I'm sorry, let's call this meeting to order. So additions or changes to the agenda? I have a couple. Does anybody else? Okay, I apologize. I hope this won't keep happening, but these things keep coming in after I have the agenda. So one is the liquor licenses, which were in your packet. And those are six for the Maple Corner Community Store, which would be sale of liquor and tobacco, consumption of those items off-premises, or at least liquor parts, consumption on-premises, and then class two, which is beer and wine, and class one, which is spirits in the bar. And then there's one for Adamant Co-op, which is just sale of liquor and tobacco. So, everybody understand that? No, I think they don't do tobacco. I think theirs is just a class two liquor beer and wine. Okay, I thought it said tobacco in the form, but I don't think it matters. Yeah. So, any questions about that? Oh, sorry, this is additions to the agenda. One other thing, after talking with Toby and with the staff in the office, we were thinking it would be easier for everybody if we changed Toby instead of $30 an hour, which would come out to about $16,000 a year, to just give him $16,000 a year, and he gets a bi-weekly paycheck. No monthly? Oh, he just wanted a monthly paycheck. He would be 12 equal payments of $1,333.34, and that way he doesn't have to keep track of the hours. And we don't have to check them on him and all that sort of thing. So, any? That may be the one aside. Everybody okay with that? Well, heck, let's vote on those two things, then, as since we're moving right along. So, let's see. Let's move that the licorice, that the licorice and tobacco licenses for the Naval Corner Community Store and the Ataman Co-op be approved. So moved. Second, second. More discussion? As the named applicant on the Maple Corner permits, I think I'll abstain from the vote. Okay. Which, does that make sense to people? That would be appreciated. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Okay. And then the second one is, Barbara, you have a contract for Toby? Or did I take that? Oh, I do. So, but I've told you what it would be. It would be an annual salary of 16,000 equal monthly installments of about 1,300. Anybody want to talk more about that? Okay, let's move that we approve this contract and authorize me to sign it. So moved. Second. Okay, more discussion? All in favor? Aye. Remind me to sign that and give it to you. And Jordan, when you finish signing those, just give me the Barbara, if you would. Well, I'll do it. Okay. Anybody here? We are moving right along. We've now reached the public comment portion. Hi, John. Okay. The next one is John McCullough. And he said he was going to come, but he thinks we're not getting to him for another three, another few minutes. Two more folks. That may be John and Donna. No, he's got us. Okay. But John's got, John says, let me see if I can do this. As zoning administrator, he needs a much more, what do I want to say, sophisticated mapping system than what he has, is able to have on his current computer. And he's asking to set up a workstation in the town office, which would include a desktop, some hardware and software. You can take a look at this if you want. And that, there's another, that is a quote for a Dell setup, but the town office prefers that he get the, what's that, or our tech? Arbitech. Arbitech. Because a lot, it would cost probably a little more, maybe a little more than 2,000. And with it comes a warranty that they will fix it and that they'll make it all work with our system and all that sort of thing. So this, am I missing anything, Barbara? If we get this workstation, it all needs to be wired into and connected through our server and so forth. And we just really strongly feel that it's more appropriate to have Arbitech be responsible for all of that. Plus, if any issues down the road, Arbitech will be responsible for it as opposed to a separately purchased, something that we went off and bought on our own and then hope would work. If there are any problems down the road, Arbitech will be responsible. And we, Arbitech gave us a quote about a month ago, I guess. No, it was actually several months ago. Several months ago. Just under, this is what I recall. I sent it to you guys a number, a couple, a month ago. It was a, seems like it was 1900 and something. Seems like it was just under $2,000. So only about $100 more than what John has there. What I don't know is if that quote has already expired and if the cost would might go any higher, Tegan tried to get a response on that and she did not hear by the end of the day-to-day. We, hopefully, we can have an answer for you tomorrow. Well, I would like to suggest that we move that John can spend, I guess, John, can spend up to $2,200 for a workstation and let them work out which one. Thoughts on that? I would just put in, I know that when we first talked about this, the question arose of if it would work for him to use the Lister computer and after talking to him, it's clear that it wouldn't, both timing-wise and hardware-wise. Yeah, and this computer would live at the town office? Yeah. So in theory, were you to retire or choose the name you could be used by the experts? Oh, yes, it would not belong to him. It would belong to the town. And that's one of the goals, I think, is having him be able to work at the town office and transition eventually to somebody else. And at some point soon, we've got to consider an old Janos and has agreed to be assistant zoning administrator. So that will give them both a computer that they can share. We're not gonna appoint Jan tonight, but soon we probably will do that. Yeah, I think, well, so one of the things that's on here is the assumed software for Microsoft Office for $200, which I think is probably just over or just under whatever the annual cost is, but that would be, so zoning admin is one of the accounts that would be added to the email system that we're talking about and would include that. So I wonder if, like, I've worked with RB in another capacity where they're fairly agnostic about where the material comes from. There's a little extra bit about whether or not it's covered under a warranty and whether it's coming through them or not. I would just say it's probably worth just either having them freshen their quote relative to the specs that John has listed. And just I'd be happy to help facilitate that, I guess, since I've already kind of got a dialogue going with them. And whoever's is the most efficient and as long as John is happy with whatever alternative they offer, then I don't think the price point is really at the objection here. It's just a matter of where it comes from. So can it be worth having them just freshen up their quote and give any last? That actual bringing it online isn't hard for them. It's not a bunch of extra work regardless of where the machine comes from generally speaking. So you suggest we not vote on it tonight? I think your recommendation of approving either entity to procure something for this purpose, not to exceed $2,300 I think to be safe would be fine. And if we can find a way to come underneath that by a few hundred dollars, it sounds like we should be able to then either party can move forward with an acquisition. Okay, would you like to put that in the form of a motion? Sure. I would move that we authorize either RV technologies or John McCullough to purchase a dedicated computer to reside at the town office for the purpose of conducting work relative to the zoning administrator not to exceed $2,300 and that that should either go through John McCullough for reimbursement or RV technology or I guess we could buy it. The town would buy it directly, right? On the town regards. Yeah, I think you would probably do the purchase, wouldn't you, Barbara? Yeah. I'll second that. All right, discussion. I would just add in addition to the computer there's some accessories there too. So he needs to purchase an entire work station. Is that how you would say it? An entire work station, yeah. You got that, Ann. Mm-hmm. Okay, everybody understand what we're doing? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay, and the motion passes. And we're all ready to court his pond. Yes. I just want to make sure I just stood that at this point, Tegan came back out of communicating with RB Tech and that George and you volunteered to coordinate with John and or RB Tech whichever direction you guys decide to go, is that correct? Yeah. Okay. All right, thank you. Sure. So we're actually already to court his pond, but we're awfully early and your folks aren't all here yet, I presume. Well, let me just do one more thing. It's not on the agenda, but there's no action needed. We've received our annual equalization study. Do you guys know what that is? Equalization of property taxes. Not specifically. Yeah, okay. So every year we have to pay the state a percentage of our property taxes for schools. Yep. And the state in order to make sure that we're not way undervaluing our property, for example, and sending them what they would consider less than our share, they come in and they do not an appraisal, but I think what they do is they look at properties that have sold and compare them to how the listers have listed them. And then they give us a common level of appraisal by which we have to change the percentage of our property taxes for purposes of calculating what the statewide taxes. And not too surprisingly, this year we're way under and the way we're listing them because of course prices have been shooting up. So our common level of appraisal this year is 80%. So we will be multiplying our grand list by 20% in order to figure out our property tax share, but pretty much every town in the state is probably in the same boat, so it probably comes out about the same anyway. So that's just a four year information. Does anybody wanna see this or ask any questions about that? Okay. Good. Curtis Pondam, are you ready to go? Yes, Barbara. I'm gonna excuse myself. If I can get all the paperwork inside my sign so I can take it back to town office. And can I hold this as a reminder? That's your copy unless it's Ann's copy. He can have it. