I'll call the order this June 19th, 2023 meeting. Recording in progress. I'll repeat that, June 19th, 2023 meeting of the Waterbury Select Board. First item on our agenda is to approve the agenda. Do I have a motion? So moved. I feel the motion has been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Is that a hand? Seems to have lost sound from you all. So the motion has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda, Danny. Any further discussion? No. Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? We have approved the agenda. Next item is the consent agenda. Do I have a motion? So moved. All right, moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the consent agenda? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. Yes, sir. If there are any NQID questions, we're here to answer them. But if it's the formality, that's fine. Okay, well, I appreciate you coming. But from what I can tell, the motion has passed. All right, congratulations. And we wish you the best of luck for the successful NQID 2023. Now we're at the public portion where we welcome any comments that are not on the warned agenda. I'd like to just start by recognizing that this is the 19th of June, federal holiday for Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, and Jubilee Day. And we are celebrating by conducting the business of the town and also recognizing the historic precedence of this historic day. Secondly, I'd like to recognize the volunteer work of the Downstreet volunteers. We had over 20 volunteers from Downstreet come and help us earlier this month with a bunch of recreation projects. They did a great job and we really appreciate their support. And finally, I'd like to recognize the contributions to Waterbury by Steve Lottsvich. Steve, you have served ably as our planning director and a leader on the tree committee and our representative on Central Vermont Regional Planning Committee. And most recently as chair of the executive committee of the Central Vermont Regional Planning Committee. So we just like to recognize all your contributions to the town of Waterbury and hope that you're enjoying your semi-retirement and look forward to any guidance that you might be able to provide on the following items on the agenda. Thanks, Roger. Really appreciate that. It means a lot. Thank you for all your service. Any other comments during this public session? I'm not seeing anything. All right, we'll move forward. Tree committee appointments. We have two candidates for two positions. Erica Fuller has resigned and her, the remainder of her tenure expires in 2025. So that'll be a two-year appointment. And then Steve Lottsvich's tenure expires in 2024. So that'll be a one-year appointment. And we have two candidates, Anita Holstrom and Zinn Wolf, either of those candidates in presence. Anita's on. Anita, can you tell us why you'd like to be on the tree committee and whether you have a preference for either the one-year or the two-year tenure? Sure. So I've lived in Waterbury for 23 years and I've been a member of the garden club for at least 20 of that. I've known Jane Brown for all of that time and my background is in my educations in plant science and business and landscape design. I've been working at Cushman Design Group as the business manager. It's an architecture firm I instill for 25 years and just have been really working on my own property, enjoy gardening, enjoy taking care of trees. I've planted a bird habitat here over the last 20 years. Last year I completed the certification for the Vermont master naturalist program to get a little bit more environmental training and also the environmental leadership training through the agency of natural resources and just looking for a way to use some of my knowledge and really get more involved in the Waterbury community, just beautifying it and creating habitat and everything that trees will do for us. Sounds excellent. Do you have a preference as to whether you'd like to serve for two-year in the two-year slot or the one-year slot? Well, I'd like to do two, but if one is the opening that works best, then I would do that as a start. Yeah, yeah. Great. Any further questions from the board? No? Do I have a motion? I can't. I'm not hearing anymore. Oh boy. Oh, again. Oh, now I got you. Okay. It's my microphone that does the trick. No, she can't hear from the owl. So who's- Oh. Yeah. But you can hear us now? I can now. Yes. I think it was our compliment. Wow, words contemplating. Our pause. Yes, no pause. It was just a pause. No pause. I understand Zinn is not gonna be able to join us tonight, is that correct? But he has- He's expressed an interest, I think I included his emails. He did express an interest by email and he's been before us previously as well. So he's also interested. We know and has a budding tree business as well. Landscaping business. Okay. So I'm open for any motions from the board. I would move to select NIDA for the two-year term and Zinn for the one-year term on the tree committee. All right. I'll second that. All right. The motion has been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Just say thank you both for your interest in serving on the committee. Yes. Thank you both. We have a wonderful amount of public engagement I'd say at the town level here in Waterbury. Steve, do you have any comments on these nominations? No, I think it's great. NIDA has attended at least one meeting and has a lot of expertise, which is great. And Zinn has good tree service. He worked for Vermont Arborist for a while. He's a neighbor of ours, grew up in our neighborhood and has a lot of energy. So no, I think it's great. It's super that we've got seven people with such enthusiasm. That makes me feel really good. Great. Pass the torch. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Congratulations, NIDA and to Zinn for your two and one year positions on the tree committee. We look forward to your service. And thanks for showing up again tonight. Okay. The tree ordinance. No, I skipped one. Oh yeah. Ha ha, good point. The CVR PC and Transportation Committee. So again, we have three positions. Steve is retiring from his position as Waterbury's commissioner on the Central Vermont Regional Planning Committee commission. And then there's an alternate position. So we have a commissioner and an alternate. And then we have a position opening up on the Transportation Committee. And we've got some background on that. Steve, do you feel like you wanna give us any further clarification about the responsibilities of those different positions? Sure, I'd be glad to. I've served, excuse me, the longest on the Transportation Advisory Committee, which has a representative appointed by each town. It's a separate body. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. I have a hard time hearing it all. Let's make it as easy as we can. Sorry. Yeah, I'm glad to see you to come forward. Steve, lots of speech. Yes, okay, thanks for letting me speak about this. So the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission is made up of all the Washington County towns and three towns in Orange County. And so the two positions on the commission are the commissioner and the alternate. The alternate can attend any meetings, but can only be a voting member in the absence of the commissioner. And that's optional to have an alternate. It's helpful, but it's optional. The Transportation Advisory Committee is a separate group. They meet on fourth Tuesday evenings instead of second Tuesday evenings. They're an advisory group that covers a lot of ground in terms of assistance municipalities to the various federal programs and does project development in the region. So the three positions are important. And it's probably most essential that we would fill the commissioner position and the Transportation Advisory Committee appointee. They're all one year positions. So they come up for renewal or a new applicant each year. It makes higher in July first. Right, that's why I'm outgoing now. And I've been the board chair for my second year. And then I was chair of the Transportation Advisory Committee for a long time. And it's a really good group as well. Okay, great. Yeah, and I think we have one of the candidates here. Doug is here, Doug Grayson. Okay. Doug, would you like to come up? Sure. Doug, you've addressed this previously as a candidate for the Planning Commission. Could you explain why you're interested in this position and your preference for one of the three different opportunities? Well, thank you. I'm interested in the role on the Regional Planning Commission because I think that suits my background and interests the municipal code reviews, the brownfields work, the forestry work. Those are all things I'm interested in and have some experience in. The Transportation Committee, I hadn't been aware before tonight that there was an opening on that and that I could be considered for that. I spent 10 years on a citizens advisory group for a very controversial bridge replacement project in Seattle and was in the thick of it for I think it was a $150 million project by the time it was done. And there were issues with economic justice going through a poor neighborhood and navigational rights and things like that. And my construction background is well suited to the transportation side of it. So I'd be interested in either position. Okay. All right. Great. Any other questions for Doug? No? Okay, Doug, thank you. I'm gonna just discuss the two other candidates and then we'll see where things fall. Another candidate is Monica Cowan. And I believe Monica is not able to join us tonight, but she has expressed an interest in, was it to both positions or all three positions or did it as a clan? Well, I do have the information from Steve that gave the details, which I did send out, but Mr. Gleason's pointed out that he didn't know. I didn't highlight it in my email either, I admit. Wow. So I don't know what Monica's preference would be. Obviously all three of them were aware of the CBRP representative. Right, right. Not as aware of the transportation one. Okay. So that's a great question. I don't know what Monica would wish to be appointed. Well, and Steve is resigning as of this month, so we actually need a representative for next month. So it's