next slide. Second. Any other discussion? Can I comment? Sure. Um, to me, I mean, $100,000 doesn't necessarily sound like a lot in respect to, you know, the overall cost of this, the impact on not just emergency services, but traffic in general.  I mean, it's a big deal. I mean, it's a really big deal.   So to me, $100,000 doesn't necessarily sound like $100,000 just to get the bridge. You're looking at probably anywhere from three to four, maybe $500,000 extra, depending on how long it takes for the paperwork to go through to get the process started to even get to the replacement part. So, you know, I mean, it's just $100,000 to get the bridge. That's not to site work or whatever. I don't even know what they pay a monthly fee for that bridge. Have you ever heard of Price? I don't know. That's the thing is, you know, you're throwing out what it all could be, but you don't know what it is. And until we have someone come in and know where we get more information. The additional information will be very helpful. Like you said, you're hoping that they understood too late, but they may have been quoting what they perceive as one lane. So even that is gonna be important to know. No, but that's a too late. Right, right. So when you take in, check with the availability of the Bailey Bridge, you can take and see what the timetable is, trying to think the, and try to also get the monthly rental fees for it. And at the same time, hopefully we can be pushing the state to do the engineering on the road stuff. It's all the same people. It's all the same group. Well, can the bridge be put in in such a way that they then, when it's ready, come put the culvert underneath and then take the bridge away. No, can't do it that way. No, the bridge is gonna be pretty low to the road. Because then, Well, we don't even know what the design is. I'm guessing it's probably gonna be the same design as Fisher Road, which is gonna be a live bottom, multiply, but they'll be the same engineers. They might try to do something different. They might not want a live bottom. Well, I'll be sure, but I'm gonna change your, in the middle of the stream. Well, that's it, like I said the other day, it's kind of, you would think that they'd almost just take the Fisher Road design and just. Move it over. Move it over, but. Well, if they, Never come to Bay and they do things. But even with that, the trick is here is going to be to take in, find out what the cost of the Bailey Bridge is, and hopefully we can get the state going, give the design so we can get those concrete pieces in order to remember that was the other issue with the Fisher Road was the, near as concrete places down in New York State somewhere. And that's what this time, they don't make mistake on the footings last time. It's one of the permit process is gonna take six to eight months until the process. One of these, I don't know if you've showed them the 35 things that we're gonna do in line of all of this. Yeah. There's kind of a compliance there. No way we can just fill those holes in temporarily. And. No, because it won't stay, because it hasn't stayed, it's gotten way worse now. Yeah. Is it growing? Yeah, there's not much left down there now. Any other discussion on this? Thank you for doing the research. All those in favor of tabling this? Aye. Aye. And carries flood damage at Darling and Junction Roads. So this is another project to be paid for by the feds. There are two culverts on Darling Road and one on Junction Road that we went out for bids on for engineering services. We received four bids back, included in your packet. One is from Auto Creek Engineering for 59,000. One is from Premier Engineering, which is a brand new outfit out of Northfield for 99,600. For Wright and Pierce Engineering for 247,780 dollars and one from New England Consulting for $37,000. What was Wright's? 247,780. The recommendation is to go with the Auto Creek Engineering proposal. I concur with that. I think they are very well known. They do good work and it's substantially less expensive. So was that a motion to her? Let me just see what, yes. Was that a second floor? Yes, it was. Thank you. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. The motion carries the appointment of representative to the Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District. Theron Leigh-Sleeper online with us. Is it official yet, Theron, can I say? Yes, it is. Okay, so first of all congratulations to Theron. We all know him, he's on our planning commission and it's a town meeting and everything. He is the new general manager of the management district. Did I say that right, Theron? Replacing Dan Casey. So congratulations on him for that. But also at the time meeting, Matt Levin stated that he was stepping back from the Berlin's representative and would stay on as an alternate. We had appointed another representative who became the treasurer of the management district. So he's now a non-voting member of the board. So we're back to the point of looking for a new representative and Peg Nonley, who we all know as one of the justices of the piece, heard it there at town meeting and stepped up to be the representative for the Solid Waste Management District. So I'll make that motion to appoint Peg. Second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. You go ahead and do your vote. I just want to think through until I sell that. Well, why don't you talk to Joe to make the vote? All right, that's to a mention, Joe Levin from the planning commission. But I wanted to let you know that you want to reach out to me if you have any questions about what we do or our organization, or just about managing Solid Waste General. I'm happy to be with you, come meet with you and help navigate anything that you're trying to figure out as far as our work goes. You okay? Thank you. Thank you, congratulations. Thanks. All those in favor of the appointment? Aye. Motion carries, congratulations. Let's see here. Capital improvement plan. So now Theron is switching his hats from the Solid Waste Management District to the Planning Commission. You know, one of the things I've really been pushing for the last several months is improved capital planning and capital budgeting and looking ahead more as far as what we're spending our money on and when we're spending it and being more proactive on that instead of doing things like we did with the roads with Pine Hill Drive this year, putting it off, putting off for another year. You know, let's develop a plan for this. So I've sent out an RFP, which is in your packet for consulting services for development of an asset capital improvement plan. We received two proposals back. One is from Stone Shore Municipal Consulting, Enrichment, and another from Seam Solutions in Barrie. Theron and I, you know, Theron on behalf of the Planning Commission reviewed both of these proposals. They both came in under budget Stone Shore. One of the principals is somebody widely known to us here in Berlin is Karl Rogers. He's a former Barrie town manager. And then also Ron Rajensky, who's a former town administrator, I believe, in Richmond. I was very tickled to receive the proposal from Karl Rogers. If, you know, when I was, you know, first looking at what we want in a capital improvement plan, you know, I was immediately told to look at what Barrie town does. And, you know, if I were to try to do it on my own, I would copy or, as I say, best practices what Barrie town does. So I really do like the experience that he brings. Their proposals were $26,800. The other proposal from Seen Solutions is Stephanie Megman. She was an engineer with V-Trans and also did a lot of work with Vermont Emergency Management in the State Emergency Operations Center. Her cost came at $21,550. But looking at the two, I think that the Stone Shore would be a plan that we could use, that we would actually use. And not just something pretty to sit on the shelf and gather dust, but something that we could use. We could update it, be a living document that we could base our decisions off of, not just now, but for the future. Theron, I think you're in similar thoughts as that. That's right. Yeah, I found the Stone Shore proposal could be overall the better value of the two based on having the two consultants versus one and the wealth of experience that they bring to the table. I did think that that was the better proposal of the two. And they set out with an 11 month schedule, am I understanding that right? I believe that's what it was, correct? Yes. To me, that sounds like an excellent rate for the time period that they would expend working on our behalf. I concur. So I'll make the motion to approve the Capital Improvement Plan contract to Stone Shore, Municipal Consulting that this be paid for with ARPA funds. Your second? I'll second that motion. And for the discussion, all those in favor? Motion carries. Ice rink engineering bid. So this is in your packet as well. Pages of the anticipated expense of the full ice rink redevelopment. As you remember, we have the bond vote on this back in November, basically putting a solar canopy on top and turning it into a four season facility anticipating like pickle ball and basketball and possibly even tennis and things like that in addition to the winter ice skating and hockey use. The first step early in obtaining the bond is you're going to do the engineering work, which RFP was sent out and to Boy and King was selected as the best value at just under $52,000. So recommend award of that contract to Boy and King. That second page is until we get the bond in place to cover that, the funding for