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Great. I've been keeping status of where we are on them and I updated today and I wanted to hand out. This is terrific to have this thing. I'd love this. I can keep it, remember, I don't wanna remember anything. So if that's on your face. That's the purpose of it, it's good for you. And I didn't, do you have an extra one on her? For me to go along? Do you have a line? Somebody, I have access to it, so I can share. It would be helpful. Thanks, come on. And so I wanted to kind of jump ahead and ask a question about something else about the dam, but Mark said it was gonna be here at 6.15. I was wondering if, Jamie, if you had the last meeting I gave a letter of support to be signed by the select board for a grant through the Rural Economic Development Initiative. Did you guys do anything about that? That doesn't sound familiar to me, Marge. Oh, I sent you the. I remember seeing it, but I don't think it made it to a meeting. No, I remember you bringing it up, Marge, and to be sent to Jamie. Which I did. Yeah, and so I don't think that that was circulated. Okay. That was just a good mark there. Yeah. What I'm gonna have to do for each, any time we have a grant, we'll probably need a letter of support from the town. And I can't remember who it was last meeting said, wanted to know what the requirements were for recording and all that. And so I am asking that question every, from each one. And I haven't gotten a response back yet from the Rural Economic Development Initiative. Yeah. I think it would kind of streamline that a little bit, Marge, I think as we kind of formalize the partnership, it would be worth also formalizing how that works. So that, you know, we're generating the letter of support and then there's our, that was certainly a concern the last time was, you know, who's gonna be responsible for administering and I think, or matching and how that all works out. Yeah, and so I just want to bring it up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. This is for a very small grant. Yeah. 100, 700, 500, but if we ever, if we do get something large, then definitely. But if you want, I'll nag the person to see if they can give me what the process will be for administering. And then I'll send that to you, Jamie, and then it's the next meeting if you guys can. And that letter is in the Curtis Pond folder for the next meeting. Okay. Okay. Are you suggesting that be part of the MOU that we rewrite the MOU to formalize how we would work on that or? Yes. Yeah. So I guess I had a conversation today which I guess I can speak to since it's related to the Curtis dam, so I reached out to the town attorney and had a pretty productive conversation about next steps. And one of the recommendations is to formalize the MOU into an agreement that kind of hashes out who's responsible for what happens in one order. And so they are going to be taking a stab at a first draft and trying to get us that. Is that Bob Fletcher? Is it Bob? And Joe? Joe. Yeah. So I had a conversation with the two of them. Did they say anything about the fact that the MOU was signed by the last board and you're now at all new board? No. No, I think that idea based on kind of what we discussed was picking up the honoring the MOU. There's no specific conversation about changing those conditions, but adding certain conditions that really formalize a number of the issues and concerns that have been addressed or brought up since the signing of that and the bond vote and everything else just try to bring everything into one document that is more than just an MOU and officially designates the status of the parties involved. And then part of that conversation is also or doing that is to bring both groups under just kind of one roof so that we can have much more collaborative, transparent conversations. So that's kind of what we're saying. Who pays for that? Is that coming out of our funds? I mean, it's our funds. Is it coming out of? It's a whole one thing now. It's going to happen. No, but I mean specifically, does it come out of the dam project funds that we're raising? What is it? Well, they're having the attorneys. Yes. Both Joe and Bob do more work on the MOU. I'm just curious. I mean, it has to be done. I'm just, are we... Is that town? Is that the town? Yeah. Well, it seems to me they're representing us in this case. So I think we pick that one up. Yeah. Yeah, okay. What were you concerned about when you said, what did they say about the old select board having signed it? Are you concerned it must be redone? No, I just was curious whether they thought your five people that didn't sign that the, no one sitting signed it. So what kind of legality is that? I think it's... Doesn't matter. The town doesn't, you're free to disavow it, but... Yeah. The conversation today was intended to be a very candid one. You know, we as a group have in the last meeting, I believe, kind of made a statement affirming the last MOU and a desire to collaborate and move things forward to the best of our ability. And so that was part of the conversation. It's just like we all have an interest in doing it. You know, quite literally, how do we have much better conversations and much more efficient conversations and what need to be put in place to kind of facilitate those conversations? And it was good, it was a good productive conversation. So we can only move as fast as we move on these things, but within a couple of weeks, they're hoping to get us a draft of that agreement and a punch list that we can kind of consider. So did you talk about the other agreements that we need to have? Not the other agreements, but the good-planned deals? Yep, those are all part of it. And to the best of my understanding today, there's a willingness to help find a way for, you know, there's not a strong objection to those. Okay. Some of those conversations, I think, are going to have to be had in the executive session because they're gonna involve negotiations with other parties, even outside of these two parties. So, and making sure that certain risks and liabilities are covered, but there is not a strong resistance to finding something, or finding a way forward that aligned with everything that's been discussed so far, certainly with this group, that's about as much as I can share with that conversation for now, I guess. Curtis, Pondam Association, how do you want to proceed? I had listed three, four items that I was hoping we would cover. We can go through, I mean, we talked about them on the first one. Yes, that one's done. Plus, you want to walk us through the timeline. So, why do you guys- Well, I wanted there for purposes in our discussion. So, I'm thinking we should go with the agenda item. Fine. And then we can come back to this if we, you know, provide the information. And being careful to leave enough time, I think we all want to go into executive session together to talk about the RFP. Okay. So, I think the second thing, including, excuse me, are you Mr. Tucker? Oh, I thought you must be. Okay. Yeah, go ahead, introduce us, Marge. I was gonna say, this is Jeff Tucker, who's the engineer on the Du Bois and King contract. And he's come out to give background information on different liability insurances that he's seen in the past as well as to kind of talk about the legal actions so that our legal documents, this is a good time. Jeff said that he would come out tonight and I really appreciate it. But if we can pull out as much as we need to, so he doesn't have to come back again. So, I don't know if you guys want to ask questions of Jeff. Did he want to meet the Du Bois? And this, do you want to introduce Ann? Yeah. Or Jamie, why don't you do it, Jamie? I'm Jamie, I'm sure we've met. I'm part of the, yes. You have two aunts, sorry. You have two aunts here. I'm Ann Winchester, and this is Ann Toulon, who we call Ann Toulon. I'm Jordan McKee's. Let me just interrupt because John just came in. John, we already did yours. Pardon me? We already did yours. I'm sorry. We already did yours. We authorized the money and Jordan will be in touch. Thanks, guys. We're over here. Before John wants that, I'd like to introduce him to Jeff because John's the zoning administrator and we have, and Jeff submitted the permit application for the callus zoning. So just, so I don't know if you guys know each other already, but Jeff Walker, John McCulloch. So we're on the Curtis pod, no. Okay, I'm going to sit around for a bit. Hey, sure. Okay, why don't you guys go ahead? Well, do you, I don't know if Jeff prepared anything. Who wants to?  I'm not sure we all do. The passive will, the passive from the dam is constructed in state standards. Passive will, passive is the entity that's associated with the League of Cities and Towns that insures the town. Passive has special insurance for dams to the tune of one million. They have many dams that they insure, by the way. France, I think, is the head of the part of the, he's not the head, I guess, he's one of the top people in the passive bureaucracy. Fred has been here, worked with us, worked with you. The last time I was here, Fred spoke about the possibility of supplemental insurance, but I have not talked to him. So I spoke to him today. The last select board had asked him to look into whether or not there was supplemental, what they offer for all of the, I think, 63 or so, municipal or utility-owned dams that they insure, they offer one million dollars in downstream liability. And that is specifically downstream liability and not coverage for the dam itself. It doesn't cover the replacement cost. That's not a problem. Right. And so the last select board asked him to look into if there was insurance for replacement cost, if there was insurance during construction phase, and if there was the ability to raise the million dollar downstream liability to a higher policy. So I spoke to him today to find out if he'd made progress. And he said that more or less the answers to all the questions are probably not. He said all of the dams they insure have the same million dollar downstream liability. He doesn't know of others that have, you know, balked at that and found additional coverage. He did say they're still talking with the, his, maybe you know more, he called it re-insurance, re-insurer. So they're still talking with that other insurer to see if there's an additional liability policy to get above the million, but he wasn't super optimistic about it. And he felt that the other municipalities he works with have not really questioned that policy substantially. He also said that typically the coverage during construction is borne by the contractor. And I know that one of the contractor we've been talking to the most over the last year or two has, is it two million? I spoke with him Saturday about this very good thing. And it's one million is typical and two million during the construction. I think it costs a little more, but there is no, I mean, I worded it like an act of God that takes it down. He said, well, we're not touching the dam. So you're in the exact same boat as if, as we are right this second, right? And like he used the example, he's done all the little dams fairly, which is four times the body of water and a town, a real town right there. The damage would be, you know, factors of 10 more. Then they just all find it acceptable. It's just sort of standard dictated by the state. And so all of that's, so basically no, there's no act of God coverage that he could pay more for and he gets covered for more or so. But I liked his point, his stress was, well, that's the same as today, if it goes today. Maybe Jeff might be able to speak to some of that too. Now really, Marge, I think what Colleen just articulated was consistent in my experience as well. Will it be possible during construction to ask the, what would you say, the person who's building it, the construction person, to increase their liability to cover us? Yeah, and they can. And it's, you know, X dollars per million. He said he's never been asked to be increased more than two, ever. Or that any else that he knows of. And that will cost us more, is that right? That will increase our cost. If it comes out of, I mean, it costs the budget of the project, right? So we could put that into the RFP. Yes, we can put that into the RFP. We can make that a condition. It will cost more, but keeping in mind that what they're describing is what's typical. You know, we'd be going. Anything more than, we'd like to advocate for what all the other towns have done. I think if you put in the RFP, you'd want to make it an option. You know, what if the town wants extra coverage? What would you charge for it? So they'll just build it into the bank. But wait, there's two pieces. There's after construction, then we have the one million liability. And then there's during construction. Yeah, they're only covering during, and you can put in the RFP, just like you said. But I want to understand what Colleen just said. You're saying one million would be typical for a during construction policy as well? Yes. But then we would, would we have the liability on top of that, that we get from passive? No, because our... No, it doesn't even start till it's completely done. Passive doesn't start till it's completely managed, sealed by the state, that it's a 100-year dam or whatever. What you said was that one million is for downstream damages. What about the dam just washed out and we have to start again? Why wouldn't we want to have... Well, one million's not gonna cover both. Wait, wait, slow down for a minute. There are three different types of insurance we're talking about here. One is, the dam is built and done. Passive will ensure you for downstream liability for a