important that we... I'm a clinician. Yeah, Doug, sorry. Fairness, when I read the correspondence, I was looking at the Regional Planning Commission. And it very well could have been a reference to a position that I hadn't been contemplating and would have been aware of. So the notice could very well have been there. Yeah, oh fair enough. Yeah, I didn't highlight it. Yeah. Try to be as comprehensive as possible. The other candidate here that has expressed interest is Robert Adler. And Robert, I don't know if you're with us tonight or we have any further information about his interest. But hearing none, I will take a motion from the board. If the board feels that there, any member feels so moved. Given what Steve told us, I suppose we could have the same individual for both positions as well. There are some commissioners, I was going to mention that, there are some commissioners who serve on the Translation Advisory Committee. There may be an alternate commissioner that also serves on the Translation Advisory Committee. So there's no prohibition in the bylaws that says that an individual can't do both. The course is all right and then the commissioner have to be doing divisions. See how I looked at Doug? Yeah. Yeah, we are getting the opportunity to say yes. Yes, yeah. Okay. Doug, would you be interested in doing both? No, thank you. I'm trying to put my foot in here and get some experience in the areas that I haven't worked before. Perfect. I thought it was a good tablecloth. Yeah, you could wait. Well, I don't know. You could wait on the Translation Advisory Committee. You could wait on both the alternate and the Translation Advisory Committee if you'd rather reach out to those individuals and see what their interest level is. It is a time commitment and you may not want to make an assumption about what they would like to be involved with. So that's an alternative is just to appoint the commissioner and then reach out to them and then maybe your next meeting try to fill those other two positions. That was just an idea. There may be sage advice to have a motion. Hearing that, then I'll move to appoint Doug Greason as water raised new CVRPC representative effective July 1, 2023. And then just note for all of us here in the room that we would plan to follow up at the next meeting with Robert and Monica about interest in alternate or transportation advisory committee. Okay. Seconded. The motion has been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Doug, congratulations. You look forward to your service. And thank you for standing forward. And we do have a special meeting that will be warned for the 28th. Right. Yeah, oh, okay. Oh, we've already warned. The... Well, outside the window we can... Okay, outside the window we could potentially get input on the two remaining positions for that meeting. All right. You move forward to the tree care ordinance. I know that this has been proposed by the tree committee and with had some input from our municipal manager. So would you like to inform us about the origins of this ordinance? So Stuart Whitney is here. Stuart put a lot of work into this draft. And also my work... And also my work by his neighbor, which is spent right now sitting in his seat. We're gonna move this right here to this tree. It's okay. Neighbor. Okay, here we go. All right. Stuart and Steve, go ahead and just give us a little background on this ordinance and... Well, Steve might help with the original background because he's been on the tree committee much longer than I have. But about a year, almost two years ago, we sort of got wind on the committee that other tree committees or tree boards in the state of Vermont were developing tree policies or tree care ordinances for their towns to set guidelines on the maintenance and protection of shade trees. So about a year and a half ago, I contacted the Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Program. I spoke with them about this. They sent me some examples of other towns that have done this and sort of got us going. So between the Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Program, the Vermont tree warden statutes and some examples that we were provided. I developed this tree care ordinance for Waterbury. It's very bulletproof kind of language. It's very similar to every other tree care ordinance in the state or tree care policies. And that was how it was designed. It wasn't designed to be artistic and creative and loosey-goosy to some degree. They wanted some consistency and they wanted some sort of rigor and they wanted to make sure that it was in conjunction with the 2021 Vermont tree warden statutes. So the organization of this is very similar to every other town that we have that has one. The common goal was just to unify the language between towns and cities in Vermont. And the mission is to plant, protect, maintain and remove the shade trees within municipal areas. And along the way, we discovered that most of the tree committees or tree peoples in other cities are called tree boards. So in conjunction with this tree care ordinance, we incorporated the change of our committee to tree board versus tree committee to be in alignment with what the Vermont Urban Community Forestry Program was suggesting that we do. And they were pretty much the sort of the tree goos that led this. And so what you have today is a document that's been through many revisions, many eyes have set upon it. And I think it's not necessarily perfect, but it's ready to go and it's been approved by the Vermont Urban Community Forestry Program and Lee Shraddner and Joanne Garten, who worked with us, have approved it and said that is in line with other towns and cities in Vermont. Roger, could I just add something? Please do. I think one important aspect of this is that the tree committee or board doesn't have a lot of statutory authority. They are really an advisory group. They're advisory to the town. They can develop plans that work with you, the select board to apply for grants and oversee projects. The tree warden and deputy tree warden, if a town has one, are really the ones who have the authority under statute to do things like evaluate a tree that's in the right of way, if there's some debate, whether it's a hazard tree or not, or maybe a neighbor wants a tree taken down, then it's really the tree warden who has the authority under statute. In some situations, there needs to be a public hearing. If it's a, the statute's pretty prescriptive in some aspects and that's covered here in the ordinance. And one of the things that this is more of a housekeeping to do is that it would be really good if we got either Celia or Bill Woodruff as the deputy tree warden. So it doesn't have to happen right now, but I think it would be a good idea because sometimes there needs to be kind of an on-the-spot determination about a hazard tree, whether it should come down or not there. Mike Losiavo has been appointed as, I think you're aware as the tree warden. I think he's up there in the corner. Oh, okay, great. Hey, Mike. Yeah, I won't speak for you. So you're the tree warden. I didn't realize you were on the call. But that's mainly what I wanted to add. This doesn't, it does not dictate what happens to a tree on private property. It's public property, municipal properties and rights of ways is what this covers for the town road rights of ways. A shade tree is six inches or larger. So it's not dictating what happens to necessarily small trees that want to park if it's a flowering tree, something of that nature, then it would fall under this ordinance. So that's what I wanted to add. Correct. And I think it governs, it sort of describes what we do as a committee, but it also gives the town some sort of meat to enforce some of the statutes if they're violated. I don't know that we've had much experience with that, but when talking to Elyse and Joanne, there's people moving in from out of state and the client is changing. And so this sort of protects the trees that are planted in the municipal way from being taken down from a private owner who happens to own the house or the land that that right away have bucks. Right. Okay. Any other questions for the board? Yeah, I'll listen. I have a couple of questions. I guess I don't know who should speak to this, but I'm curious just about technicalities around if we, it sounds like we need to change the tree committee into a board. I guess I should first say, thank you to all those on the tree committee for working on this. And Steve, appreciate it. And I will say, I have friends who said, what ordinances are you reviewing? And I was like, tree care? They're like, you're an ordinance for that? I said, well, we're going to talk about it. So a kind of nuts and bolts question about mechanics for us as a select board around, is this an ordinance we would need to warn for the 60 days and receive public comment on? This is just a preliminary conversation or is it a different type of what would next, potential next steps look like for this? It's an ordinance. So you need to warn it for the 60 days if you choose to adopt it tonight. Okay. And is that the goal for the tree committee or the ask for us is to have us warrant the draft for public hearing? That's what we're asking. Yes. Got it. Thank you. Kane. To piggyback on Alyssa's question, do we need to make up, do something formal to change it from a tree committee to a tree board to change the word? Well, my understanding is that if you adopt this ordinance, it's automatic with the ordinance that the name's changed. And that's all it really is, is a name change. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Back to Alyssa. I guess I have some questions for Steve about how we see this potentially interacting with other municipal permitting and processes. I'm laughing because I know you're not staffing at me more, but at the last planning commission meeting, I will say like cards on the table. So I live on Main Street in downtown, where kind of the public right of way is often the vast percentage of folks yards. So as I'm reading an understanding, unless I'm incorrect, this covers like the two nice trees, right along Main Street in my little frame, which totally understand the purpose and why it's there. My question is about, we have no person shall plant any tree within public ways and places without permission from the tree warden and deputy tree warden. So if I'm a property owner on Main Street, and that is I apologize for each three under protection, how do I know that? I guess I just want to say like, I know the planning commission is thinking about how to make permitting user friendly. They were actually just having a discussion about the most effective way to do site plan requirements to encourage both trees, but also plantings and ornamentals. So I'm just, again, big picture thinking about how does this particular tree specific ordinance plug into other pieces we have that regulate what folks put in their front yard? And I guess that's my caution is just, regardless of this ordinance on itself, I want to make sure it's information we are appropriately sharing with property owners in ways we already interact with them. I'll speak to that. Please do. Sure. So town politics and governance is- Yeah, well, I think issues around rights of ways are an educational issue and staff, Tom and Bill Woodruff and Celia and others deal with us all the time and Neil. So it's really an educational issue with the Main Street project course there was a huge right away process there that hopefully with all those owners clarified what was right in the right of way and what wasn't. But as far as a landscape section in the zoning, that if there is part of a landscape plan that involves a planting in the right of way then that's gonna have to come in according to this to the tree warden and maybe probably be brought to the manager of public works director. So I think landscape plans, as you recall from I think being on the planning commission primarily deal with private property. Occasionally there are asks to do plantings in along a street or something which is fine but that normally there has to be a coordination process for that through the zoning but this wouldn't apply to a landscape plan that strictly on private property would really have any bearing to that. Totally. Yeah. No, I agree and I really appreciate that clarification particularly that it's not most people. I guess I would just say in the spirit of we have like nine ordinances we're reviewing later trying to think about that coordination. If we choose to move forward ask that maybe we ask Neil about, I mean again and probably as just a staff outreach thing of flagging I just need to think about someone who is moving forward and doesn't, is it just adding a checkbox or something like that just to make sure folks know that this is covered? Yeah, well I think we should have Neil in the planning commission take a look at this and Neil can educate them about the ordinance. That's always a good idea. And I would have a bit of a comment period. I don't know that I'll pick the tree committee wants it to drag out but I think this is not a final draft. It's here for your information and comment. So Stuart has a couple editorial corrections that he's recommending and there may be other changes that Tom has reviewed it. We've incorporated his comments but of course the board should have your input as well. Tom would we need to have a corrected final version in order to warn it or can adjustments be made? You can make adjustments to this tonight. It's a warned items you can amend the ordinance just so long as we're entirely clear about what the amendments are. And then we could warn that final version. So you could adopt this tonight. There's one sort of important word that's missing in one of under under protection. If you look at the second paragraph where it starts with penalties for such actions may apply. And then the second sentence that's whoever shall willfully mar da da da without permission from the municipality may be fined. So there should be a word may be inserted there before be fined at the end of that sentence to complete who will a who will be fined. It's not the municipality that will be fined. It's whoever mar the tree. But other than that I read it in preparation for this meeting and I think as far as the tree committee slash board is concerned it's ready to go to the next level of eyes and critique and revisions or suggestions or whatever people are uncomfortable with or unsure of. I've done, I worked in the healthcare system for many, many years and I've dealt with policies and procedures and curriculum and blah, blah, blah. And we always feed you those as living documents. Something that could go back at any time and be corrected or altered or fixed if we discover something is wrong. So while we're presenting you today as Steve suggested isn't necessarily a final perfect ordinance but it's where we're at at this point and we're ready to go forward. And we've had enough support of it as it is that it could stand alone without anybody's corrections but it'll only be stronger in the morning but. So everyone at home is having audio issues. Okay. If anything I can do about it. Ever you just did like getting up it got automatically better. So just stand here. I want better down in my head. I honestly was like, I don't know if there's a cord that gets twisted or a mic that's being my hole or something but. Audio guy who has more technology experience to me. I don't know at all. No, my question actually is whether all these other microphones. Who is Eric? Eric. Eric. Okay. Is it just the internet connectivity? That was my other question. I don't know. Sorry. You want to try changing the live. Changing the live. The video's good so it's not bad. Yeah. I can change the wifi. No, it's not. He's what he's saying. That's correct. Okay. How much did you miss? Internet access? Toow. Yeah. So I'm on a protected network. Yeah. I think that's fine. If I go on a public network I can't imagine that's going on. Looks like we have two days left. But if everybody can speak up. All right. Keep wiggling the cords. But that's about all I got for you. I'm sorry. Okay. So for the group, I'll just reiterate what our request is. Is we're requesting that this document be reviewed, send out to the public for comments, and then to come back with whatever suggestions they have, and then to have it approved. And Tom, you've reviewed this. This is the standpoint. I reviewed it. I'm going to have to review it. We're pretty comfortable with it. Okay. There's no further discussion. Do I have a motion from the board? Now I need to be my part, I guess. Oh, they're working. Am I warning for public hearing or for public comment? You're warning to adopt the ordinance, and then the adoption would occur automatically if there's a staff process to do the appropriate publications. The adoption would occur automatically in 60 days, unless there's some form of public comment that causes you to. So it's not like zoning, where there's changes and substantive changes. It's just I'm warning this draft in front of me. I think this draft in front of you with the addition of the word may under the protection section. Great. Now I'm thinking she's making a motion to warn of this. To adopt the ordinance. Well, that's my question. I guess I personally would love to have a little public comment before I'm warning it to adopt just personally, not that I'm opposed to doing so. Yeah, you don't have to adopt it tonight. We were anticipating this would be a two second process that this was an initial review, answer questions, see if you have any comments and then at a subsequent meeting, put it on the agenda to adopt and incorporate any comments at that point into a final draft and make that available to the public and so on for that meeting. So that's what I would suggest. And it gives you some time to really go through this with a fine tooth comb and let you know, maybe let's do it and me know if you have a question. Can you add this to the agenda for July 17th? Great. So on behalf of the slack board, I move to thank the tree committee for their work in preparing and staff, the town of Waterbury Treecare Ordinance and move that we add this as an agenda item for adoption of the ordinance at our July 17th, did you say? Yes. Select board meeting and advise the public and relevant boards and committees that if they have any comments, who should they go to? Oh, they can go to me. They should go to Tom Leitz prior to then. And I'll share them with the tree committee since Steve is on his way to be part of it. I forgot. I forgot. Victory lap, knock on one. That's what I'm saying, but I'm available all along. If you like, I'll give you my email, you can share them with me and I'll incorporate them in the draft and send it back to you. Okay. All right, that all right, Karen, in terms of those little rambler. I'm sorry, I think the only part I missed was who gets the comments. Is it Stuart or Tom? Tom and he just noted he will forward them to the tree committee. Oh, okay, okay. And I should be on second. Thank you. All right, we have a motion. Do I hear a second? Second. All right, it's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Just wanted to note, they made a great point about a deputy tree warden. We should probably put that in the parking lot just so we don't forget that. Yeah, I'll add that to an agenda soon. Well, see whether Celia or the Woodruff once would like that. That's really something you can handle. I've got a couple other candidates too. Oh, okay, well fine. Go for it. And also we might want to clarify the transformation of the tree committee into the tree board. And make sure the terms match. That is like one example of a minor correction I had. This gives language around terms. Is that what we're pointing to currently, et cetera, et cetera. All right, I think all of that is included in the spirit of the motion. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? We're gonna abstain from this one, Roger, because I missed most of that conversation. And then just to clarify on our end, I'm gonna review the document and then any feedback or questions, talk to Tom about, and then be ready to vote at the next meeting, at the July meeting. Okay, thank you. All right. Well, we still have- Hey, me or Roger. I plan on abstaining as well because audio was not good for the majority of that presentation. Thanks. Okay, for the revenue, we have three votes for two abstentions. The motion still passes with a quorum of three. And we will address this on July 17th. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Do you know how to email? Yeah. All right. Next step is checking the time. We're still ahead of schedule. The planning director and acting zoning administrator appointment. Yes. We received a notice, perhaps Tom can explain how this came to pass. So the planning commission at their last meeting and executive session recommended a candidate. Thank you. I had sent you a memo about some of the conversations I've had with that person and some revisions to the job description. And the way the job description is written, we previously had a director of planning and zoning and then an assistant zoning administrator. The key part of that is that the director of planning and zoning could have had the legal authority of the zoning administrator to sign permits. So that is retained. The big difference in the job description is that the planning director would not have oversight duties over a zoning administrator. That zoning administrator would report directly to me, which is fine. I'm comfortable with that. If you want to discuss any particulars about the candidate, that is a worthy item for executive session. Or if you're comfortable appointing the candidate, that would have to be done in public session. So in essence, if you have the action I'm asking for tonight is to appoint the candidate who'd be the planning director and the acting zoning administrator, you would then go and seek to hire a zoning administrator. So the planning director would only then be the acting in the event that the zoning administrator is absent. Right. Okay, any other questions for Tom? They don't read. Yeah, Alyssa. I'm just clarifying the appointing the acting zoning administrator would be until that position is hired for. Correct. But there isn't like a deputy type model where they have that authority in even a hired zoning administrator's absence to sign permits or no. They would in the absence of the zoning administrator. So absence is not defined as filled or unfilled. It could be vacation. Okay, it could be partial. That was just my question for something short-term like that. Thank you. Okay. I personally feel comfortable with the proposal but open to other suggestions from the board. I like those changes. Go ahead. I said, I like those changes. I think that makes more sense than our previous job description. So how are we moving this one? We are moving to... You'd have to use the name. So the motion would be to appoint Neil Lightner as the Fighting Director and Acting Zoning Administrator. So moved. Shh. Nice one. Did we catch that? No. I move to appoint Neil Lightner as Waterbury's Planning Director and Acting Zoning Administrator concurrent with the Planning Commission's recommendation. Do I hear a second? Second. All right. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? I've been very pleased with all of my interactions with Mr. Lightner and I feel he's very well qualified and thankful that he has decided to move forward and take the position. And also congratulate our Municipal Manager for making these arrangements. I think we're in good shape and he appears to have the full support of the Planning Commission as well. So I think this is a great move. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right, congratulations to Neil Lightner. And now the follow-up will be when we have a Zoning Administrator candidate. Oddly enough, even though that person works closely with the DRB, that person has to be recommended by the Planning Commission again. So we'll go through the same process with a different person. All right. Have you opened up, I guess you wouldn't open up anything up until this gets passed, right? So we'll have that job posted within a couple of days. All right. And we can include it in the charter as a position to streamline the appointment process for in a hypothetical next step for that. All right. Moving forward. Ordinance and policy review, vendor ordinance, entertainment ordinance, recreational facilities ordinance, fields and facilities, reservation policies, recreation department, parks facilities policy. So these are a number of different ordinances that our town manager will now explain. I wanted to try to meld through these. Robbie has joined. I think that may be Robert Adler. Oh. I just wanted to bring that attention. We could go back to that. Sure. Sorry. No, go ahead. Robbie, is that you? Yes, sorry, everyone. I was just following the agenda time and it was a little unclear to me when to join. I have two young kids, so I was just trying to... Yeah. So sorry if I missed this, the part of the agenda that I was supposed to join for. Not a problem yet. Our practice just for your information is that there's nothing holding us back. We will move through the agenda with as much alacrity as possible. So previous to your joining, we interviewed Doug Greason, who expressed an interest in the regional commission representative on the Central Vermont Regional Planning Committee. And the board moved to appoint him to that position. There are two remaining positions, which are the alternate to our representative on the commission and the Transportation Committee representative from Waterbury. They're both one-year appointments. They meet on separate nights. As an alternate, you'd be welcome to attend all of the CVRPC meetings, but would only have voting authority when Doug was not available. So would you have an interest in either of those two positions? I think I will respectfully bow out of either. So yeah. Thank you and say again, sorry, I missed the part of the agenda, but. Yeah, we also regret that, but we welcome you to look at other opportunities to. I will continue to monitor yeah, appointments associated with zoning and planning. Thank you. Okay, Rob, thank you for joining in. And I apologize that things didn't quite work out as we had hoped, but there you are. Now I'll give my call and have a good night. Okay, thank you. All right, let's move back to the ordinances. Down your side. Okay, the reason I put so many on the agenda was to some extent go through them and to some extent illustrate part of the challenge we've had. Some of this arose because we've had conversations with the people who come to the town and they don't know what permit they need. And in fact, if you go to the town website and try to figure it out, it's quite the struggle. It was quite the struggle even for us being new here. And so the first thing that we'll do that we don't need permission to do, we'll just do is we're gonna redesign our website to some extent and make a checklist and make it a little bit of one stop shopping. Some is on the town website, some is on the Waterbury Wreck website. Not entirely clear if you're someone coming to the town, what you need to do necessarily. It's probably clear if you've done it before, but if you're a new vendor. So that's part of the challenge. I wanna quickly go through a few of these to give you some of the themes. I'd like to start with the entertainment ordinance, which is the oldest and the bunch. And I met with Danny about the entertainment ordinance. And the real challenge here after delving into it far is that section one, the definition of show, which really talks about live entertainment, concerts, plays, magicians, things like that. That definition is embedded and comes from state law and that old expression, Vermont being a Dylan's rule state, which means you can't do anything locally that the state does not permit you to do. We had talked about modifying this ordinance to include parades, which was something that was talked about for a while. But in fact, it's not entirely clear we can because parade is not a show as defined by the state. What we could do on pages two and three are approval conditions. And the approval conditions for shows are really comprehensive and pretty good requiring crowd control, medical personnel. We talked about that with Circus Marcus, things like that. So we could add an approval condition that effectively says follows the town's parade policy. And subsequently have a parade policy and that I believe would be entirely consistent with state law. So we could address the issue of parades there. But functionally, this ordinance, even though it's dated is consistent with the law. And I actually, despite the fact that I initially reviewed it and thought to myself, well, this is an ordinance from the late 90s. We'll probably want to rebuild it fresh. After reviewing it, I concluded I really don't see a need to rebuild this fresh. There could certainly be some minor tweaks and that one is one of them. But in general, it's consistent with the law. The law hasn't changed. So that being said, since I mentioned parade policy, I did sit down and I did it late, but I finally have a draft parade policy. So I'm going to pass that around. And it's reasonable. Daly? Something I noticed, Tom, is that in Montpelier's special event policy, they call it a special event, not necessarily a show. And they define it on their own. And I don't know if that's different like a special event versus entertainment versus show or, but they just defined it as a race parade, festival, street initiative, or event that uses public property. So versus like, so I don't know. It's just something to consider or just keep in the research, but... I didn't look at Montpelier's. I did look at a number of, not a number, several towns that have their rules about parades embedded into law. And South Burlington is probably the best example, but South Burlington actually has that embedded in their charter. So they've got specific legislative authority to regulate parades, and it's quite clear. They don't have to necessarily refer to a somewhat unclear section of state law. But the parade policy I worked on with Gary Dillon and we thought to put out in front of you a pretty minimal policy that I think hits the highlights, but every parade is different. And from my conversations with Gary that the challenge this past year was the Festival of Lights. Right. And it might be a good idea to have a policy in advance just because we'll have a new town staff. So the rec director was pretty involved in that in prior years with the turnover we have. Might not be a bad idea to get in front of it from that perspective. But in essence, Gary's suggestion was the policy doesn't need to be incredibly detailed because they ultimately have to answer these questions. This will be in front of the select board as part of their permit process for a special event. And each parade is different. The little parade this year was, how many kids, Karen? 