the 51,000 that the time would cover that through a bridge loan to be paid back. So I'll make that motion. Actually I should make that motion, but I would recommend to Boy and King be awarded the contract with the bridge loan authorized in the town administrator to sign on behalf of the town. So moved. Here a second? A second. Any other discussion on this? Hearing none, those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Personnel policy update. So I'd mentioned this a couple weeks ago and there's a copy in your packet of things that I would like to see us start looking at as far as updating the personnel policy. First of all is the on page nine, the boot allowance. Currently at $150 per fiscal year, I would recommend that you increase to probably $300. Next is on page 10 under paid vacation date. Well, actually let's back up. Bottom of page nine, top of page 10 is the list of paid holidays during the year. So I don't know if the board is inclined to make any additions to that list or not, something to think about. Two possibilities would be MLK birthday and also June 19th holidays. So that's for consideration to think about. Then on page 10 under paid vacation days for the first year employment, paid vacation days will prove at a rate of four hours per paid period to a maximum of 40 hours. However, no vacation time may be utilized until the employee has completed six months of employment. So four hours over six months does not equal 40 hours. So I think that needs to be clarified in my recommendation just be a straight 40 hours for the first year because that's how the rest of the years are laid out. 80 hours, 120 hours and nothing just keep it uniform through all of those. Bottom of page 11 under sick leave. Full-time employees may accumulate sick leave at four hours per paid period to a maximum of 160 hours. I would recommend removing that cap of 160 hours that there'd be no limit on the amount of sick leave. You can carry on the books. My old job, that's how it was. I had over 2,500 hours of sick leave on the books at one point and I had to use 1,600 hours of it in one year. And I didn't use a penny of pay. So to me, I don't think we're out anything by extending that cap. I don't want to get into a situation where somebody's getting up to the 160 hours, maybe they're sick that day and the federal government, we called it first flu so they don't lose any of their time off here, give that something to think about. I'm not saying we should, but that's be a recommendation I make. I think that's all of the updates I had. So I know it's been a while since you guys have looked at this. There was one that I had talked with Vince about was that on time, we're only allowed 40. I had talked to him and hopefully maybe go to 80. That's our page. In the winter time, so we can kind of, if we get a couple of weeks of long hours, we lose quite a bit of pay through taxes. And if we get to put some in the comp time, it might go take a day off here or there when the weather's a little nicer. And we wouldn't possibly lose. That's the way it was when I was at B-Trans. We were allowed 80 hours of comp per year. I'm good with that, I'll figure that out. I'm not up to make decisions tonight, but I wanted to put this on the radar to start reading through it and see what other updates you might have for this. Excellent. Pair of boots is $300 now? Or a big pair of boots? Yeah, new clothes, new clothes. They're more, they're made in the United States. Really? But a fair chip was it was made in the United States there about four or 450 to 10 months ago. It was right there, probably. They're almost 300 bucks. Okay, anything else on this? If not, town meeting recap? So a couple takeaways from town meeting is on the local options tax. The Charter of Change packet, Rachel sent to the Secretary of State, which is the process that goes through to be sent to the legislature. So that was done last week. I've not seen anything yet, as far as a bill being introduced in the legislature or anything. I'm skeptical if they'll get to it this year or not. They got a lot of their big bills to do on this. It's a fairly straightforward thing. A lot of towns have been through the options tax at this point in everything and nothing controversial, but it's just a matter of their timing and getting it through their committee schedules and everything like that. So I'd be happy if it passes this session, but realistically, I'm not so sure it will. Well, our representatives said that it shouldn't be an issue. They don't think it would be an issue, but. She has it on the show. That's right. Are you talking about implementing the local option tax? Correct. Or getting approval from the state. The state has to approve it down the capital? The legislature has to approve it, correct. Oh, golly. Well, did we get our legislators to kick butt on that? Well, I think, yeah, I think they will. It's, you may know. And it's, you know, like I said, it's a fairly straightforward thing at this point. They've been through it, you know, with some of the other, and it's just a stand alone. And we're not trying to do, you know, five or six other charter proposals in the same, you know, which sometimes gets bogged down, you know, what these other cities and towns are doing. So to me, it looks like a quick and easy thing to do, but they don't ask me, they don't consult with me on these things. So. Hey, but we have a state mushroom now. Oh, yes. Yeah, that was funny. I was reading Ian's thing about the mushroom, you know, that was pretty funny. I just want to say you guys, Select Board and Tim, did a great job getting the word out about the one and a half acre deal and about the local option tax. You know, I saw the video, you were in the truck and you were interviewing them. And I don't know, you guys have a little marketing campaign on Frontport Forum in various places. Well, it worked, good job. Thank you. And I'd like to do more, you know, I know in the past, we used to have a newsletter. I don't know if I want to go quite that formal, but, you know, maybe a series of front porch forums, postings throughout the year or something. Might be better than a, you know, a full newsletter and stuff that we've done in the past, probably been 10 years or so since we've done the newsletter. Any else on the town meeting? No. Okay. The town treasurer assumed far department bookkeeping. Ah, I do assume. Okay. So this has been a subject that's been floated around in the past, I don't even say it's been discussed. It's been floated for probably about three, three plus years in particular. So currently the far department uses batch odor for their bookkeeping. And that comes at an expense of 1,200 a month. It's plus fees, that I understand. So it's expensive for what, the far, I mean, we see in the orders tonight, you know, we see what's involved in financial aside from running the fire department. And we feel that the treasure department now has the capacity to take on those duties for the fire department. We met with the president and the chief and the treasurer today, worked out some of the questions that everybody had regarding this. And we are comfortable at this point, preparing a proposal to move forward or to present to the fire department corporation, I guess technically, to move forward on this. In reality, we're looking at, you know, half a dozen to a dozen checks per week that, you know, the fire department has to pay.  We think we can, you know, do it cheaper than what they're being charged. We think we can provide a better service, timely service. They get reports six weeks or so after the end of the month. Yeah, six weeks behind. Or as I was going to do it tonight, I did not, you know, we can, you know, through NEMRIC, we can run it. I'll say real time, but we can run one immediately on demand for them, you know, provide them much quicker numbers that they need for their operations. So, I don't know, Joe, you want to chime in or Janet? Well, like I said, you said earlier, you know, we've been talking about this for a few years or whatnot. I think that the cost of the accounting for the fire department, we backed up before we had bachelors doing that, before we outsourced it, we were doing it with volunteers. And that was just burning out our volunteers to do so. We're looking at something nearly, you know, quarter million plus dollars of a budget and relying on volunteers to do so, you know, efficiently and correctly and all that. It's just, that's why we outsourced it. First time around, we did have like three entities that answered the RFP, Bachelors got it. And at that point, it was nearly, it was $900 a month plus expenses. And those expenses were programs that they may have had to buy to put in place to take care of our finances or postage and handling of the checks and the invoices they were paying. The contract came due. We ended up putting another RFP out. Bachelors was the only one that actually answered it and it increased nearly $300. So, I mean, we're paying something. I think they have a lot of overhead. They have, and so I kind of get that. I see it probably this move, the only thing I see beneficial is being more, it's financially responsible for the money being spent in that one line item. That's all I got to say. And I think with our meeting, I had a meeting with Cali a week or so back and tonight I think it's very clear that they have time available to do so. And that's wonderful. I've been a proponent of it for quite some time as a liaison between the board and the fire department. I actually suggested it to Joe a couple of years ago. At that point they