million dollars, not until, okay? So the town, of course, shouldn't accept the irrevocable offers of dedication on the dam until passive can ensure it, okay? The second type of insurance is insurance that the contractor carries for liability for their negligence. It's for their negligence that occurs during construction. That's completely separate. And that's, a standard is a million dollars. So if the coffer dam breaks or something weird happens, it's hard to imagine. It's a pretty simple project as dams go, but something bad happens. They have a million dollars that, if it's, you know, would cover downstream liability. And I think probably the dam itself, probably everything that flows from the negligence. But that's just during construction. So if you want, you can ask, as in the RFP, we can ask for optional additional coverage and, you know, a separate price for that. And then when we negotiate the contract with them, we negotiate the contract with them. We would decide, you know, do we want to pay if it's cheap and we do, if it's expensive and we pay. So let me understand though, if the dam washes out during construction for some reason, then we've got to go back and spend another 700,000 or whatever it's going to cost. Plus we'll have the downstream liability. So I'm having trouble with why we wouldn't want 1,700,000 dollars of coverage. Or too many, well then we could, probably we could ask for it. But you can decide that then. You can decide it when we negotiate the contract. Of course, but I'm going to understand. Go ahead, Joanne. I think it's also, we're understanding what that insurance covers to mark the point, you know, if the cofferdam fails as the result of poor construction or something like that. But if there is like a significant storm event, you know, that would be an act of God. And then who owns the liability of active God type? Situations that wouldn't necessarily be covered by either of these insurances. And so there's a certain amount of calculus that needs to be put into that or a decision around what mechanism is going to sufficiently mitigate that risk. And my understanding is that's the bigger question. Isn't so much, you know, whether the insurance is adequate for the construction phase, whether the insurance is adequate for the post-construction phase. And because there's already mechanisms for each of the bodies that are willing to ensure those. It's the, what about, you know, what is the actual risk? And can we put some calculus around what the downstream risk is for an active God type failure that wouldn't be covered by these things? I can talk a little bit about that if you want. Sure, sure. Okay, so we're talking about a situation where there's a huge rainstorm or a hurricane and a dam's overtopped into boxes, right? And it really doesn't matter very much whether that happens now, during construction, or after, excuse me, later, okay? It's pretty much the same. So what is the calculus there, the risk calculus? One of the things that you need to, anyone who's good at risk analysis does is you have to weigh different risks. So one option is we go ahead and we issue the bonds, we start construction. This town still doesn't own the dam, but it's issued the bonds. And the dam collapses and there's downstream damage. Let's say the damages are $3 million. I'm just picking them up, okay? You know, the store, it's gone, nine houses, maybe really badly damaged. Attorney's fees, you know, you name it.  So that's $3 million. So let's say option one is the town is connected with this enough and the town is sued and nobody's insurance covers it and there's a $3 million liability. What would the town do? Well, I think the only thing the town could do is issue bonds. In other words, you'd have to borrow that money. You don't have $3 million lying around. So you'd borrow the money and probably would cost you, I'm gonna take a number out of my ear, $200,000 a year to pay off those bonds. Okay. But you can't stop there. That's only half the analysis. The other half is what if you don't do anything? What if you say we're so worried about liability, we're just not gonna do this? We won't issue the bonds. And the same thing happens, okay? The same $3 million. It's arguable that the town, I mean, I know you've probably heard, well, then the town wouldn't be connected with it, wouldn't have any liability. I have to tell you in my professional opinion, I don't think it's black and white like that because the town is so engaged already that the town would be sued. But let's say that the town had no liability. So the only people who had liability are the current owners who don't have any money anyway and so that would just end. But the town would probably lose, we think very conservatively, $20 million in assessed value. And that would probably cost the town something like $200,000 a year. So it's really $200,000 and $200,000. You cannot, when you're analyzing risk, you can't just say, oh, let's be conservative and look at this risk. You have to look at both doing something and doing nothing. The difference, though, is that when anybody who's a good risk analyst looks at comparative risk, they won't apply the dollar risk by the chance of it occurring. So on this side, the side of the dam collapsing because of a weather event during construction and the town being on hook, what is the chance of that happening? Well, of course, who the hell knows, but I would say personally, way north of 1 in 500, but let's just say it's one in 100. Let's be really conservative and say there's literally a 1% chance that that would occur. What is the chance that the town will lose $200,000 a year in tax revenue? 100%. That's what would happen if you do nothing, the dam will eventually collapse and the pond will be gone, et cetera. So you have $200,000 if you do nothing and $20,000 a year if you do involve yourself. In other words, the final, and you can fool with the numbers, see, these are just off the back of the envelope. You can fool with those possibilities all you want. You'll never get to the point where the financial risks to the town are going ahead are greater than the financial risks of the town doing nothing. It's simply impossible. And what I suspect is, you've only heard about that story from your lawyer and it's just dead long. So I think from a liability perspective, so then you might ask, well, that's fine Mark, but how do we attenuate the possibility of a hurricane coming anytime? The answer is, we try to do it this year if we can. I mean, that's the, I can tell you, we can tell you a little bit about timetable and there's an argument that we might not be able to finish it this year if we can't find a contractor who will do the work, but the best solution to the liability from an actor gone is to do nothing. I mean, it's to do, to act as quickly as we can. Mark, I'll take on a little bit of risk and probably say this, but I want to kind of correct the characterization. Certainly based on my conversation today, the brunt of the conversation was not how do we put the town in the position of assuming the most minuscule amount of risk relative to that one, and so there is a, I don't think we'll be, we'll probably see eye to eye on a number of other issues, but that one is not the main driver. And so let's not get too hung up on that particular thing. There are other boxes that the town attorneys would like to see checked that have less to do with what happens if a catastrophic flood arrives. Everybody kind of knows that we'll go around in circles trying to figure out what zero risk looks like or how to achieve that for all the reasons that you've listed there. And so I think we can kind of move beyond that particular issue. Well maybe what we ought to do, because it's important from terms of no point, knowing how to move ahead, is to look at the timeline. Yeah. The timeline, if we want to move this here, is written by one date, May 15th. May 15th is the leg. Sometimes July, the bond bank will issue bonds for all towns that want to participate in, have projects that were approved at town meeting and want to bond them. I think that's late July, they issue the bond, so let's say they'll issue like $90 million worth of bond. The last date to apply to be part of that bond issue is May 15th. And the town, so what the town would do is the town would file an application through its bond council to participate in the bond issue in the amount of X. And I think by the end of May, that application probably would be approved, I mean, if it's gonna be approved, it's very pretty quick timetable. So by the end of May, we would, at that point, when we've applied and they've approved it, it's pretty certain. So at that point, at the end of May, it would be pretty easy for the town to be in a position to negotiate a contract with a builder at that point. Because remember, you don't want to issue a contract, you don't want to enter into a contract with a builder unless you have a pretty good idea about the month. So, but if you work back, part of that application, I think, is an opinion from bond council. And that opinion from bond council has to say that it's legit and legal and that there's nothing wrong with it and that the town approved it and the town, the voters approved it, et cetera. It's an opinion letter from them. And then, when the bonds issue, the town does not issue bonds. The bond bank issues the bonds. The reason that works for everybody is because the state of Vermont has a very good bond, I think, double A. So the bonds are less expensive. So let's say they issue $450,000 worth of bonds for the town. Then what they do is they have the money, they have $450,000, they turn around and loan it to the town. And the town promises to pay the loan back. So we don't actually issue the bonds.  And that's how the process works. It does mean that it would be good if the RFP, you know, May 15th ain't so far off. It would be good if the RFP went out as soon as we can reasonably get it out so that we have some bids and we have an idea of how many bonds, you know, what the quantity of bonds we want to issue, I think. In other words, let's say the bids come in at $800,000. Well, we're gonna have to raise a lot more money and we're gonna have to issue the whole 450. If the bids come in at 700,000, maybe we don't have to issue all 450. Or tell them all 450. And I don't know how the mechanics of that work. I just have a feeling that the sooner we get that RFP out of the door, the better, and the more likely that we are gonna get bond counsel to, excuse me, the more likely we are to get contractor if there is a contractor who'll do the work this year to come in and say they'll do it. Questions for Mark on that issue? Moving quickly to get an RFP out is one of the primary concerns at this point. You know, so, because I'm glad we have the engineer here to kind of talk through some of this, but this group particularly hasn't been privy to our, we have the applications that are submitted, seven, I believe, right, six. And Mark, you had mentioned that there's been kind of dialogue, points of clarification, that sort of thing that have come in from those agencies, you know, relative to the design and engineering and kind of getting a better sense of where we stand on those and whether or not there's gonna be like meaningful change orders that are gonna come as a result of some of that dialogue. And yeah, and so it'd be good to just kind get up to speed as possible on what the status of those applications are because it seems pretty hard. And in an ideal scenario, you would have permits in hand before you're engaging and quoting for something that could substantially change in price relative to changes in design or requests from any of these agencies, even if it were just the engineering fees relative to those changes, you know, that moves the needle on what the costs of the project are and getting an updated, refreshed look at what the actual