100. 100 kids, not a ton of spectators. As you can imagine, mostly parents of the families. And then we have two really large parades. And I think in general the folks do a pretty good job planning, but Gary just wants some ability to essentially say we need to put these things down on paper, we need to make sure that we've got some ability to regulate it, some ability to correct evaction in the future. Did you try defining a parade? No, because the challenge there is I think when you define it, you can limit it. I think it's, I guess I'll go Supreme Court, you know, when those things were, I know it when I see it. Just wondering if that would help, again, help people understand at what point they need to apply for, apply these rules. So I think what would help them understand is if Karen and I and probably the incoming REC director do that one stop shopping idea for the website where we just make it really clear, you know. On the top of our website, I envision a button that just says, how do I? And it's, you go from there and it makes it easy. You know a parade I just thought of, we hadn't talked about at all, it was the Easter button that the Rotary does. Think, well the kids, they leave the school, I think you go downstow to Railroad and Railroad to Pilgrim. Is that right? Yeah. Our understanding is they have to stay on the sidewalks when they do that. I don't know if that's how it's practiced. I don't know, I haven't done it in a couple of years. But it's discussed, it's, we no longer can go down Main Street, we need to take that side route to not pass traffic. Right, otherwise it'd be a parade. Yeah, I mean a critical distinction for me is whether you're gonna close the roads or not. Yeah, so if you're closing the road, that's I think automatically a parade. If you're not closing the road, I don't believe you need our permission to assemble on the sidewalks. All right, well I think it might be helpful to have that in this policy, just so we know what we're talking about. Okay. Okay. Would it, I guess my question is, would it make it easier to enact a parade policy along with a parade permit and not alter the entertainment permit and the entertainment ordinance? I think what you're suggesting is, I guess I'm a little bit unclear what you mean exactly, I think. I guess what I'm saying is like, instead of taking the parade policy and adding it to the entertainment ordinance, we just make it its own ordinance. It's own policy, stand on policy. Yeah, that's what I was suggesting. Yeah, I'd just introduce the entertainment ordinance as a way to say it doesn't really fit in any one ordinance perfectly. Okay. Which is part of the challenge. Well, that is the challenge. So, at the same time, if an organization came to you with an entertainment permit and it involved a parade as part of the entertainment, they would have answered these questions as part of that, as part of the policy. Gotcha. Same if it was a show, same if it was simply a parade because they need your permission to close the road. No, at the same time, we have received applications for special events such as 100 on 100 and perhaps even the walk to school event where the roads are not closed, but we do ask that they apply for a permit, and I'm not exactly sure which permit they're applying for, but we do stipulate that they should have a safety guard in place at all road crossings. And so, would that fit into our parade policy or another ordinance? It could, and that's part of the challenge. So, we don't have an ordinance regulating special events that I could find. No, no problem. So, we do have a special event permit that in essence they ask, they ask a select board to approve the special event that's really based on insurance coverage. So, from the staff perspective, we're making sure the permit is the wrong word. When there's a special event, we make sure there's insurance coverage and name the town as additionally insured. If they're doing that event on public property. That's- Right, well, we have the vendor ordinance, which they have to have an application for them to make sure that usually, if that's only applicable on public property, and it's usually like somebody's selling goods or selling food, and it's not somebody at the parkers market, that's an entirely different- Right. So, the gravel grinder came, not the gravel grinder, but there were permits associated with that event for venting. Right, people selling goods at the park. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm just wondering, as Dan sort of suggested, maybe special events is the larger category and then vendor permit, the parade policy, and perhaps one of these others, oh, the entertainment ordinance would fall under those and you could have a decision tree on the website to see where you're going to permit. It is a little bit of a challenge now to sometimes figure out where to send people. Yeah, I agree. Mike, that's the same. Yeah, I'm sorry, Mike. Mike. Mike, can you hear us? Yeah, Mike, can you hear? Just trying to unmute, question, how in the future are we going to treat like the NQID? Because like, we kind of had the discussion that it's sort of like a town event, but the rotary sort of doing the infrastructure. Next year for NQID, are we going to have rotary apply for a permit, even though it's kind of a quasi-town event? So, it's a good question. Probably the best way to navigate that is to have an MOU with the rotary. We have one for, we have a, we have an old one for Rusty Parker Park that's worked well forever in a day. All right. I don't think we need to get involved with running NQID because we've got a local organization that does a great job. So, let's let them keep doing it. Agreed, you know.  You know, I'm sure they would be glad to give, you know, discussions on road closures and stuff like that, any information that the town needed to know. And they're the ones who essentially, Al at the rotary essentially gave us a draft parade policy. We said, Al, what do you do? And in fact, he's, they've got their own policy slash protocol that they've done for a long time. Oh, yeah. Right. Dan McKibbin has been the NQID chairperson for Rotary where Al's like they is the park guru. Yeah. And Dan is here. So we'll ask him to come forward and get his thoughts on the matter. Yeah. I mean, the scary part about an MOU is we would document all the work we're taking on by running this event here after year. I just, I look at it from what's the least overhead for us from an execution perspective. So if, you know, filing an event permit is just an additional task, I'm fine with doing that. If, you know, if you want to do an MOU, we can talk about that. But, you know, seeing what we're doing through Rusty Parker Park, that seems like maybe more formality than we need for just an event. Yeah. And for background, at least my understanding of the background is the big challenge here is at the Festival of Lights last year, some new staff in town. What happened is one, the road was closed way in advance of the parade, the event, which didn't need to happen. And two, some of our town vehicles were parked blocking the road with no one there. And so the fire chief naturally was unhappy after that and said, if there's a fire, I got to get through somehow. Yeah. And if I've got to knock over a rack fan, guess what? I'm plowing the truck into that van if I have to. But he just said, you know, you need something in place to some basic rules. And it wasn't about an outside organization as there, it was about the town itself and some new staff. But it was nonetheless a good reminder that we should have some basic rules. Yeah, you know, we're tied off with the fire department on the planning for this parade, but I think having a discussion for such a major event in town, if it's under the context of an event permit that we go over before the event, that's reasonable. So your preference would be to apply annually for this permit? Yeah, I think that's similar to creating an ongoing agreement. Yeah, makes it clear, doesn't require a separate MOU. All right, thanks, Dan, I appreciate it. Thanks for bringing that up, Mike. Do you want to proceed with the other? Sure, let me just talk about a couple other issues that we, just because we reviewed them. So there is a ordinance to regulate uses at recreational facilities and reviewed that one. And that is essentially about, not about use of the facilities, but about behavior. So there were two interesting notes in that ordinance and that one's 2002. So the first is it refers to page one, section G, public and decency ordinance, which I have no doubt was passed at one point, but I've been unable to locate it. I was gonna ask you about that. So we're gonna keep looking and it might be deep in the archive somewhere. But it's not on our website, I'm searching for what I could. I couldn't find anything about it yet. And it's not the suitable public discussion. It's true. And then the second piece on page two under impermissible uses, I just want to point out that camping is an impermissible use. At our recreation facilities. So when that homeless conversation comes up, it's interesting to know that we've affected, we have an ordinance governing this already. Does that mean that we don't have the authority to allow camping, if that's a question? That means if someone's camping at one of our recreational facilities, they're not legally doing it. So we have the authority to, but we have the authority to grant an exemption if there's a special event and the Boy Scouts want to do a sleepover at Old Gaby or something like that. I think you certainly do. Okay. Exclude camping. Go interfere with recreational activities. I think sometimes things are on the books and how we're enforcing them is another manner of deployment. Or not. But again, didn't see a need to, do any major updates to this ordinance, even though it's a bit older. I'm in the third section three. I feel like we're going to get sued possessing firearms. I know that's a very popular opinion, but feeling someone could potentially exercise their second amendment rights. Yeah. Let me take into that. Let me take into that a bit. I do know it's quite common for towns to not allow firearms on their own property. Right. I just had it underlined because I was like. Hmm. Yeah, this is just our parts though. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. And is the enforcement officer identified in this? As defined in the definition section. As named in the definition section. Police officer, pool director, associate pool director, 2A. Okay, yeah. Pool director, assistant pool director, program director, or para-efficer. It's well, I was looking farther down, but it's actually defined in section 2A as to who the enforcement officer shall mean. Oh, right here, right in front of me. May I have another question? Okay. I guess this is a question for you, Tom, because I honestly don't know the answer. Can a municipality or, yeah, I guess a municipality enforce an order, an order of no trespass on public property? I've been, yes, now it's been done. I'm aware of a number of towns doing it. Generally those towns have police forces. So it's a little bit different, but you can no trespass to one from public property just as well as you can from a private business if that's part of the question, yeah. In my judgment, it should be a little bit of a naturally higher bar. We get people in here who are unhappy. We'll get a number of them once tax bills go out. You know, they can come and they can complain about their tax bills and I think it'd be pretty tough to no, I just think from my perspective, it'd be pretty tough to try to no trespass someone if they scream and curse and threaten violence. That's one thing, but I think people raise their voices from time to time a little bit and they gripe about it, but yeah, it's pretty rare. Yeah, that was going to take you back to session three after the obscene language part. That was going to be my next go-to question after the order of no trespass. Not the threatening, obviously that makes sense to me, but obscene language, I guess that's undefined. Is that the discretion of the enforcement officer? Yeah. And a lot of this I think is focused on just kids at the pool, kids at the day camp. Gotcha. Right. Different situations might call for different definitions of what is actually considered obscene. Absolutely. And if it's one of our campers, there's a pretty easy solution. We can send them home. Right. Okay, any other questions on this one? Or anything else you want to call to our attention? Nothing else in that one. There's another one, and this is part of our confusion. There's a recreation, which is misspelled, Recreation. Recreation. Department of Parks Facilities Policy. This policy exists on the Waterbury Rec website. I downloaded the document, I could find- With the same misspelling? With the same misspelling. With the same misspelling. I downloaded the document, went into the document properties, and it said document created in 2019. So I looked through a year's worth, or even more, worth of meeting minutes around the creation date of the document for both the town and for the Recreation Committee, and found no reference to this policy anywhere. And it's not on the town website where adopted policies are located. So- Guidance. We may have been something developed by staff. And I'm waiting for Frank's Committee to see if he knows of any conversations around this in the past, and he's been on the Committee a while. But it's quite detailed to the point where we're talking about the sixth priority for someone who might want to use a recreational facility. So a lot of effort was put into it, and I would suggest that it's pretty darn well-written. And- With the exception of the title. With the exception of the title. Which could be a program for the kids with reaction, you know, you get out there. It could be purposeful. As a general point of information, the default setting of Microsoft Word is that spell check does not spell check all caps words for anyone who might be writing anything ever anywhere from the terrible speller. Anyway. So I would suggest, not for today, it's pretty detailed policy, but I would like to forward this to the Rec Committee. And I think they should have the opportunity to review it, massage it as easy fit, and I think they should bring to you this policy at a later date. Because it makes perfect sense. You do at the same time have an adopted Parks and Facilities Reservation Policies, which goes part in parcel with this other one. So you can see part of our confusion here as we've got- We've got some intersection. We've got a lot of intersections. The ordinance and this policy, is there anywhere where they can reflect where the rules are different? If you read it closely enough, there probably is. Yeah. The policy is far more detailed. The unadopted policy is far more detailed than the adopted policies. So what I think the Rec Committee should do is give us one. Of these two, the Reservation Policy and the Facilities Policy? Because the Parks Facility Policy, what do we get down to? Here's our criteria for allocating for public spaces. Right. That's essentially a Reservation Policy, if you will. Reservation Policy is a little- So you need to- It's a little more- Melt these two together. Yeah. And then Karen and I can do the work about putting it on the website and making it clear where you need to go, what you need to do. Do you need a motion from us to direct us to the Rec Committee? I don't. If you're comfortable with it, I can just give it to them. I think we can do it by consensus if everyone's agreeable. Yeah, it seems like there's a lot of really good stuff here. There's just too much of it, so I think that's a perfect path. Yeah, that's the issue. So we can, at least in this case, I think take two and create one. I just want to point out that the Amplified Sound Policy and the Reservations, and the Reservation Policy is exclusive to Rusty Parker for 85 decibels. Which is because there was a former village ordinance that had a sound limit, but wouldn't apply to the rest of the town. Gotcha. If that's the reason, I can imagine that was in there, but probably should be updated. But, well, yeah, because they had jurisdiction in Rusty Parker Park, but we have other village properties, like right down over here, Anderson Park, and the Ice Center area, but also likely to have Amplified Sound at some point. So it sounds like it does suggest the earlier, just so I'm clear, the earlier suggestion people liked was Danny's, where we should try to write a policy that better captures the special events like the gravel grinder.  I think Tom, you and I sort of, I touched on this in our meeting, it's just having that overarching special events. And then, I don't know how far to go to, like, is there a specific road closure permit, regardless, or do we just include closure in the different types of events? Like if you're having a parade, the road closure plans need to be in there if you're having it, whatever. But it seems like having that umbrella and then being able to drill down within makes sense, but. Okay, I can work on that. I'll probably need some help from you. Yeah, I'm gonna do it. Yeah, for me, road closure is one area, I don't know if we actually need to define it other than road closure, whether it's a parade or some other type of special event.  So in essence, it would be a ton of what a very parade or road closure policy. And then, for these other events that don't include road closure, I'm thinking that it's really a question of how many participants, like, or maybe 100 or more that are going to impact road crossings and or potentially trigger a noise ordinance or in some way inconvenience, the general use of the property, then there should be some type of permitting involved. So follow up to that is, we just had a tournament, not we, but there was just a tournament at Hope Davy, which had, I don't know how many people at any given time because they staggered the starts. But it was advertised as being over 200. Yeah, several hundred. So are you envisioning an event like that coming under this special events policy wouldn't impact a road? Yeah. But certainly it would be a pretty heavy use of a public park. Yeah, I think so because it really does impinge the normal use of the average Waterbury resident. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Danny. And I think, Tom, we had touched on this as well, like that application for the special event can have an if then component. So if you have over X amount of people, you just need to let us know what's going on and get our approval. If you have over X number of people and vendors, then you need to do your vendor thing. So there's that and it sounds overwhelming, but I think we could organize it pretty neat and clean. So that when folks look at a special event, they can know, oh, I need to check off this, this and this box or all I need to do is say I'm having a special event and let the slide board approve it. And I did take a look at the Pealier website and there's, I mean, it's not the last word, but it is a reasonable attempt at doing sort of one stop shop on the website, which I think it really should be our goal here so that people don't have to bother Karen. They can just look on our website and say, oh, I need to do this, this and this for what I'm planning to do. Mike, sorry, I didn't hear you. Just a brief comment. I think it's hard with some of these events. Some of them you just don't know how many people you're gonna have in a parade or some sort of a road closure event. Sometimes when you think it's gonna be 50 or 100 people, it could wind up being 250 to 400 people. So I don't know how we deal with it. I do agree that it should, any kind of road closure should fall within some sort of special events for a parade or a special kind of different kind of activity that as I think Roger eloquently said, it impinges upon local Waterbury residents. Yeah, Alyssa. This is just a wording question. I feel like what was interesting in this recreation and facilities policy to me seems, as you said, much more like