were in the middle of a contract and it wasn't going to expire per period of time and we had floated it around through the board, as we said. And there were reasons why we couldn't go forward with it based on staffing, et cetera. But I think now is a wonderful time to move forward, especially if you've had those conversations and they have the time and it's cost effective. You're really the only kicker that I see is that the fire department has to provide 90 days notice to batch elevator to cancel that contract. If we're going to do this, I would very much like it to be effective July 1st because that's been both in these their fiscal year changes over. It's not going to be cost effective to do this in the middle of the year or even after a quarter or anything like that. That doesn't mean that July 1st we had to take it over, but if it extends a week or so into the new year before we start writing checks, I'm okay with that. My concern is that 90 days for July 1st is right around the corner for both for us and for the fire department. So if we're going to end up doing this, we're going to move pretty quick on this, potentially from our side at our next meeting, which would be April 1st and I think your next meeting is April 2nd. So those two dates are very close together and I think we can work things out before then. And I think after this evening's meeting that we had, I think we can have probably a proposal together to give to the board of directors who meets a week from this Wednesday. That's wonderful. And I concur with everything said and also bachelors have done a wonderful job as well. Yeah, they have, yes. Well, basically we, the fire department's paying exactly for a level of service that we don't need CPA level of accounting for these books. And I concur with that. I just wanted to put it out there. They have done a wonderful job and we appreciate it. So that's all I have on that unless anybody has anything else. So we'll have a vote on that April, April 1st, April. No fooling around. No fooling around. Okay. Anything else on the fire department bookkeeping? Hearing none. Hearing none. Turn over. Well, so once you're here, do we want to do the merger committee appointment? That would be wonderful. Sure. So I also want to jump in. Mike Sweeney has stepped away from the merger committee with Springtime coming up and across season starting. So he has stepped down, but Rod Sear, who we all know, a longtime member been involved in the fire department since 1973 has offered to join the committee in that capacity. So I will make that motion. And I'll second that. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Congratulations Rod, when you see them. Welcome to Rod. Okay, Town, Traffic and Build Ordinance. So I thought this was going to be an easy PZ process. I thought we were just going to have to add Dodge Farm Road for a speed limit and Dodge Farm Road where Denner's Scott Hill is a stop sign and that was going to be it. Public hearing has been worn for April 15th on this. Looking at it into a little bit more and I've mentioned this before that the section numbers of the, as are formatted in the ordinance, I'm going to make those all uniform Roman numerals. I want to correct the spelling of dog Rover Road to dog River Road. Add in and then correct a Partridge Road to Partridge Farm Road, which is its official name. Then we had talked about Comstock Road, changing the speed limit there from 40. And then your package is a separate email. The response I got from the league as far as setting speed limits generally between 50 and 35 miles an hour without conducting a traffic study but only after considering the neighborhood character, abutting land use, bicycle and pedestrian use and physical characteristics of the highways. So we do not need the engineering study to drop the speed limit on unpaved class three town highway to 35, but we do have to consider those factors, which I think all play into the proposed 35 mile an hour speed limit on that road. The proposed 35 mile an hour speed limit versus the 40 that it's currently set at. So I've updated the draft to reflect the 35 mile an hour speed limit We'd also talked about increasing the fines for certain violations. I've increased the handicap zone, the fire lane and fire hydrant to $150, which I think is still reasonable. Now comes the issue. Tim called me last week about the speed limit on Goodenout Road and Marvin Road and starting to look at the ordinance. There are 26 roads that do not have a speed limit listed in the ordinance. Majorities are very short roads, which to me is okay.  However, Orner Road, which is there off of airport road across from Blue Cross Blue Shield is posted for 35 miles an hour. I looked at it as I drove by yesterday. So there is some mismatch between what these roads are posted at and what's in their ordinance. So, you know, I can add Orner Road, 35 mile an hour to our draft, but I think to do it properly, I think we want to take a look at all these roads and make sure if there's not a speed limit that we're okay with that and if there is and we need to reflect it in the ordinance that we do that. So more than likely we will not be holding that public hearing on the 15th, but we'll have to rewarm that for a different date. And I show this list to Tim and we'll be working out over the next. I'll go around, some of these do have signs on. So we're going to go around and give you a list. They don't mark where you're going to check the list on your travels and see what is posted there currently because there is some of them that are on the list that don't, that do have them. That makes totally sense. So if they doubt we would have to post it. Here you're talking about putting signs up. Not necessarily, if there's a sign, I think we should add it into the ordinance, but if there's not a sign and it's not in the ordinance, I don't know that we need to establish one for, you know, a one-tenth of a mile, with one walking road. Right. So you're going to work on that. There'll be more on that to come. Okay, any else on the town traffic? License, permits, and vouchers? I make the motion to approve payroll warrant 24-20 for payroll from February 25th, March 9th, 2024 to be paid on March 13th, 2024 in the amount of $60,482.92. Payable warrant 24-G21 with check number 23780 to 23818 in the amount of $178,034.20. Check number 23799 in the amount of $700 for police training and tour approved. Berlin Volunteer Fire Departments let rooms orders from July 2023, October 2023, December 2023, and January 2024. Oops, I'll second. Thank you. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. The motion carries. Approval of minutes for February 19th, 2024. I make the motion to approve the Monday, February 19th, 2024 minutes as presented. I'll second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. The motion carries. Approval of minutes for March 4th, 2024. I also make the motion to approve the Monday, March 4th, 2024 select board minutes. I'll second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. The motion carries. In a correction to a September 19th, 2022. So this was the meeting where you all approved the police department contract. However, that approval never made it into the minutes and is actually not on the work of video for that night either. What I suspect happened is you all went into the executive session, which is noted in the minutes to discuss it. And then when you exited out of executive session and formally approved that contract, the recordings had stopped at that point and the minutes are generally prepared based on that. Recording, so I actually never made it into the approved minutes for that meeting. So we need to add the actual approval of the PD contract to those minutes. And there's just two other things that I noticed in the minutes before I would approve them is on page one. Just about toward the end, it ends with a question mark and there's something missing there to that sentence that begins the organization then brings in outside members and it ends with dinner at the first meeting and town question mark. Seems like something's missing in that. And then the other thing is on page two, Joa Luzi's last name is spelled wrong. But other than that and adding in what you mentioned, I wouldn't have a problem approving them as long as that area can be looked at and added to and then changing Joa's last name. So, so, and also on the end of the actual approval. Okay, Smith approved the adjourn seconded by Kandler. So I'm guessing they're thinking that was Joa Luzi. That's why I've been here. So that means you weren't here at the time? No, Jo was at the time. I was at the time. So you do have the three? Just that who seconded was most likely Jo. That will just need to be looked at on page four. Well, Jo, but John Quinn was still on the board at that time. I don't believe he was at that particular meeting. Not when Carl Parton was on. We're still looking at September 19th. All right. So, you know. No, it's not listening to me. So, and you do. You name everybody going in to include whoever the select board's members who was present, right? So when we go into executive session and everybody disbands, camera goes away and we come out with a decision. Whose responsibility is that to make that, to record the motion and the end result of that motion? If there was action. Who makes that? I'm only asking because I'm the secretary now, okay? Well, I would say the secretary. Okay, well, I wasn't at the time. I wasn't at the time, but I'm just saying is it would it be now my responsibility to do that? Yes, but you