costs, you know, from the perspective of the engineering firm. Are you project managers, I think? I'm not sure what the official term would be for two boys and two girls. No, no, I'm just, I don't want to mince words about what the actual relationship is, I guess, right? Sure, so if I may. Yeah, of course. I think I just wanted to circle back to insurance. Yeah. We have drafted what we refer to front-end bidding documents. Yeah. That if I trust the town will be provided to your attorney, you know, for review. And within those, within our general conditions, there's a lot of contractor-required insurance, this general comprehensive builders risk which goes to flooding and things like that. And certainly, obviously, your counsel will be looking at those and seeing are those limits where you want them to be as I earlier discussion, or if you'd like to increase them with a ride or something like that. I just want to make sure that this board is aware of that and that your attorneys either have it or will be. Secondly, for what it's worth, I certainly would, you know, if attorneys have any technical questions, I'm certainly available a little bit of conversations and fall calls and things like that. So feel free to send my contact information to your attorneys if that would be helpful for the community. You know, in terms of permitting and bidding the project with a request for proposal, we spot on absolutely the lowest risk, if you will, for change orders and things like that. Is everything as a plus and everything is set. The permit still to be acquired for this project, the Vamont Dam Safety Permit. And there is, on the second page. There's a whole list in there. Yes, the list of the sections. We do feel as of today, you know, the issues have largely been identified and resolved. Vamont Safety has already issued their review comments and largely addressed them. We're backing up a few things this week. You know, so is there still risk that something may change? Yes, it's pretty minimal at this point, but it's greater than zero. You know, they may find something else that they've been staggered from on Vamont Safety. Are the threatened and endangered, rare, rare, taking folk are meeting later this month. You know, we don't anticipate anything. We've worked all of that through, but until they do, until conversations, it's the risk is greater than zero, that something will change. So you're absolutely correct. I think it's reasonably low risk, you know, but we're not the ones that issue the permit, so. You've been in conversations with Vamont Safety, right? Yes, yeah. Yeah, and as of last week. So we're pretty clear on what they want, but until, you know, that finalizes. So that's where we stand on the permits, and as Mark said, the list of them. But we don't even have one, yeah. That's correct. So we don't have even one, I'm saying. You know, in your conversations, do you have any ideas to type in? Well, I have to have, yes, it's a short answer Mark to the question. The longer one is when we circle back with Vamont Safety, they're gonna need about six weeks or so to issue. They've done a very comprehensive review, should be an administrative function. So that list is said, we don't need a permit from them. They're rare and endangered. As I said, their committee meets later this month. I'm not quite sure. But there's a difference between them telling us that they don't see anything and yes, getting the approval. I mean, there is, look, Jeff said there is a risk. They could come back, but the fact that there's been so much back and forth. I think a lot of these, Jeff feels pretty secure that he's gotten pretty much all most of the comments back. So that's a risk. We have to decide if we want to issue the... What about the historic preservation or the historic gun? That's a total unknown. Yeah, that one's underway. Well, it's a, yeah, but it's an unknown. That's correct. They can't even drill till in the May. Well, I did ask, I did get at the end of the day today, Katherine Quinn said, can they come out? They were curious what it was like at the dam that could they come out. So I was gonna go down tomorrow and see how much snow is there and how they can come out and do a site visit. So I just got that a couple minutes before I came down. But also, not to sound terribly negative, but when you say it needs six more weeks, but basically dam safety said it would take three to six months and that was in July. So I don't know that I believe six weeks either. Yeah. They, you know, the bed was pretty firm that six months was the outside. There are different kinds of risks here. One is the risk you're alluding to, which is, could there be a change in design, which would change that. And I think there is dam safety. So I think the fact that dam safety is telling an engineer that they've worked with again and again and again, look, we're basically okay with this, attenuates that. But I do think that we would want to build into the project budget contingency to deal with the inevitability of something. I mean, it's pretty simple project compared to the store, for example, but it's still, I think things change, things change, and so we would want to build in a contingency. And that could even happen after approval, something as Joe said before, something could come up that they weren't aware of and that might change things. I also think that you could enter into a contract with a builder, pay the builder and enter into it. He's contingent upon receiving the permits. So that you're not in a situation where you have to pay. But I'm not sure of that. And I think that's one of the things that we would want to, we talked about in a little bit, we're unsure of, you know, with that. Well, in my limited experience with that, that largely comes down to whatever the risk of the, whatever the appetite is for the builder, for the builder to assume that kind of risk. And you know, these are, well, this might be like a simple dam project. Dam projects aren't simple projects. So, you know, that's their own calculus and do we narrow the pool by not having those things, by making that a condition of the RFP? It doesn't have to be a condition of the RFP, it could be in the contract. All right, I'm sorry, a condition of the contract. Well, I think that that's the kind of thing where you'd have to see, we don't all have to see where we are. In other words, if all the permit people are saying, it's done, it's just, we're just doing the paperwork. That's one thing, if we're on the other end, and full of uncertainty, it's another. Can we start all back on the historic, because you had mentioned that that might be a situation where there could be significant changes to either what they'd like to see done to the existing one or characteristics of the new one. I'd like to just speak to that too. Sure. The historical society has to, or whatever historical preservation has to say that it's being done in a historical way. And they did talk about there are opportunities for mitigation between like dam safety, you know. They want the dam to be safe. Sure. And so there can be discussions. And obviously the sooner they weigh in to the Army Corps of Engineers, the quicker we can come to a decision. And I know you spoke more on the technical and I was, as far as that whole, you know, the back and forth and stuff. So if you wanna. Sure. It all comes down to the Army Corps of Engineers permit. Yeah. There's a condition within that permit that says, is there an adverse impact to the historical resource? Yes or no. And that decision has to be concurred upon by SHIPO, the State Historic Preservation Office. And so Curtis Pines Association has retained a archeology historian, Catherine Quinn, and they're gonna be out doing their work here imminently. And they're the ones who's gonna be computing and making a recommendation to SHIPO on whether or not the project as proposed would have an adverse impact or not. If it has an adverse impact, then there's mitigation that would need to be completed. If there's not adverse impact or no adverse impact, then that's gonna largely satisfy the Army Corps' criterion and then that permit by default will be issued because it's already issued in the country of large. So we had a very detailed conversation with both the SHIPO people on the phone, with the archeologist consultant, Catherine Quinn, Curtis Ponfolk, four, five weeks ago, three weeks ago, something like that. So they're doing their thing. And I think the general assessment is everybody concurs the design that we've proposed maintains a historical integrity of the dam. We're leaving the existing dam in place. We're not taking it out. We're strengthening it so it sticks. The top of the dam with the little bridge spans across and we have proposed a modification. She's really gonna be focusing, I believe, on that and saying does that rise to a certain threshold to whether or not to turn to that. We have said if it does, let us know and perhaps we might be able to mitigate that design so we can avoid the adverse impact conclusion. So I'm optimistic if they're gonna conclude there's no adverse impact because if they're conclusive, SHIPO will agree with that and then that will complete the anti-core process. But we won't know until Ms. Quinn has her report done, which is, I mean, there's too few to snow out there. I was hoping for it earlier at the dam just now. But we hope to have at least a preliminary one of the month perhaps, something like that. Well, it's so much she had told me is it probably wouldn't be the actual drill at the end of April. And then they need to have time, I mean, realistically. I'm just surprised that they said, can we come out Friday into a site visit? And I was gonna check tomorrow to see what kind of a steeper down the dam. About the Army Corps of Engineers, you're saying we've got the permit from the Army Corps of Engineers except for this one piece? No, the Army Corps issues these permits for the nation at large. It's not an individual permit, a general permit. GP1, a general permit too. For this case, the dam to be eligible for that permit, you have to satisfy these different criteria. So if we satisfy really the only one here is whether there's a historical or archeology adverse impact, if it's concluded no if not, then the permit is issued. Okay, so that would really be fine. So it's really the Army Corps, this is not a project that needs in and of itself an individual Army Corps permit, it just doesn't. But there is this historic requirement. And luckily for us from the beginning, we have been favoring the design that leaves the dam, the historic dam there. Jordan, how are you doing? You done for now? I think a list of things that discussed it I think would be better. Oh, I meant on this issue. On this one, yeah. Sorry, I wasn't wrapping up the discussion on it. Do you want to wait until executive session or leave till later at the legal documents? No, I was gonna bring that one up next if you're ready. I imagine you know as much as I do if you've had those conversations, but as far as I can tell, I can only think, well for now, we need draft. We need, I think Joe prefers not to put plain deeds but to use irrevocable offers of dedication, which I think he could draft in an hour or even 10 minutes. But there's also the access ones in. I think the lay down is the contractor or he deals with the lay down, he's just straight. So then, and there is an easement probably of access since Camp Road is private. You probably need an easement from the father gills for repairing the dam and you probably need escrow. I don't know what happens with those irrevocable, I mean the physical irrevocable offers of dedication. Whether they just given to the, I think they just be given to your attorney and they'll just sit with the attorney and be reported when the town is ready to report it. Then there's the, but that's the only ones I know of. And just in terms of current property