an internal rationale, so to speak, which I applaud us having it to me isn't quite the same as like the ordinances. And I just am wondering, and then we're using policy, do you have, are you using the words interchangeably? I guess the comment is just to say like, I trust you in terms of recognizing within this mix of stuff to me, it feels like some is a strong ordinance that we need to be regulating that folks have certain things. And some might be in internal working document for staff that outlines rationale. If it's internal working document, it shouldn't be on our website. Hard. For the public to assume it's our rules. Got it, yep, thank you. I hear what Alyssa's saying though, the policy ordinance kind of keep getting intertwined. Okay, you've got all the direction you need from us. Thanks, Phil. All right, so we'll keep moving it forward. All right, thank you. Appreciate all your work on that. Next item on the agenda, the 2024 ARPA spending processes and review survey results. Thanks, Roger. We have on Zoom, Kazia Haveland, who would be our 915 for the sales tax reallocation. Okay. She sent me an email today. She was feeling a little under the weather. Yeah. So I'm wondering if we can swap those items. I'm happy to do so. And send her home, well. Yeah, well, sure. Let's move forward with the resolution to apply for sales tax reallocation for 51 South Main Street. Is there a, oh, what's this? I can get a quick background on the program. Okay, please do. So this is in essence, not in essence, this is the grant application of the seeking approval for, if approved, the way the program works is the state benefits from the first $100,000 of sales taxes purchased for the project. Sales taxes beyond that can be reallocated into the project, if you will. So this will be funding to further that project, no different than the town's injection of funding. So if you look at the estimated purchases from Down Street, I'll apply the sales tax to all of it. It'd be about $227,000 in sales taxes, according to my rough math, with the first 100,000 exempt. Because I can fill in with the gas. That might work for her. I'm happy to answer any questions of the best of my understanding on the program or the project. Unfortunately, Nicola couldn't be here tonight, so you guys get me. I'm happy to do my best. I think you gave a great few lines and options of what the program is, but essentially it takes that sales tax and re-infuses it into the project in a grant form. Yeah, I think it's a great use of those funds. Other questions from the board? Yeah, Alyssa. Tom, can you just repeat, is the 100,000 the amount that can benefit the project, or I'm seeing sales tax re-allocation request 100,000, just page one. Is it over the 100,000 that goes? Again, just, this is minor. I'm just trying to understand what you just said about the 275. Is it the 175 over? My understanding from reading the program guidelines is that the first $100,000 does not benefit the project. So it goes just to the state as it would like if I paid sales tax on goodness, beyond that it would go back to the project. It would flow through the town. Got it. Got it. So it's returns to essentially that amount of sales tax from Retail Assistant, okay. And you're looking for a motion from us to reallocate those funds back to downstream through the funding application. It's good to have the town approve the application so that it's not just us going rogue and not working with you all through the program. Right. Alyssa. I would move to approve the 2023 sales tax reallocation program application from Down Street Housing and Community Development for 51 South Main Street. And I just wanted to note online that this is a benefit of us being a designated downtown. So seeing as we just made an appointment in planning and zoning who helped us get that designation many years ago and we fund revitalizing Waterbury every year, which helps. I just think it's an exciting example that we're applying for something we're eligible for specifically because we are a designated downtown. I happily second. All right. We have a motion moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. Congratulations. This 2023 sales tax or reallocation application has been approved by the board. Thank you all so much and I appreciate you're pumping it up. Absolutely. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Now we'll go back to the ARPA spending processes and the survey results, which Tom had forwarded by email earlier based on the last year's survey that went out to all the property owners in town and also was up on our website. And the purpose of that was to sort of guide our direction in spending, which I think we used last year in making the allocations for the 2023 budget. And now we're, the last meeting we approved, I think it was 26,000 in ARPA funding for the purchase of equipment. It was 26,000. And King, you forwarded me some interesting numbers on cooking equipment. Would you like to talk about that? Yeah, I can briefly talk about that. Restaurants, when they're either going under or liquidating equipment, put it up for auction. Any restaurant in the area is gonna do that. Essentially any business that uses service equipment like that is gonna auction it off when they're done with it. Nobody throws away that equipment, it's expensive. So I forwarded an auction to Roger and said in reference to the senior center's request for purchasing more kitchen equipment. An avenue that they can possibly go through is bidding on equipment. It will come cheaper through a bid, but that also leaves us not knowing how much they would be paying for it, not knowing how much to allocate for it. So they would have to win their bid for us to allocate the money for it. Otherwise you can get all that equipment used, which is something I would probably need to discuss with them, which I have yet to do. But those are all things I looked into after our vote at the last meeting to try and bring that cost down a little bit while getting them the equipment that they need. Part of the challenges, they don't have a director right now. Right. But they are operating and they have been operating without a director for more than a year now. And they provide an essential service to a lot of town residents. So I think they're appreciative of the 26,000. And I suggested to Cain that he forward that to them just to see if they were interested. And part of this speaks to our interest in being cost efficient in the spending of ARPA funding. I think Alyssa called into question the prices of the benches in Karen's budget for the restoration of the alleyway with each bench costing $2,500, which is a pretty expensive bench. And I guess under reflection I too wondered whether that was a needing opportunity for fundraising. You see a lot of these benches in order of memory of a certain individual. And often that comes with a substantial financial donation that would obviate the need for further ARPA funding. May I, I don't know. Yeah, sorry. I couldn't talk to anybody who was looking at the screen. So in response to, so Cain, I don't know how much money would be saved. So I don't wanna make any assumptions, but I think it's a great idea and also remembering time as a factor. So just weighing the pros and cons of how quickly something might be available to bid on versus not. And also thinking about longevity and you have more expertise in the area than I do. And yeah, I still wanna think about, is it if we're gonna save $5,000 to $7,000 but it will be less, it will, the lifespan will be 10 years less, is that a worth it? Or what really thinking about making that investment now to save, having to reinvest partway down the line. So just things to think about on that. And then, yeah, so since Roger, since you brought up the alleyway project, I was thinking about a part of this process was something that Alyssa had brought some examples of early in our conversations, which were towns who had created a community application. So they allocated a certain amount of money, whether it be 50,000 or 100,000, whatever it is. And there was a process by which community people, citizens or organizations could apply for specific projects. And the alleyway project felt like something that would fit really well in there. It would take developing an application and some criteria for assessment. But if we put a bucket towards just that, it wouldn't be known that it was for things like art or beautification or revitalization outside of things like infrastructure and human services and housing or things like that. So I think I'm a big proponent of that. I know it'll take a little bit of work, but I think it creates a nice, clear process instead of sort of that feeling of flying by the seat of the pants, which we have been for a little bit recently. Well, I would say certainly I said- Yes, two different issues. One, I agree definitely with Kane's thing about potentially buying equipment at auction. And the way you could do that with them is auction, as a lot of restaurants, it's probably one of the most fragile businesses that there are. So there are a lot of failures. So there is a lot of actually good equipment out on the market. What we could do is give the senior center kind of an up to amount. So they could go in it with eyes wide open. So we could say, we're willing to give you so much and that's where they know where their bidding can be. So if it goes above that, they may want to look at another option. As to the question about the walkway and the alley project, I don't believe, I'm on the fundraising committee for revitalizing Waterbury in regards to the alley project. And I don't believe that the actual cost of those benches are $2,500 each, they're probably closer to $1,000. That's I think more for, we're looking at folks that can donate that amount toward the whole project. Then the good part about it is the alley project is about 50% funded already, which I think is a very positive thing. So that's going to encourage donors, but we had a lot of conversations as to, should we have benches named and stuff like that, we didn't want to get into a situation where every little piece of the alley was going to be having like, quote, naming rights. So that's still a work in progress. So you've sold a lot of bricks already. So a lot of pieces of salt. Right, the bricks are something that's really separate. That's already been done, that's going to acknowledge things, but I think what we're going to be looking at is some sort of a plaque to acknowledge donors at different giving letters rather than having, this much for a planter, this much for a bench, this much for a sign on the wall. And I think that's still a work in progress with the fundraising committee. And I have one question, Mike, about in closing, Karen said that she thought that the project would be going on for another two years, almost regardless of whether we gave her the 20 or not. Is that your understanding?  