have a very nice time administrator who keeps track of those things. Yeah. When you see the problem, the problem of this was is that even when the person doing the transcription did the transcription, they only headed up to going into executive session. Right. That's right. Now it's different now because even though when we go into executive session, the camera leaves. And, but if you see online, Orca is online. We put them into the waiting room and then when we exit out, we put the Orca online back into the full meeting, so from that point it's recorded, but this was two years, what, a year and a half ago and Zoom was still fairly new and who knows, maybe even Orca cut off at that point as well and didn't come back or anything, so. I guess my question is, do you all remember who made the motion and seconded to approve the contract? I honestly do not. Well, I'd be willing to bet it was you, Flo, but. It could very well have been me and Carl could have been the second. I can definitely look back at minutes that I have held on to and see in my notes if I could find that. When you need this correction done, whenever, it's gonna be better, but table first, you're gonna put them back onto the agenda then first. And I'll let you know what I find out, Flo. Okay, well, round table, Flo. I do not have anything to see me, thank you. Round table, Joe. Oh, let's see, what is that? Pie. Yeah, March 23rd, Saturday, March 23rd. Rural and Fire Department will be having an all-you-can-eat pie breakfast. Expect to see everybody there. It'll be a great event, community can come together. You'll be entertained by many people, but Ray Burke and Sam Burke will be playing as well, and that's your entertainment. Last year was a great year, and I expect another one this year. Starting at 9.30 till noon. Folks can bring pies if they wanna donate them as well, I'm bringing two. The more the merrier, and the more people the merrier. It's always a good time. Anything else, Joe? I think I'll get it. Tor. I have one, I still don't have an email in this last week. The state has opened a temporary shelter in Berlin for those exiting the hotel program. It's there on 190 Junction Road, which is the A&R Annex. This came a lot very quickly, but I will say that the state and agency human services and buildings of general services were very accommodating for us. We put together a conference call very quickly with the police chief and Tom and myself to go over the questions, concerns we had. They were very accommodating for that. But they were anticipating between, possibly between 50 and 100 residents at the shelter. The first night, that Friday night, they had zero. Saturday night, they had one. And Sunday night, last night, they had zero again. So, the demand definitely wasn't there. Of course, it's not a great location at all. It's out of the way, it's cut off from services. It's not on the bus route. There's a lot of things wrong with that location. But Saturday morning, I did reach out to Rick DeAngelis with the Good Samaritan Haven just to see how things went on his end. And he said that they were very proactive in trying to reach out before that to try to get people into their shelters and stuff. And I think that was very successful in keeping the population down at our shelter in Berlin. So, we'll be continuing to monitor us throughout the week. But at this point, doesn't seem to be a huge issue or anything. That's wonderful. I'm glad you went over that. I had a resident approach me about it and just asked a few questions. And I had given the same information that no one had stayed the first night. But I think it's wonderful that everyone came together to do that in a short period of time. And they have two National Guard on duty at each of the locations and four EMS providers there in addition to service agencies, Washington County men's and things like that to try to get them into more long-term facilities and other types of help that they need. Excellent. And then here again, I think the Good Samaritan Haven was very instrumental in that. And there was a time period associated as well, like 7 p.m. or anything? 7 a.m. to 7 a.m. 7 a.m., 7 a.m. Are they gonna keep this open for the schedule duration or are they gonna feel that out? I've not heard of them cutting back on it yet. My concern is if they do cut back. I mean, you know it from emergency management. You know, the power goes out and stuff. People can suffer through it for a day or two. Third or fourth day is when sometimes that need goes up. So if they cut it off right now or tomorrow, I'm just worried, okay, maybe somebody found something for the weekend, but that's now dried up or not available that come Wednesday or Thursday, that need might surface. And if we've already cut everything off at that point, you know, it would really be stuck. So I would kind of be hesitant about promoting them closing these shelters early. But I would also depend on, you know, what available with a good smear to shelter as maybe they have capacity at that point and can take on a few extra people or not. Anything else to add? I don't know. Okay. Burling pond of water levels, Dicky Dan. So in your packet is a series of emails basically between the conservation commission and the city of my peeler concerning. Well, first of all, starting with the, sorry. I apologize. City of my peeler with approval from the state has placed some stock, stock logs on the outlet from the Berlin pond which has raised the water level of the limpond. And there's a concern that it's going to affect, I mean, all of those things, this year's noon loon nesting activities. So there's been a good dialogue between conservation commission and the city of my peeler on this. The other issue is that eventually the city would like to remove the Dicky Dan, which is, here again just got to go through permitting and everything else. It's not going to be a quick process but in the next couple of years or so, something that the city may want to do. I think we as a board need to be aware of what the city's wanting to do and make sure we make our voices heard at the appropriate times. That's right out here. Yeah. Right. Fire department has a dry hydrant right up there too. Correct. Okay, yeah. So that's another issue to be concerned about with that. Definitely. So this is mainly for your information but I wanted to make you aware of this for the few months going back and forth on that. How old is that damn? Considerably old. Yeah. I don't know about the one right here. Right here. Is it back to the 1800s? Tom's making reference to 1850. Yeah. That sounds right. It was really, talk about Mr. Strong. Well my house is 1845 and that owner of that house, I think owned the mill at one point. There's a built-in mill. This last one says that Mr. Strong established the mills at that site and provided lumber for which my house was built in 1850. So very likely your lumber as well. So. Well the dam held up well. Was that old? I can't believe it was old. Apparently there are, I don't have the latest inspection report from the dam but excuse me, apparently there are some issues there. I'll take us in that minute. Collapse, but Tom's got some ideas. About refurbishing the dam and so forth. So anything else on the Niki dam? No. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. The executive session? We do for two items. Move to re-enter into the executive session for sale lease of property under one VSA 313-18 and personnel one VSA 313-183. Assessing that motion. If there may possibly be action. All those in favor? Aye. We're in executive session.


Save 10% with my code BOBBY10 on raw, organic, grass-fed and grass-finished, freeze-dried organ meats from grassland nutrition. Link in the description box. All right guys, welcome back to the channel. If you're new, my name is Bobby. Guys, it has been a while since we reacted to Dr. Zucker and Nike. Today we're going to react to a heated exchange with a Christian lady about Jesus in Qatar. So from what I heard so far is that this Christian lady gave Dr. Zucker and Nike a lot of pressure, especially when it comes down to Jesus being the Word of God, the manifested Word of God, the incarnate Word of God in this world. This, of course, in stark contradiction to the Islamic theology. I'm very curious to see this heated exchange. With no further ado, let's have a look. Yes, sister, most welcome. Can I have your name and your profession and a question, sister? All right, my name is Rose and I work for Qatar Airways. Hello, Rose. My question is, I've heard you talk about religion so much and I'll speak of the Bible because that's what I'm aware of. You say, you talk of Jesus as religious leader. But as far as I'm concerned, Jesus did not come to introduce any religion. Neither is he a religious leader. What Jesus introduced in this world was the kingdom of God. The second question. I'll interrupt right there. How did Jesus introduce the kingdom of God during his time? There was no talk about him introducing the kingdom of God, but rather him giving the way to the people of returning to the kingdom of God. So there was no talk about a physical kingdom whatsoever but a spiritual one. Maybe you can elaborate which religion is God because as far as I do research, I've come to understand that Jesus, who is my Lord, and my Savior, he did not introduce any of those. He introduced the government of heaven. In other words, he wanted to colonize world like with heavenly power. There's a lot of controversies. I don't really understand the lady. There are a lot of different words. Ultimately, she said that which religion