owners. So I do wanna just mention that I've had this last week, I had direct communication with the ISIS, the father gills and the Miller group. And they are still in support of the project. They wanted to happen. The father gills did acknowledge that they own the Camp Road. So that's, there's no issues there. The, they have, the heises have expressed concern about if there's a permanent, when they are concerned about public access to be the dam after it's fixed. Like they don't wanna see, they don't wanna have people swimming on the dam and boating and from the dam. So I think that's something we have to kind of be aware of that if we have, that the town has access that it'd be kind of limited to emergencies and maintenance. So this, you guys have to decide that, but it's a consideration. Cause I think for safety reasons anyways, you wouldn't want anybody swimming from there or boating from there. We have a boat access, we have a swimming access. So that was some of the concerns that they had. I just wanted to talk about a process for getting these done. Jordan, I assume you're not clear. You can't call Joe tomorrow and say these are the things we need yet. Is that correct? We, we need to talk to him about today. Oh, so, so are you confident you've got all of, all the ones we need and all the information you need? Not entirely, but I think that, that we've been kind of going through this list and part of quite literally today's conversation was what makes sense for having a more direct conversation with all parties involved so that those things can start to be drafted. I mean, I think that it's frankly, I think it's a little bit of a shame that that portion of it hasn't, hasn't moved faster because those aren't the most important parts of a lot of this. And so we're trying to play a little bit of catch up. And there's, there are elements of that conversation that I think would be best to kind of discuss as a group in an executive session because it'll also involve negotiations with our outside parties. Okay. We also, now of course you have the classic construction documents, which would be the RFP, the contract. And those, there's not quite the pressure. I mean, I think the pressure is on, is getting the RFP out. And the pressure is pushing the permit tours as much hard as we can. And the pressure, you know, those, and getting the bond documents process moving so that we don't miss that deadline. Yeah, and there's also a concern about the authority basically to do that without figuring out the other elements, or at least having the other elements sorted out in advance, whether they're held in escrow, et cetera, et cetera. But that's really kind of the gaming out that you were discussing today. And making sure that we're in like the best legal standing to actually have an authority. And then who is the final deciding body between all of this needs to happen one way versus another way, who gets to make that decision. We can, I guess you'll just want to discuss that in any second session, or open, are you not sure? I'm not sure that we'd be quite there yet, but I think that there are still things that the board and the CPA would like should discussion in that executive session, if that makes sense. Got it. But I do think, things like, I think the irrevocable office and made escrow instructions with business program, that's pretty straightforward stuff. Yep. Okay. Are we ready to go into executive session or are there other things you want to talk about out here? You've kind of gone through my list. Marge, you talked about going through the timeline. Well, I think, I know, but I was using it that we needed a mechanism to get talking. But we did, I mean, we talked about that. You think we've covered it? What do you guys think? All right, if I'm understanding correctly, we're going to go into executive session to discuss the legal documents that need to be drawn up, plus, well, the RFP, I guess, is a legal document and the RFP. Is there anything else? We're not gonna really discuss the contract tonight, are we? Which, the construction? Yeah. That's really part of the RFP. That's after the RFP. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, later. Yeah. The items in the bid document that does discuss the contract. Oh, sure. Sure. So, yeah. I think what we're saying is the, I think in the bid documents, it says in there, this is what we think a contract is gonna be like. Okay. In that case, it sounds to me like we are ready to go into executive session. So, shall we make, let's make a motion. Well, just, we're gonna make a finding and I've written it down and Rose, it's handwritten but I can give it to you. I would like to make a motion that the select board finds that public viewing of a draft of an RFP, and I'll add, or other legal documents, that an RFP forbids for construction of the Curtis Pond Dam or other legal documents would place some potential bidders at a disadvantage and that the document should only be made available to the public until it is final and ready to be released to potential bidders or shown to the people who might sign the document. And therefore, we should go into executive session under one VSA 313-6. I'll get this to you, Rose. Okay, thanks. Did that make sense? Do I need to say it again? No, it makes sense. I think we got it. Okay, I made a motion. So, second. Any further discussion on that? Okay, all in favor? Jamie, yes, you wanna say something? I just wonder if, I don't know what it is. It's gonna be the second part. If that's the majority of the meeting, if we wanna take a break. Oh, yes, I was going to suggest that because then our ORCA guy can just pack up and go home. Anne, are you inviting anyone else? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't say that. We would like to invite the members of the CPA and their engineer into executive session with us. Pardon me, that was part of the motion. Is that okay with you guys? Yeah, thank you. And I'm sorry, the others of you are here. It's an early, I assume you don't wanna wait till we come out. We're unlikely to have anything to report. So. Did you vote on the motion? No, we didn't. We're still in discussions. Is this? You want me to leave the recorder on sitting there? Oh, geez. The thing is Gabrielle will wanna hear it. Can we record an executive session just for her? We can't even do that. Oh, just for Gabrielle? Just for Gabrielle. So, all right. We've admitted to it, I can be discovered, so. Oh, really? All right, the motion has been moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. Okay. So we're gonna take a short break. Well, we pack up and then we'll reconfirm. And we still have to make the app.


Welcome, this is the education community in the Vermont House of Representatives on May 19th, and we are welcoming in three students from the University of Vermont, Vermont, who have looked at reading proficiency for us at the request of representative Austin. Representative Austin, do you want to just tell us about your process on this. Rowan, did you want to say something. Yes, I was just going to mention that the way that we wrote this report was a, it was collaborative and so all three of us were working on it so if you don't mind. We'll kind of be going back and forth to explain different sections the sections that we worked on and the ones we know best so we can give you the best overview of the research that we've done. Thank you that sounds great. So, Hannah would you like are you starting or. Yeah. Hi guys, I'm Hannah. I'm a junior here at EVM but I'm actually graduating this Friday so I'm very excited about that. And Maron and I are part of a Vermont legislative research class, and we put together this report on literacy methods for pre K through three students at the request of representative Austin, and we started off by looking at academic literature, and books about what practices in literacy work the best and gave a report of that. And the big focus of our court is that only 37% of Vermont students in grade four are literate so it's very important that we get it right with the literacy so we're going to move into some definitions to start. Oh, who's ever next. So first out or first I made nearly thank you for having us this afternoon. It's a pleasure to be able to come and speak with you guys. First of all we're going to be talking about the reading wars because that's kind of the frame in which this whole battle is taking place. And basically, it's been occurring for at least 40 years, some research, some researchers considered to go back even longer than that. So there's two different arguments for either a phonics or a whole language approach to teaching children how to read. And obviously, this is a big battle, and why we're doing this report, and essentially to put it in simpler terms, the debate is about whether teaching kids should be about vocab and phonics or a whole language approach, where you identify words in your everyday life, and then sort of from that. So, the two camps are phonics, and then whole language. So phonics is about like chunks of the word, like C, H, or AE, what sounds those make. And it's very structured hence it's going to be used in structure literacy. So that's. Hannah, can you speak up a bit. Yeah, sure. It's hard to hear you. Okay. Thank you. So you have the phonics approach which focuses on the chunks of the words and how they sound, and that's focused on getting kids to recognize how a word is actually constructed. And then you also have the whole language approach, which is less, there's less methodology to it more just kind of like how kids learn to talk, they'll learn to read by reading by reading books and by being put in situations where they're confronted with language, they will learn how to read. And before we move on to explaining structured literacy and balance literacy, which are essentially these two camps, I just wanted to say something briefly about the science of reading, which is a scientifically based research that's been going on for 15 years. The most important part I think is that it's interdisciplinary so it focuses not only on education research but also on neuroscience and linguistics and many different ways of understanding how to read. And so the science of reading is, it includes experiments and observation that's been going on for the past 50 years, and all the research is peer reviewed and published in journals. And so it is legitimate research that we were using to put in this report to describe all the different methods that we found. And the science of reading, the main goal is to understand why people have a hard time reading, how to best help them and then develop the best practices and methods to address reading issues, literacy issues, and just make sure that kids are able to read the best way that they can. Thank you. I will go forward with speaking a little bit more in detail about structured literacy, which was obviously the topic of the request brought to us by representative Austin. So, what I used for the definition was put forth by Lewis Spear Swirling, she's a professor of the Department of Special Education and Southern Connecticut University. To begin structured literacy includes explicit and systematic sequential teaching of literacy at multiple levels. So this means phonemes, letter sound relationships, syllable patterns, morphemes, vocabulary, sentence structure, paragraph structure as well as text structure. So this is a cumulative practice and it constantly takes ongoing review, which is the structured part of this you can hop back to wherever students may have gone awry or didn't learn completely one of the lessons so you can go back to that and help them go forth with it. This takes the use of carefully chosen examples and non examples typically put forth by reading experts and they have different specific books you can give to these kids, which emphasize certain letter sound relationships and vocabulary things