is God and Jesus is her Lord and Savior. Ultimately, you said nothing. The other question is... Sister, please pose one question at a time. I've already posted two questions. After that answer, you can have the next question. Or ten even. One question please. The sister asked two questions, and I believe the sister is a Christian. She said that I said Jesus was a religious leader. I never said that. And never ever said Jesus, be upon him, was a religious leader. I said he was a messenger of God. There's a world of a difference between messenger of God and religious leader. A messenger of God is far superior. You have many religious leaders in the world today. Jesus Christ, please be upon him, was a messenger of God. And you said in your question that he's your Lord and your Savior. First, let me tell you, sister. Islam is the only non-Christian faith which makes an article of faith to believe in Jesus Christ, please be upon him. No Muslim is a Muslim. If he does not believe in Jesus Christ, please be upon him. He has to believe the sense of... That Jesus Christ, please be upon him. He was one of the mightiest messengers of Almighty God. We believe that he was a Messiah which translated Christ. We believe that he was born miraculously without any male intervention which many modern-day Christians today did not believe. We believe that he gave life to the Netflix God's permission. We believe that he is those born blind and lepers with God's permission. The Muslims and the Christians, we are going together. But one may ask, then where is the parting of faith? The parting of faith is that most of the Christians believe, including yourself, that we come to know from your question, that Jesus Christ, please be upon him, claimed divinity. And most of the Christians believe that Jesus Christ, please be upon him is God. Let me remind you, sister. I am a student of comparative religion. I have read the Bible. There is not a single unambiguous statement in the complete Bible where Jesus Christ, please be upon him, himself says that I am God or where is his worship? If, sister, you can point out a single unambiguous statement from anywhere in the Bible, a single unambiguous statement from anywhere in the Bible where Jesus Christ, please be upon him, himself says that I am God or where is his worship? Me, I, Zachary and Nike, I am ready to accept Christianity today. I have heard you start saying that. I am not speaking on behalf of the other Muslims. I am ready to put my head on the yellow team. There is not a single unequivocal statement. Here my question clearly. Here my challenge clearly, sister. There is not a single unambiguous. Which is great. Of course, the Trinity is not mentioned, nor is there mention that Jesus says that he is God quite the opposite. He proclaims that he is the Son of Man. If we look into the Old Testament, we will see as well their statements about God not being the Son of Man. And Jesus clearly states over and over again that he is the Son of Man. Of course, however, to be able to worship Jesus without becoming a polytheist, you would have to proclaim that somehow Jesus is God as well. If you, however, have Jesus as God, the Father as God, the Holy Spirit as God, now you are again in polytheism, and now again you have three gods. So what to do? You say no, there is only one God, but this God somehow miraculously has three persons.  However, yet again, there is not one single unequivocal statement that claims that Jesus is God. This is only due to the perception of the early church fathers that came to the conclusion that if you combine, mix and match certain passages within the Bible, you come to the conclusion then that yes, God indeed is a Trinity. A statement, not a single unequivocal statement where Jesus Christ will be upon him himself says that I am God, always worship me. True. Yes, sister. I have an answer to that, sir. In the book of John, the Bible says that in the beginning was the word and the word was God, and the word was with God, and the word became flesh. What I want you to know is that...  That does not fulfill my challenge at all. You name the book, I will give you a reference. You are quoting from Gospel of John, chapter number one, verse number one. And the word became flesh, it was number 11, 12, 13. You are quoting only the book, I'm giving you chapter number, verse number... Answer me. The word became God. What does that say?  If we dissect this claim of John metaphysically, we see that God is one and then God speaks a word and this word, therefore, because God is uniquely one, cannot be outside of God, cannot be anything but God and therefore is inseparable of God. Hence, the word of God ultimately is still God. Just as we say, hey, this is my nose here and it is inseparable of my body. So therefore, yes, it is Bobby's nose, but ultimately this here is Bobby as well. This is her mind game here. And to play devil's advocate here, the same critique has been proposed to Islam as well. When we are speaking about the Quran, the Quran being the word of God, therefore the word of God yet again, not being separable of God. Hence, the Quran must be God by that standard. Sister, worthy is the word spoken by Jesus, peace be upon him and the answer is no. What is my challenge? Not a single unequivocal statement, not a single unambiguous statement from anywhere in the Bible where Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, himself says. Himself says means that should be in red letter. There is something called as red letter Bible. If you are a Christian, you may be aware of it. Red letter means Jesus Christ, peace be upon himself said gospel of John, chapter number one, verse number one to 13 is not in red. I'll answer it. First of all, you have not fulfilled my challenge. It should be Jesus Christ, peace be upon himself says. These are not the words of Jesus. It is the word of a Jew by the name of Philo. Correct? It's the word of a Jew by the name of Philo and never, ever did he claim divinity for this. Yet I will help you. What does it say? Anyway, your quotation was incorrect. I will give you the verbatim quotation. Gospel of John chapter number one, verse number one says, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God.  And later on it says the word became flesh. If you agree that the word is God and if you change word is to God, in the beginning was word becomes in the beginning was God and God was with God. Do you mean to say there were two gods? No, because the word of God, sir. It's not really a fair explanation. You hold the question. Yet again, the same applies to the Quran, the Quran being the eternal speech of God not being created. So if the Quran is not created, but it is the eternal speech of God by that default, it is God as well. The Christian perspective is that Jesus is this uncreated word of God. You pose the question. You don't allow people to give answers. You ask, you pose the question and I'm giving the answer. After I finish the answer, you can speak. You can't interrupt. Did I interrupt you when you were speaking? Did I interrupt? Yes or no? Now when I'm giving the answer, why are you interrupting? Let me finish the answer then you can answer. Point number one, you didn't fulfill my challenge. It is not the word of Jesus. Your whole argument goes out. Yet I'm answering. You did not tell, you should say, sorry, Dr. Zakir, it is not the word of Jesus. Did you say that? No. You are not honest. Tell to the audience, these are not the words of Jesus, peace be upon him. Am I right or no? You don't know. See, you're quoting and you don't know. I am a student of comparative religion. These words are not spoken by Jesus, peace be upon him. Yet I'm answering. If you say the word is God and if you substitute words with God, it means in the beginning was the word becomes in the beginning was God. God was the God. Was there two gods? And the answer is no. I'll give you a third answer. If you read. Okay. The three are down the argument. Yet again, you can apply the same logic to the Quran, man. The first time the word God is used in the beginning was the word. The word was with God. It is Hothios. Hothios in Greek and anemic means the God. The second time the God is used, it is tonthios. Hothios means the God, Almighty God. Tonthios means godly person. But unfortunately in the translation, they are taking you for a ride. You go to the original manuscript of Gospel of John, chapter number one, verse number one. The first time the word God is used, it is Hothios, meaning the God. Second time it is used, it's tonthios means the Godly person. So it reads in the beginning was the word. The word was with God, the God. And the word was a Godly person, meaning a messenger of God. That's actually even worse because it describes then that the word of God itself is a distinction within the multiplicity of God and hence becomes a person of God. This actually confirms the Trinity. And this is called, you understand English. You tell me what I said is wrong. I'm quoting your scholars. I'm quoting your back. You pick up any Bible or red letter Bible. These words are not in that point number one. You go to the Greek and anemic. Do you know Greek sister? Do you know Greek and anemic? Was the Bible revealed in English? Was the Bible revealed in English sister? Yeah, it was Greek. Greek and anemic. So the original word is Hothios.  Go home and Google. Hothios, maybe I'm pulling a fast one. All right, sir. All right, sir. Hothios means the God. Tonthios means a God, Godly person. That means even if I agree, it says Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, was a messenger of God. Do you believe in that? No, he's bigger than messenger. He's not just a messenger. You have to believe that, however, because even the Bible states that Jesus was a messenger. Please, so to call my Lord a messenger. Sister, sister, sister, I ask you. We will do something to prove something, sir. But first say that what you quoted is wrong. You agree it is wrong. Then we go to the next question. I don't agree. That means what you said is it's not word of Jesus. That means you're fooling the people, right or wrong? You thought I did not know, correct? No, I'm not here to demonstrate knowledge, sir. It is not the question of knowledge. It is the question of Bible. You believe Bible is the word of God, correct? I don't believe it is the word of God. Even though you believe the Bible is the word of God, I know Bible more than you, right? There is one thing to know the Bible. There is another thing to have the revelation of the Bible. Because you know, even when Jesus came, the people who did not understand who he was were religious leaders. They missed big time. They did not know who he was because he was hidden. And the word of the new testament. You point out one place in the Bible where an ambiguous statement, unequivocal statement, where Jesus Christ peace be upon himself says, I am God, or he says worship me, I am ready to accept this. Simple challenge. I'm not saying that it's wrong to call out Christians and tell them to actually quote where Jesus proposes that he is God. However, he didn't go into the depths of the argument that the word of God is a person of God. Very important distinction here. Can I ask you a question, sir? Can you separate yourself from your word? Good question. Can you separate Dr. Zaka and Nike from his word? Can you separate Dr. Zaka and Nike from your word? But what difference does it make whether I can or whether I cannot? You see, you don't get it. Jesus is the word of God, made flesh, but religious mind is too big for five senses. Jesus is the word of God and himself he is God. The Bible said he gave him the name that is above every other name. Which is the word of God? Every messenger gets the word of God. Moses was the word of God. Jesus was the word of God. Abraham was the word of God. Prophet Muhammad is the word of God. So what is the problem? Which of the messengers did what Jesus did? At this time is the word of God. What is so different about Jesus peace be upon him? Yet again, now he's saying that all the messengers are the word of God, but he's using a metaphorical speak here, of course. However, when it comes down to the Qur'an, I'm sure Dr. Zaka and Nike would say that the Qur'an is the literal word of God. And looking at the Qur'an, then you would have to admit that we have a manifestation within this world of God's word, which is eternal, of course. And therefore, what is it then? If God cannot be described at all, if there is no distinction in God, if there is no multiplicity in God, but we have the Qur'an physically here, we can look at it. So are we looking at God? Yes or no? You cannot point out a single statement from your Bible, where Jesus said, I'm gone away. Very lame argument. Since the beginning of the Word of the Bible, till the time of Jesus, tell me any of the messengers you call who was capable to cast out devils to heal the sick? Why? Because in the beginning it was only God who had power to deal with the devil from the fall of man in the garden of Eden. But these things were hidden for salvation of man. If a person takes out devils from a person, does he become God? Today there are many people who do Rukia and they become devils. Yes, I do the same because I've been translated into the kingdom of God's dear son. Today, sister, there are many human beings, even in Qatar you have who can do Rukia, I can take out devil from the human being. That doesn't make them God. Does it make them God? They got that power from Jesus. I cast out devils myself in the name of Jesus. So you also become God now? No, I have been translated because of my faith in Jesus. I agree with you.  If you read the Bible in the Gospel, when he gives life to the dead Lazarus, he prays to Almighty God, every miracle Jesus Christ, peace be upon him did, he did in the name of God. He didn't do on his own. I will explain to all these congregations what is all about Jesus.  This is a question and answer time. You need not answer me. All right guys, and this is it for today's video. I have to say I'm not impressed at all with Dr. Zuckerneig's debate strategy. That being said, yet again, I am not a Trinitarian. I do not agree with the doctrine of the Trinity. However, she made a point. She clearly displayed that yes, within John, even though it doesn't come from Jesus, but we have the claim that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. So what does that mean? Even if we look at it Islamically, Kun Faya Kun, God says and it is, right? God creates through his Word. So we cannot distinguish his Word from him. It is what it is. When we are speaking about messengers, yes, they are metaphorically the Word of God. They're bringing the Word of God, so to say, but they're not really the embodiment, the Word of God. However, that claim has been made about the Quran and about Jesus, Jesus being the Word of God that has incarnated into the flesh and the Quran being the transmutation, the transliteration of God's Word into a book. It says Kitab, so therefore, yes, it is a book. God's Word became a book by the Muslim perspective. And now we have an issue here. Therefore, I do understand the Trinitarians as well. The issue is, if we have God's Word in a book form, but we say that God, Allah, is like nothing within his creation, but the same time we do see the book, the Word of God here, we do have a contradiction, because ultimately we can see God's Word, which is God within this creation. Please let me know in the comment section what you guys think about this. Of course, this is a philosophical debate and doesn't really bother the common laymen. I truly believe that God is one. And for the common person, this is all they need to know. They need to understand God is one, and that's that. However, philosophically dissecting the distinction made between God and his Word is crucial if you really want to understand the multiplicity within the unity of God. At least, I personally think so. Alright guys, but this is it for today's video. Let me know yet again in the comment section what you guys think. If you liked it, leave a thumbs up. If you haven't subscribed already, guys, please do so. And if you want to support this channel, all the links are in the description box below, guys. Thank you so much for your ongoing support. As always, may God bless you all. Much love and peace.


Everybody, Matt here for Latin Sports Cards, ripping five boxes for Joseph S. We have two boxes of 2023 Top Starboard Signature Series, one box of 2022, Tops Chrome Update Baseball, one box of 2023, Panini Prism Baseball, and one box of 2022, Tops Chrome Platinum Anniversary Baseball. Again, these are for Joseph S. Good luck, Joseph. Start off with your SIG series. First up, Matt is Luminaria Unduli, Otto, 43 of 50. This is Olivia Diabo, Davo, second box. Come on, let's see a big hit out of SIG series. Yep, that's not a bad idea at all. That is Adi Gallia, Otto, Angelique Perrin, Star Wars the Clone Wars. Let's do Tops Chrome Update. Bidget, nice. That's awesome. J.J. Matievic, Rookie Purple, and Luplo. Jayrod Rookie, Matt Brash, Purple debut, Stephen Kwan, Generation Now, and Gritchick. This is Rookie Otto, Jason Krizan, and Krizan. Nick Plummer, what's that? Ethan Holiday, that's his name, right? Jose Altuve, and C.S. Suzuki, Rookie Purple, O'Neil Crews debut, Hunter Green, Oren Spahn, Horatius, Montero, Shane Baz, and Voight. Arias, yeah, it is. Trout and Cindergarde, Bryce Elder, Jacob DeGram, Correa, Joe Dunn, C.S. Suzuki, Generation Now, and Arias, C.S. Suzuki, Rookie, Ian Hath, Donaldson, Hernandez, Romero, and Dettmers. Ted Williams and Mike Clevinger, Andre Palante, Brash and Ramos, Secunia and Bobby Whit Jr., Rookie Purple, Felix Bautista, Rookie Purple, Tim Anderson, and Sean Doolittle. Let's do Prism and we'll close it out with Tops Chrome Platinum Anniversary. What's up, UK? How's it going? It's Francisco Alvarez, Future Supers. That is Gold 10 of 10. There you go, nice one, Joseph. And to 99. Purple, Signatures, Tyler Black. We have Pink Ice, Brooks Lee and Rod Carew. It's a Pink Ice hotbox, possibly. Looks like it. Cool Papa Belle. Blue to 149. Arovera, Prism, Babe. It's a Pink Ice, Biggio and Frillick, Ricky, Second to None, Buster Posey, Prismatic, Judd Fabian and George Valera. This is Redemption. Nice. That is Signatures, Prism, Purple, Mazataka, Yoshida. There you go, nice one, Joseph. Evan Carter, Leon Robinson, Rodriguez, Drew Thorpe, Green Scope, Jim Bunning. That was a Hyper Griffey, Carlos Bayerga and Drew Jones. That is Oscar Colas, Red Wave, Pete Rose, Robinson Job, Vigio, Kobe Mayo, Orange Wave, Red Wave, Orange Mayo, doesn't sound good. Ricky Tiedemann, Ice, Job and Soto. Actually, any Mayo doesn't sound good. Robert Hasell, Red Wave, Bobby Whit Jr., Non-Rookie with the Rookie Logo, Tori and Mazarowski. Johan Rojas, Whitey Ford, Pulsar, Netto, Wagner and Yoshida. Red, David Ortiz, Jet Williams, Ice, Chipper, Netto and Willie Mays. Two packs to go, Richie Ashburn, Tin Kents, Red Wave, Dick Williams and Tony Oliva. Blue, Harry Walker, Quinn Priester, who's that, Pulsar, Tucker Toman and Jake Madden. All right, here we go, Top's Chrome Platinum