and this includes quite a bit. And further you want to teach the kids the decodable text, and then prompt corrective feedback, and it also involves a lot of teacher and student interaction so the teachers really have to be able to care for the needs of the students as well. If you have any questions about the phonemes or the more specific vocabulary that I use in that I have some definitions as well that I can run through. I think we've actually spent a bit of time on that this year so I think we're in the structure, the different structures. So, yeah. It's not normal conversational language so we understand this specific terms that have very specific meanings. Absolutely. Further I'll just go on to mention a couple of the bigger studies that I had used throughout our research and the first one was citing Carol A. Denton. And this was a 2010 study conducted in 31 elementary schools, and it looked to compare the differences between typical school practices and responsive reading instruction and responsive reading instruction can really just be replaced with structured literacy and the programs that go along with that when you implement it. And the purpose of the study was to look at different differences in phenomic awareness, word identification, phenomic decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension as well as oral fluency. And the study found that on average those who received the RRI or responsive reading instruction were placed in the 25th percentile and oral reading fluency. And in contrast, those who just received the typical school practices placed in the 18th percentile. Further, 40% of the students in the RRI group tested out of special educations after the study was conducted. Those that were a part of the RRI group, as well as it helped with at risk learners or at risk English learners more specifically. And that's when you have just certain students who may not have English as their first language and then they struggle a little bit more obviously because learning a second language certainly can be difficult, especially when you put in different cultural settings, as well as everything that can go along with that. But this isn't to say that structured literacy is exactly perfect. Some experts do warn against strictly phonics based approaches. It's common within structured literacy programs, and this is just an opinion from the national panel for reading that concluded its report by saying systematic phonics instruction should be integrated with other reading instruction. Phonics should not become the dominant component in the reading program, neither in the amount of time developed, devoted to it, nor in the significance attached. It's important to evaluate children's reading competence in many ways, not only their phonetic skills, but also their interest in books and their ability to understand information that is read to them. And that's, that's a bit on a structured literacy. Thank you. We definitely spent some time looking at that. So appreciate that. Thank you. So then I covered balance literacy, which Adam was kind of talking about how at the end of that structured literacy shouldn't be the only thing that is used and balance literacy is said to be this compromise between structured literacy and the whole language approach. So they're supposed to cover each other's shortcomings. So when you are learning how to read and you might know how to sound out a word, the whole language would provide you with the context of what that word means in reading. So balance literacy is seen as a compromise between those two ideas. However, it's not well studied because it's just this blend of the two. There's no specifics on how much structured literacy and how much whole language is actually used. So there's not a lot of academic research out there about how balance letter, but balance literacy performs against structured literacy and some scholars condemn it saying that it's just the new whole word approach. But then others would also argue that it's not a problematic idea. It's a good idea. It's just been executed poorly. And we need to have more definitive guidelines for teachers so that they know how to teach both structured literacy and whole language literacy to have that actual truly blend approach. Sorry, it's having trouble with the button there. I wanted to just mention a couple of different subsets of both of these approaches to teaching literacy. There are a lot of different methods out there. Some of them are really good. Some of them have research behind them and some of them don't. I chose two that are that are different. Different from what I've seen and some of them just have a little bit modification on either structured literacy or balance literacy and some of them have a lot. It's a lot different, such as one one method that was formed by two researchers named Dale Rose and machine man. It was, it was conducted over 13 year period, nine different studies in 100 schools in Chicago affecting more than 10,000 students. And so this curriculum focuses on five critical reading area areas that were identified by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which are phonemic awareness, systematic phonics, or reading fluency, vocabulary and text comprehension. So this particular, this particular program is different because it uses drama and music to teach literacy. It's, it's an alternative, not it's an alternative, alternative art space reading curriculum that's very different from the normal non art space curriculum. And so, results of the study found that when students were taught to read using art space methods. They had significantly outperform their peers so using those five different methods the phonemic awareness systematic phonics or reading fluency. And it was also helpful when they were in small groups and there was frequent feedback from the instructor. And once again, just they outperform their peers they had the reading level was above people with the typical reading practices. In this case they were also able to increase engagement and the subject they will be able to contextualize the reading a little bit more, which throughout all of the reading that I've done on on the literature that's a very important aspect of it is contextualization being able to understand reading and literacy within a subject or a thematic area of focus. So this study doesn't particularly mention like I said, it being balanced or structured but I think it was more of a combination of the two and it was definitely alternative to both balance and structured because it uses that drama and music based learning. So one that I wanted to speak about briefly was interactive read allowance, where teachers are really being the ones to read aloud and interact with all the students getting students to be a part of the conversation. I read an article by Shannon you are in her colleagues, a compile a bunch of information describing how these interactive read allows can help students to read particularly English learners so students who didn't go up or don't have English language as English as their native language excuse me. This particular method improves contextual learning especially because of the explicit vocabulary instruction. There's culturally relevant learning environments. There's comprehension exercises to ensure that students are understanding everything discussions with the teacher as she's reading or as they're reading excuse me. And it can also help create more community feel according to one teacher that they interviewed for this article. Another thing I wanted to mention was the idea of reading to learn or learning to read this is something that I came across quite a bit in the literature. And so in the 1990s it first came up as the idea of learning to read and reading to learn. The first is that in grades K through three children are learning to read, but then four through 12, they're reading to learn and so that means there's little contextualization. And so it's harder to grasp subjects if you're not combining both reading and learning at the same time. There's research showing that skills and information that are learned together yield the best results later on in schooling process. And focusing only on reading to learn after grade three results in narrow skill development and children who struggle to read particularly struggle if they aren't able to contextualized what they're reading or how they're learning to read. Dr. Juliet Halliday at the university is one of our more the people that we spoke to she's an expert in literacy instruction and K through three education in particular. She recommends that teachers use contextual learning programs and thematic curricula in particular to enhance learning, not just at young grades because often in kindergarten or pre kindergarten, you can have specific themes, such as top off the top my head and thinking about dinosaurs you can have learning about dinosaurs and at the same time going through reading and literacy exercises and what she recommends is that this be continued throughout all schooling before college so K through 12. One other thing before moving on to expert instruction was that there's some difference in reading level as a base going into school based upon socioeconomic status. Students with families that have a lower socioeconomic status or lower income may not. The families may not have the time or resources to help students interact have students interact with books before they even get into pre K or kindergarten. This is just what one. Some studies find. And so it's not 100% set in stone that that's how that happens but sometimes students can be set back because they weren't exposed to reading just by having parents sit down with them with a picture book or something. And Dr. Lynch porjowski, who was the former president of the Vermont Stern Center. She essentially completely disagrees with this and thinks that even though some students perhaps may come in at more of an advantage than others when they're going into pre K or kindergarten. She is adequately prepared and well taught has the adequate resources, has the time to dedicate to individual students, any difference in basic reading level going into kindergarten or pre K can be made up for as long as the teacher has the skills and resources to make up for it. And I just, we spoke to a few different experts. Dr. Porjowski was one of them. We also spoke to two experts I mentioned one. Dr. Katie Ravel and Dr. Juliet Halliday at the University both are experts in literacy methods and K through three education. And so Dr. Halliday believes that there's a lot of good approaches for methods other than structured literacy. And she says that there's some evidence and the she's some there's some evidence against it kind of like what Aiden was saying earlier, you have to be cautious about that. What she's saying is, there's these kind of the war that was going on that was mentioned earlier between the balance letter series structured literacy. Dr. Halliday said that it feels like they're trying to solve a complex problem with a simple solution by just using structure of literacy. She doesn't believe that structured literacy is necessarily the right approach, but linguistic knowledge is really good and so that has to be incorporated into both and adjust a simple phonics approach isn't good either. Dr. Katie Ravel on the other hand, believes, not on the other hand I suppose she believes that really a combination of both structure literacy and balance letter C so the phonics approach mixed with a whole language approach is the ideal way of improving literacy in K through three. She emphasizes that these two camps don't really exist anymore even though unfortunately that's not what we found in the literature that we read there's still quite a difference between structure literacy and balance letter C. And so what she recommends once again is a combination of both. And Dr. Pojasky is