Anniversary. Hey, thanks, Jim. Appreciate it. Appreciate the follow. If you haven't already, please hit the like button on the live stream. Subscribe on YouTube, follow on Twitch. We appreciate it, everybody. Rommuto. After this, we have Silo, Ryan G., Alexandros S., and then I have time to go get the box and get it ripped, then Logan S. as well. Dennis Eckersley, Refractor, Verlander Thumbnail, and Edward Cabrera. Payne Gettin' Low, Peter M. and Justin S., almost positive. I won't get to you guys. Corey Kluber, Blue Mini Diamonds. Hey, thanks, bro. Appreciate the follow. Sabathian Siever. Back, there's Turner, Carlson and 75. Rose Gold, Jack Morris. Yeah. Yeah, Kluber is a ray here. Yepez, there's a Reed Detmer, so the big thumbnail in it. They also have Babe Ruth with the Red Sox in us. Modolo, Connor Siebold, Rookie Refractor, Tom Glavin, Bobby Doerr, and Wander Franko, Rookie, Jay Melendez, and Riley Adams. That's Rookie, Platinum 12, Cream and Fuchsia, Atomic to 100. That's Tautis and Manny Ramirez. Ashburn and Karu, Robinson and Strasberg. Oops, Joanna Doan, Rookie Refractor, Curtis Terry, Robson, Thumbnail of Pedro, Jason Hayward, and Platinum 12, Cream and Green, Javier Baez to 99. That's White and Green, not Cream. Schmidt, Kanerco, Feltner and Rod Karu. Bauer and Whitey Ford, X-Fractor, Contreras and Lowell, Gonzalez, Jason Hayward, Red Atomic, 100, Alex Bragman, Harper, Jimmy Galsman, Lemon and Welker, two packs to go, Bojo Jackson, and Whitmairfield, Otto, as a Royal, Thumbnail, Bovachette, Mariano, Marshall, and Yellow Raywave, Noah Cindergaard. All right, that'll do it for your boxes, Joseph. Appreciate it. We'll get these right out to you.


I'm Holly Clark and we're here to talk about edgy slam ideas for crowd sourcing your professional development. I'm Holly from San Diego and I would like my other panelists to introduce themselves. Hi, I'm David Tarrio. I'm David Tarrio from Coastal Mesa. I teach at Found Valley High School and I also blog at TheWrightinessesAll.com. I teach high school English and I'm really excited to be here. I've seen Holly and Tanya. Some people would maybe say too often but for me it's never enough. Hi everyone. My name is Jenny Magara and I am the digital learning coordinator for a network of 29 Chicago public schools called the Academy for Urban School Leadership. I'm also a big Tanya and Holly fan and also a David fan so this is fun to be on. Thanks guys. And I'm Tanya Avril and I co-host with Holly the edgy slam.me show. I'm a lead teacher for a school board in Montreal for educational technology and digital citizenship and really excited to be here. Let's get going. So Tanya, can you start by telling us what's edgy slam and why we decided to use crowd sourcing. So an edgy slam, we came up with the idea for edgy slam around January of last year and the idea came from us sort of being, you know, listening to all of the things that were going on with our networks on Twitter and on Google plus and you know meeting people in conferences and then getting these really great ideas from them and we said wouldn't it be a great idea if we could share those ideas but really like quickly because I don't have much time. I don't know about you guys but I want to know like a good idea. I want to be able to use it something I can use tomorrow in my classroom or share with my teachers in a short video and give them some ideas. So that's sort of where edgy slam came from and the idea of a slam is something that like you know if you've gone to most conferences have slam sessions and we kind of said imagine we could like bottle those slam sessions and some hangouts and you know share them with the world. So that's essentially where the idea came from. In terms of why, well I mean our network is the best network you could ever imagine, right? Right guys? So we had, you know, we knew we had the people. We just had to get a way of bottling in in one place that people knew they could go and visit and then using social media was the easiest way to get it out. So that's essentially where it all came from. And back when I started teaching I could have never imagined knowing David or Jenny because there was no Twitter, there was no video conferencing and as I met all three of you I'm able to keep this friendship going because of Twitter and video conferencing. Something that wasn't available to me when I first started teaching so this is really exciting. So I'll put it out there. I have a question for you guys. Why do you find the, like how do you guys use crowdsourcing for your professional learning? Jen, you want to get started? Yeah so there's a lot of different ways that we do it both virtually and in person. So one example is recently we started a new conference called Play Date which is people learning and asking why digital age teacher exploration which is also the world's longest acronym. But the idea was hands-on learning. Even more than an Ed conference the entire thing was workshop style with no leader and because there was no leader in the, in each of these learning spaces we needed to have some sort of direction. So we didn't want to just throw 20 people into room and say here's final cut pro good luck see you in an hour and shut the door which is actually what we did we wanted them to have some sort of guiding resource to go with but we didn't want to say alright David's an extra final throw him in there for two reasons one a lot of times with the exception of the most skilled leaders it turns into sitting and getting to David doesn't get to learn and I think many people experience that they go to conferences and they spend the entire time sharing and teaching and they don't get to be a learner. So instead what we did was we started we created Google Doc templates for all of these tools that people voted that they wanted to learn and then sent them out over Twitter Google plus Facebook and said hey everybody take two minutes throw in one link one tip about this resource if you are going to say one tweet about how to use it or one tip do it and then people filled it out and then we threw them into that room for an hour and said go it to final cut pro they all jumped on that Google Doc and use it as a guide. So it was like the virtual teacher in the room and that those people who knew about final cut pro were we're not going to that session they were going to a session that they actually didn't know about so that they could learn and that was really powerful because not only did we allow the experts on certain tools to go where they were novices and learn new things but we were able to have folks from all over the world who were experts on that providing the expertise for this events even though they couldn't be there in person and it really took them you know just a handful of minutes to do so we and actually I bring that up I wasn't going to talk about it but right before I jumped on this this hangout I got a tweet from someone who did a play date in LA and they showed me a page where they're still using all those docs from a year ago so that was really exciting. Wow that's pretty cool. David? David? Yeah so I started crowdsourcing kind of my memories of events with different people so it actually it started as a crowdsource Twitter chat what I always wanted was I wanted some way to be able to collect images from all of my students and kind of keep them all in one place and and be able to do it from where they are so all my kids have phones and they all use Instagram and stuff like that so I kind of learned about if this than that and then the first time I actually tested it out was at the Google Teacher Academy and what I could do real quick here is share it with you on our screen share real quick here full screen you guys are are you guys here yep can you see the screen yet not yet now we can oh almost we were so close I know sorry okay here we go are we there yeah okay great sorry thank you and so anyway so you can see just right here what happens is every single time somebody hashtag GTA CHI then their picture just went up onto onto a WordPress site and I didn't take all these pictures and I didn't have to set up a Google Drive or do all these other things just all people had to do is hashtag GTA CHI and their pictures would show up and there's a whole bunch of other pictures on here you can see it's just scrolling and it's different people and it's all their memories so then I actually have had my students doing this but what's even cooler is I've had my staff doing this so at our school we use hashtag Barron's learn and we have a WASC accreditation team showing up so I'm going to be able to show them this website and every time our teachers something interesting goes on like Mr. Zebarth wearing a dress in class you can see what's going on how the kids are learning in classes what the teachers are doing etc and it's all through our this hashtag using if this than that and WordPress blogs and it's just crowdsourcing other people what they're what they're getting it's all putting it together it's pretty cool and then one more way that I use Twitter was one time I got on and I think one of the problems that we have when we're hiring people is we use the same interview questions all the time and it was kind of driving me crazy so I just tweeted out hey what are some great interview questions and I kept tweeting it out and I got a lot of really interesting stuff and I put it up on my blog and what's awesome is like I've done some of the writing my blog this was the easiest blog post ever right because all I did was I just embedded all the tweets and so you can see there's tweets