a huge fan of structure literacy she spoke very very highly of that method. But once again her most important point is helping the teachers help the students. And just a quick little note that kind of supports what Ron was saying the national reading panel, which was created in 1997 by Congress did a study where they looked at literacy methods that were appropriate for kids age pre K through three. And they found I'm going to read the ones that they said were very important alphabetics, which is phonics fluency comprehension teacher education and reading instruction and computer technology and reading instruction. So, their findings kind of support the idea that we need a breadth of approaches when looking at reading instruction. Yeah. Oh, sorry, do we have just a couple other brief, a couple of the comments if you don't mind. Okay, good. We have to go to the floor pretty soon so I just want to have a couple more minutes. Yeah, we were just going to mention, we looked into two different states, Michigan and Massachusetts, and just looked at their practices we included. There are links to what they've developed in our report so if anyone's interested in looking at that they're there. Since we're running a little short on time, I probably won't go through all of it, but the reports use both structured and balance letter C to develop better methods that they've been able to start practicing in both Michigan and Massachusetts. And I just wanted to make that quick comment. I know we do have some folks that came in who do teach use the balance literacy approach and we certainly heard structured literacy as well, probably leaving us with that feeling that structured literacy was unnecessary but not perhaps not a sufficient condition. And there's a combination of bottom up and top down kinds of thinking. We have just a couple of minutes I just want to make sure that you have an opportunity for some questions. I'm so curious how you ended up agreeing to this topic. Or if any of you are considering being teachers or anything. So, yeah. Personally, my sister, she works in Massachusetts as a kindergarten teacher in the town that she works in I know it's, it's very like socio economically they're not in the greatest shape. And they also struggle with having a lot of children that come in that previously have never learned English. So, this was kind of a passionate topic for me my own is also a principal, and she was very curious on it and it, I don't know, it just was something that personally to me I felt was pretty interesting and I enjoyed learning about it. And I know that there's a lot of pitfalls and a lot of struggle within teachers and, and they have a pretty difficult job. So, it'd be nice to set things up where it's a little bit easier. Well as a teacher has his or her hand, their hands, the more likely they are to be able to respond to the child in front of them. Hannah what about you. Um, I studied environmental studies at UVM so this is totally out of my element I have never done anything with education or literacy. And since it was my last semester here I kind of just wanted to try something new. I think it's super important for kids and especially for going to save the planet. They need to know how to read and take care of it. Good connection. And we're on. I'm interested in environmental education and so I made a little bit of interest in education but this was really, really interesting to learn about and I really enjoy doing this report I think I think I got a lot out of it, and it's definitely helped me re evaluate how I see education and how much I value it. Yeah, the skill of the teacher. Thanks to be a good teacher again. Representative Austin last last question. Yeah, no question just want to say thank you so much and wishing the three of you the best of luck I really appreciate the work you did. I was very impressed so thank you. And I know the committee thanks you as well. I also want to just remind our committee members that this is a resource available to us, and we have got a bunch of questions coming forward, whether it's environmental issues and in our school buildings. There's a variety of meals that we're looking at that there are a variety of things so if there's some time before we end the session let's let's have a little conversation see how we might use this group. Again, to do this work. It's a great great service to us and we get to meet amazing students who take this on. Thank you so much I'm looking I've got the report up here right now I see you did have Massachusetts I'm sure Aiden that might have had something to do with your interest as well. Yeah for sure. Yeah, thank you so much three of you. We'll be heading back to the floor, I just wanted to give you one of the committee one minute to just tell you what's what's coming forward. I am looking into helping to build a little background on some of the complex questions before us related to education funding. The OPEB conversation is one. And so I have invited we have invited in Chris group who's been working on this with with the various players related to pensions to talk to us about the OPEB and as well as the OFO to talk about implications to the Ed fund. And I know that ways and means is right now looking at this issue they've got to have been looking at some possible options. I probably will watch that testimony later I think they were looking at the possibility of, of, well, I'll wait I don't know. I don't know if they've actually put that forward yet or not but they're looking at a potential financial resource to pay for the OPEB. So, and I'll let you know when it was just the whatever the most recent ways and means conversation that should be there. And with that, I guess we can head back to the floor. Yes, as 115 is on notice. Representative Conlon. Are you are you prepared to do that or were you going to leave that to me. He's he's involved in some other things so I won't get. Hi Kate sorry about that. Yeah. Yes, I think for safety purposes if you could present the last minute of the minute that would be great. Okay, sounds good. Thank you. Okay, we will head to the floor. Thank you so much.


Welcome back to the channel. In today's video, we are going to make a couple of changes to our theme to see that it improves and we're going to fix a couple of bugs that are starting to crop up as we are developing. Now, one of those bugs was highlighted by Cameron that left it in one of the comments in the last video and I enjoy that. I enjoy that people can actually try some coding, try to do a couple of things and give me some feedback. So, I hope to see your comment in the next video. So, what he highlighted is that when we go to the individual pieces and maybe select pepperoni and then unselect it, our theme retains this value as still being selected. The other thing that we'll be able to do and fix in here is that when we go to our console currently and we click the different tabs, we now get this error showing up in here in our code and that's not also healthy. We need to fix that as well. The first thing that I will do is I'm going to open up my editor and I'm going to go in my functions file and right now, WordPress supports the version of jQuery which is 3.5.1 and that's what we wanted to have here as we brought in this script and also brought in the script. So, natively, what we're going to do is we're going to comment out this code and we're going to come back here and say jQuery is already supported. So, I'm going to just edit this and make this a dependency of the jQuery that's default in WordPress and then I'm also going to comment this same line out and do the same thing here and say we're going to bring in jQuery and that's our dependency. So, by saving this, coming back here and reloading, you'll see that when I click the different tabs, we're actually getting our tabs but we're not getting the console error log showing up here. Now, the next thing that I want to do is when we got here to select the different items, we should be able to get them in our cart without getting errors down here. So, I'll come back to our food.js which is a script that we are enqueuing only on the front end. In fact, I think I need to enqueue all these scripts and tiles up here like this bootstrap because we're only loading it on the front end. I'll also move that into my front end and the reason I'm doing that is because I want to make sure that we are enqueuing the scripts that we only need on particular pages which will improve our performance. So, I'll also bring the same font Osam down until I need it, then I can always push it out. And for now, we'll just leave this CSS rule working because we'll apply the CSS style probably to all the other pages. So, I'll remove this commented code to keep everything clean. I'll remove that. I'll of course add some comments bringing styles from bootstrap and I'll add bootstrap CSS right here and then font Osam. Bootstrap and font Osam CSS for our tab navigation. I'll also add the same comment down here. So, I'll save this. Let's go back to our front page. We reload everything. The tabs still work well without an error. We'll now test our pop-up form by clicking this, try to add two items, click add to cart and we get an issue here whereby it's saying the value is not defined. And that is simply because in our food.js we do not have anything running in the value here and yet we have Ajax saying that it requires a value to be passed to this URL. So, what we're going to do is just pass this Ajax into this section. We'll save this, come back and give this a hard reload and then I'll go to pizza and I'll click the button and you'll see that when I choose to add three items now click the add to cart button. You will see that we get an Ajax response because we are pushing a post request and if we reload here you will see that we have different items going inside this particular cart. So, let me clean out our cart so that we have no products and then we'll do a couple of changes. For example, I'm going to change all these va instances into a let so that we can always use the right and modern JavaScript and we did not declare these values here before we started using it. So, I'm going to copy this right here and I'll say let the values actually equal to unempty array for starters and then we will not need this let here because we've already declared it so we don't want to have any issues in our code. So, let me just change what we have here so that we can have something more clear like success and the error we don't want to get messages that we probably don't understand. So, after doing this I'll save this come back here give this a hard reload and after giving it a reload I'll come to pizza our tabs are still fine I'll click add to pizza when I click pepperoni and small olives click add to cuts we have two successes coming in we don't have anything showing up here because the page is not reloading to add these pieces of items so we see that now we have olives showing up here but we don't have our second set of items that we chose because of an error that's also as a bug but we see that our olives are coming in twice here now what I'm going to do is I need to be able to clear this form so that we don't have these coming up every time I click this button so in our code right here at the end of after looping through the values we're going to get the form that is selected then we're going to add the reset method that comes as part of javascript and it helps to clear forms so I'll come back here reload this come back to pizza when I click this of course we do not have anything showing in here but after adding medium pepperoni and medium olives click add cut we have a success there and when I come back and click this you'll see that this is empty it's not like before it was retaining the values so that's one bug that has been removed from our code now what we need to do is have active reloads so that our mini cut can