from all sorts of different people here like Bill Selleck who said describe your personal learning network that would be a great interview question Darryl Bonham said how do you move staff parents kids when they want to stand still which I thought was really awesome who was the last person in your school you apologize to and why did you do it Shelly Burgess you've just walked out of a classroom and said wow that was an amazing learning experience what did you see so and all this was just crowdsourced off of Twitter and it was sent to me and shared and it was pretty awesome so I'm gonna go ahead and come back to the hangout here and hunch your screen and here we are thanks that's really great Holly I'm just kind of wondering would you be able to sort of define crowdsource like what that means like what do you think that means well I can certainly try I don't have like an official definition in front of you but when I think of crowdsourcing I think of going to your network and using them as a crowd of experts so to speak to get information to find out things the way that David did here when he first talked about asking interview questions the first person who came into my mind was Greg Miller he lives in Canada and I noticed that he answered so so it was an effective crowdsourcing technique because he really he's delved into that a lot now he's assistant superintendent so this is a big part of his job so it's going to your network and David Weinberger I believe is the last name he talks about too big to know the smartest person in the room is the room and that's really what crowdsourcing is it's the the crowd having the knowledge and the knowledge not being linear and isolated in the book somewhere it's rather me talking to all of you and learning and that's why edu-slam I can't stop talking about it in fact people want to like shoot me I'm sure when I walk into a presentation because I'm always like oh David does a great edu-slam about that and then if you see Jenny's and then Carolyn Skibba in Chicago and and people think I'm trying to self-promote but I'm not I'm learning so much by crowdsourcing that I can't stop talking about it and I get made fun of by a few people like oh there you go again the learning and you know Jenny was giving her keynote and we were both together in South Korea last weekend and almost everything she was talking about I knew because Jenny had talked about it on our edu-slam so it was just really powerful go ahead no no good no what I was going to say is it earlier I talked about kind of off-screen before we even gone on here that crowdsourcing is just making things kind of easy for smart people you know you kind of feel lazy like you're not doing the work with other people but there is a little bit of work involved in that the your crowdsourcing will be better as you get to know more people so if the smartest person in the room is the room but your room is really big then your crowdsourcing is going to be better so if you're not involved on Twitter if you're not involved in Google plus communities it's going to be more difficult to do crowdsourcing so you have to get out there and you know just get involved in the conversation and then your room will grow and you'll see that crowdsourcing gets really impressive the reason that edu-slam works is that Holly and Tani have put in a ton of time and effort in getting to know a lot of really amazing people and me and still their room is huge and that and they've learned that also they value people's time because we don't like to waste people's time and everybody tells me that edu-slam's work because they're short and they value people's time and they're not going to have somebody wade through one hour of video to find five minutes worth of topics and so they've done the hard work of editing getting people focused finding the right people and giving content that people cares about and so their room it looks like the Coliseum. I want to add to that I think a lot of people hear words like crowdsourced and Twitter and they're turned off our friends who might be a little bit more technophobic and I just want to point out that teachers are natural crowdsourcers and so what happens all the time is you have a grade level meeting in your grade level partners room and you guys are talking about a student or debriefing a report card pickup or whatever and you notice an awesome anchor chart or really cool writer's workshop folder that they have built in you're like hey could I see that how did you do that can you show me that's crowdsourcing even though there's only two people in your room and what technology allows you to do is be in more teachers rooms and get more people's heads and take those ideas and apply them to your own practice so it's amplifying your reach and connection with other people so folks are afraid of the word crowdsourcing or think I'm I don't I can't do that that's too hard just remember any time you get an idea from a friend or a colleague or grade level partner that's crowdsourcing this is just amplifying that and speaking about like amplifying it when we when we apply that to our students and we teach them those skills because I think that that's an essential skill for students that are growing up today to be able to learn how to use their networks and use technology in a way that they can help improve their own learning so I know that Jenny that you have some really interesting things that you do with your students in that sense can you tell us a little bit about that yeah we do a couple things and I don't think it's a novel idea anymore but the idea of the student leadership team in a school that the kids are driving the boat of around technology and they're the ones with the agency so we have them the first step is to give them the power so to have them they vet the apps before we use them they write app reviews they publish they their voices really heard Holly just said we're in Korea and at Seoul foreign school their group is called tech crew satyrs which is pretty awesome and they do some great work and they were leading sessions I was in Auburn Maine same thing they have a tech crew so we give them that self-efficacy that agency to have a voice and to kind of crowdsource their knowledge they here is this app we think it's great what do you think or we don't think it's great and we've had app developers reply and actually actively seek their feedback but then they take that expertise and they share it with other folks and allow them to crowdsource from the students by doing things like app speed dating or app speed sharing where they have small groups where teachers go through each station and do a quick learn from an app and move to the next one so they're like almost like many ignite sessions with the kids to learn the apps in a high-speed high-energy basis but again all of that like I think crowdsourcing for kids is kind of two-fold it's not only about getting the great ideas but sharing it in the kids becoming a source for the crowd to learn from so it's creating more power and agency for our kids which for many of our students they don't have enough of so again it's them learning from others but also having the pulpit to to be the resource for for teachers and for their peers understanding how to vet that to tend to decide who is a source that you want to bring into your room because we have a lot of people on Twitter that we're friends with but we've really handpicked the people on edu-slime so far there's a lot of people we don't know about either and we're hoping to meet them at Isti and Q and but right now it's understanding who really are the experts David you were gonna say something no it's just gonna talk just to piggyback on what Jen said we did the same thing with us we did a snap learning with a kind of speed dating thing and our most popular session by far was the student where we had several student led sessions but was one on cheating and they're they're now being asked to speak at the district level on the same subject you know we have 150 teachers here but we have almost 4,000 students and so to look to your students as a place where you can learn from yeah absolutely turn to the students well that's what's coming next on edu-slime so that's a great segue because we are going to devote a whole maybe even month to student voice we want to know what students are thinking what they want in education what what are great lessons to them and start listening to to their ideas I just want to share very quickly before we wrap up just just so I can show you the viewers what edu-slime looks like and where they can find it so you can find edu-slam it's at edu-slam.me and .me is actually the part of the URL a lot of people don't understand that but we did want it to be edu-slam.com we wanted it to be a play on words as well as thinking outside of the box everything doesn't have to be .com anymore it's 2013 almost 2014 and so this is one of our favorites and we have two or three pages now edu-slam's teachers who are doing great innovative game-changing work in their classroom and so we hope you'll visit edu-slam.me we hope you'll also go to the blogs of our two co- presenters here and we we wanted to bring in Jenny and David because that's crowdsourcing we know that they're experts so we went into the field and asked will you help us with this because they have a lot to offer as well so thank you both David and Jenny for coming in and helping us with this presentation today thanks for inviting us yeah thank you thank you so much and any room we're in we want you in so okay thank you thank you guys thank you