change now I'll come back in here and by now we should have realized that this static URL that we're having here is not going to work for most of our themes and that is simply because not all our sites are always going to be local site and have all this information following what we have here so what we're going to do is we're going to use our Ajax inside this loop and we're going to make something a little bit different we're going to be able to have a different URL which is the admin-ajax.php file we need to have on the admin side which is going to work with our WordPress because it's inbuilt inside of WordPress it will allow us to trigger different php functions and as well work with our JavaScript so that we can have this working in a nice environment so the first thing that we're going to do is pass this URL to this particular food-add.js and we're going to do this inside our functions.php file so in here I'm actually going to come and localize our food-add.js right here I'll collapse this so that we can have better real estate and all I'm going to write is wp-localize script and this function is going to take in the handle of this particular JavaScript because it's the one we want to localize and the next thing we're going to do here is we're going to add an object name and the object name that we want to use is actually just say Ajax underscore object we can call this anything that we want but now I'm just going to call this Ajax underscore object and the next thing that we are going to do is we need to pass an array of information at this point so we'll add these square brackets to show our array and of course I need to add a semicolon at the end here so inside our array right here we are now going to add our Ajax underscore URL and we're going to say that is actually going to be mapped or it should equal to our admin underscore URL and since this is a function of WordPress to give us the admin URL it's basically going to just come here and it's going to give us this link and then on top of that it's going to add wp-admin that's what we are looking for so it's going to give us that URL dynamically and this will allow us to go into our server when we go to the wp-admin package we should be able to access this admin-ajax.php file now this particular file if I am to open it you'll be able to see that it has a constant of doing Ajax that we've used before in wukamas it then allows us to use different things like Ajax actions and also to be able to use all these available methods and different things and actions like the wp-ajax no-priv and also the wp-ajax action as well so this is the file that we are going to need when we are working with our custom code and inside this we just need to pass in one argument and we're going to say we want to add the admin dash ajax.php and once we do this we're going to be able to have this dynamic filled inside our javascript so I'll copy this I'll save this I'm going to come back to our food.js and I'm going to console log what we have just passed to this javascript so that we can see what's happening so console console log and inside here we're going to get our ajax object and we're going to add dot ajax URL so that we can be able to see it so I'll save this I'm going to come back to our page I'll open up my inspector I'll open the console I'll reload this and you're going to see that we now have this URL showing up and this is the URL we need to pass to our ajax so that it can work properly so I'll just copy what we have here I'll comment this out because we don't need it anymore I'll now come to our URL and I'm going to pass this URL alone right here inside our URL and I would say pass the admin dot ajax into URL so that we can remember what's happening here our type will be of course we'll have our success we'll also have our error showing up here and the new thing that we're going to do here because we want to pass from our javascript we're going to pass these values that we're getting and we're going to pass them onto our php on the other side of our functions php so here we want to have a data object of course add our brackets and then add a comma so that we don't break our javascript and in here our ajax is actually going to ask us for an action and this action is something that will pass onto one of the functions that you're going to see in a little while so we'll pass an action so we'll have food underscore ajax underscore add to cut and this action is something that we're going to use in our php on one of our functions we'll see that in a little while so after adding an action in this point we are going to look for a product underscore id so we want to pass the product id as well so we'll look for something called the product id for now and then here we're going to also look for the variation id so I'll look for variation id and then in here we shall pass in the value of what we're actually having here so let me just change this from value we'll call it variation id so that we don't get lost along the way so this is what we need right now now we need to go and create a function for this action so that we can be able to see what's going on so I'll go back to my functions php in here and the first thing that I'll do is create a function we'll have food underscore ajax add to cut I'll make this a full function right here and we always prefix this with our techiepress food underscore so I'm going to just copy this as well and then change this in here so that we have something very unique to avoid php errors so we have this new function that we have here and we should be able to add an action to be able to run this so I'm going to say add action and in this action we're going to look for the wp underscore ajax and then after that point we need to add our techiepress food ajax add to cut because we want to use wp ajax which is part of what press we need to prefix our action like this and then after taking in that we need to be able to add also our function that's running that action our function is just this what we have here and what we have down right here now this ajax works in wordpress and it requires for one to be logged in but in most cases our clients are going to be on the user side and they're not going to be logged in so we need to tell wordpress please approve and allow people who are not logged in to actually use this function of ajax and the way we do that is after writing our wp ajax in between here we just add an underscore and say no priv and this no priv says no privilages should be required for you to run this particular function so after doing that I'm going to save this sofa and if you remember when we open this file from our wp admin we can now use the actions that are involved in that file like the wp ajax no priv and the wp ajax itself which are actions that are available to us globally now the first thing we always do after running our ajax is run this function called wp die because it will allow us to avoid having continuous loops running of this particular function now after writing our wp die we're going to start writing things that are specific to wukamas so that we can have our ajax running to our wukamas and doing what we need to add everything inside our cut now there's one thing we did inside our food dash js and that is we added a product id but if you look at the information we were passing inside our values here we were only passing the variation id and this variation id came from our wukamas we went into the loop and then when we go to the add to cut here we were able to see these particular variation id being passed into our html right here so for example if I click this you'll be able to see that in the elements we are having this particular id passing from the inputs now we also need to be able to pass the product id so that we can be able to know we're working from this product id and this is the variation we're looking for so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to come back to our add to cut right here and inside our form we're actually going to have a new input field that is going to be hidden so we'll have an input and it's going to be a type of hidden because we don't want to show it on the front end we're just going to be running some little hack at the back end and we're going to give this a name of product id and after getting that name we're also going to give it a value that is actually going to be from the product id so I'll give this a value here I'll say it's equal to and in here we're going to run some php and in here we're going to echo the product so we're going to get the product and from the product we want to tap the get underscore id function and that will give us the id of the product so the last thing that we want to do is just copy this here and then we'll give this an id of product id so this will have an id of product id and we're going to go back to our front page and reload this quickly we'll go to pizza we'll click this plus symbol and every time you just open this in the console log you'll see that we have a hidden input here that's telling us that we're on the product which is 22 for the barbecue steak pizza and if we go to the margarita itself and then just right click this to inspect the element you're going to find that in our model if we check our margarita pizza here you'll see that we now have a product of value 10 we're going to see that this product id is going to be quite important in our function as we start to write wukama specific code inside our functions php right here but you realize that this product id and name id still appear inside our html if we go to the pizza and click this and then just check out the form you can clearly see that this is not it's not dynamic it's just giving us something that's static and we want to be able to get this value that is very unique so what I'm going to do is come back in here and I'm going to use this product slug that we have here and then I'm going to change it in this place where we have the product id and I'm going to add on one simple keyword of hidden right here I'll also get this to be hidden so that when we come back to our front end and reload this go to pizza click this model and then check inside our forms we should be able to have this id very unique to this as you can see here and then we should be able to also get magarita pizza come and check this and you will see that you also have magarita pizza hidden so that's going to give us this value uniquely as we search for it inside our food dash right here now in order to provide this value right here in the product id you need to come here and select the product id actually equal to and we're going to use what we have here so we're going to say document dot get element by id and the document by id we want to be able to get its value so in here the id that we are looking for we're going to get this form that is selected we want to be able to get its id and after getting that id we should be able to chain on one simple word which is dash hidden so we're going to save this so we're going to come here and console log this so that we can see that we actually have the right thing happening so I'll duplicate this and test all the little levels we have here so we have the form id we want to make sure that's what's selected properly I'll get this to see that it is formatted in the right way then we should also be able to get the product id paste it here I'll save this let's go back to our front end let's give this a hard reload I'll come back to pizza open my console I'll click the barbecue steak pizza click add to cut you'll see we get our barbecue steak pizza we get the hidden we get the value of 22 and then I'll go to margarita click add to cut we get this rightfully so as we need it to be so I'm just going to remove all these pieces that we're hoping as to debug what we have here and we know now that we're going to have the right product id when we need to have it down in this place