I think that's a long, a real long run. Yes, if they can't raise the money, they don't, you know, they don't want to go forward. But I think, you know, they're looking at this year and max next almost for looking at construction in sometime in 2024. But yes, they have to have the funds before they could go forward. So if the fundraising doesn't go the way that they predict, you know, again, they're 50% in the good. And that's where, and that's why I stressed in their fundraising letter, they should state that because a lot of people don't want to give to a project unless they really feel the project is going to happen.  And they say, no, you want to say that we have raised half of the money already. So, you know, people will know this is a project that's going forward. Yeah, I mean, you're speaking directly to my concern. I don't want to invest $20,000 of ARPA funding in a project that's not going to happen. Right. And I think this is going to, you know, again, being at the 50% level, I agree. I don't want to have to have it, but I think, you know, the next step in the fundraising committee is going out with fundraising letters. We're really going after not the mom and pop donors, but big dollar donors. And to make this happen, you know, having different levels and, you know, I can't say it's 100% going to happen. But the way, you know, once it goes out to, you know, the fundraising committee and there's an effort, I would think this is going to truly happen in a relatively expeditious time, but I could be wrong. Okay. The one piece I want to get into that, Roger, I've had a few conversations about this project and I've suggested that if they're relatively close and don't want to miss a construction season that a loan through EFUD, through their loan fund would be a, in essence, a construction loan.  I've talked to some, you know, different people on the EFUD board suggested if they're pretty close, they're a trusted organization. I think they've got the ability to raise the funds. We could get them across the finish line with a loan and it would be, you know, something like an interest-only loan, pay back the funds as you raise them. I think the cost would arise if we missed a construction season next year and then there's going to be, you know, take it all and add 8%, 10%. Right, yeah. So we want to avoid that. Inflation. Okay, well, Danny suggested that we set aside, so I'm sorry. I mean, if you want to go generally before, I'm probably going the same direction as you, but I guess I just wanted to say kind of that, like zooming out of I applaud, you know, I guess I would say one, I think my comment with RW was specific, but I appreciated Danny's framing to kind of take it to a higher level about kind of what proposed uses of our bar. In response to the survey just reiterating, we have committed funds already, in fact, too many of these top categories. I mean, when we look and see infrastructure was category number one, $435,000 for town bridges last year, $150,000 to EFUD, you know, the gravel road initiative, all of that is looking to, I have Tom's spreadsheet of stuff and pulled up the town report. I just, just my overall framing is kind of like, there's two pieces. There's one, how we have already spent and committed ARPA funding, which was informed by and really aligned with a lot of the top categories. You see housing is on here for number three. Again, we allocated funding to Down Street. I think Danny really named the one instinct I had, around again, community organizations and recognizing we did have CB fiber and Wassie and EFUD and Down Street, who have worked really closely with the municipality as has revitalizing Waterbury, but you know, we had Spring Hill School and we said no, but they only asked, because they were asking other towns. And so there wasn't kind of an open call or invitation. So I would just say generally that appeals to me, depending on where reappraisal lands, it looks like we're in the, you know, four to $500,000 kind of remaining. So at least a portion of that being available in general. And then more specifically, again, I did make the comment about the benches, but I also would say, I think it's that balance of, I don't want to be nickel and diming. And so I appreciate the comments just about cost implications and used equipment, particularly with like volunteer organizations and just wanting to weigh both. And so for the RW project, you know, it's a public project and public space and how to figure out a way to support that. I think also maybe outside of ARPA, I don't know if we have other, I know that was one of the follow-up conversations just around, is there other ways of providing municipal support to that project outside of just a cash contribution? Sorry, that was Rambley. Yeah, no, that's fine. And particularly your last comment did remind me of a question I had for Tom, which was a substantial portion of their budget was the preparation of the site. I think it was like $50,000. And I'm wondering if it's conceivable that the town highway department would be able to contribute any in-kind services to knock down that cost. Yeah, yeah, I need to go over that with them in some detail, but it's possible. Because, I mean, that would be, according to the budget, again, the budget may not be exact. That would be a contribution of well over, depending on how much the town could do, be well over the value that she applied for. Yeah, I love that idea. That's great. That seems like a better contribution from us than just handing them cash. It's just doing part of the work. We certainly could. I'll leave also. It's essentially a public walkway when it's done, so we'll pay the bill for the street lights. We'll deal with the trash. We'll help over the can with snow clearing. So could you, Tom, sort of itemize what the town would be able to contribute towards those site costs? Sure. And also, of course, discuss it with Karen, because she may have already lined up providers of some of those. But that, I think, would, as Cain says, make us feel as though we're contributing without necessarily cutting into what could be scarce financial resources going forward. Sure. I don't know if this makes a difference. I know I've been pretty involved with the alley project, but please realize that alley is, I guess, private property. It's not town property. I know we would look at it as kind of a walkway, but I don't know how that would affect our contribution in terms of the way that it's done. I don't know how that would affect our contribution in terms of doing things with public works resources. I'm all for doing that, but I just, because it is private property, I don't know how that, maybe if Tom could comment on that. Yeah, it's private property, but Karen's organization has an MOU with them. I've also already agreed to add it to our insurance and there's a way for us to assign the liability to us. So it's private, but it's really quasi-public. And that's what attorneys are for. In the MOU, it provides for public access. Yeah, yeah, so I'm pretty comfortable with it. Alyssa. Roger, I'd say one of the things I most appreciate at U.S. Chair is being really good about timelines. And I guess one of the things that has come up, no, both in asking about next steps, Candidly, that has come up on this Alley project, Candidly, as a concern was the perspective timeline, but in the spirit of, again, Danny and I, I'm not speaking for the board, but talked about this idea of community organizations. Again, we have the senior center in the wings, hoping to kind of address the more imminent needs, but thinking to the future, I guess I have a question around, does the board in general have interest in some sort of community application process? Does the staff have concerns and what that timing might be? Again, looking to kind of mid-year 2023, ARPA into next year and wondering if we, do some preliminary discussing now or add it to our next agenda in terms of defining a process, thinking that for our W or others, saying, we're gonna have an additional round. And again, I'm not saying we might have other ARPA uses. I mean, I'm noting that recreation is here and that we have recreation studies and different things that have happened and didn't maybe dig into those ideas as a board, but. I can comment on that. So a couple meetings back, Kane had actually asked about ARPA funds about the debt ceiling, because that had come up. And as it turned out, from that perspective, the funds were considered allocated once they made it to us. So we have until next summer to allocate the funds in a couple of years to spend them. But what we can do, and I could prepare this for your next meeting is I could prepare you a resolution that from the federal government's perspective, allocates and spend the funds. We allocate and spend them into our back pocket. They're really in our left pocket. Now we move them to the right. So you could still go forward with a community process over time, but you could take your time. And in theory, that could take five years if you wanted to. So that's something that you could do. We could still call it ARPA to keep the verbiage we've been using. But that would take some time pressure off if you were feeling that. Yeah, me as well. I like that idea. Yeah. At the same time, I do think just in media term, we've budgeted till 9.45 tonight to discuss this, which means that we've got approximately 55 minutes left. We do have time to discuss this further. I like the idea of developing a process for community organizations. In all likelihood, we'll continue to get requests from the likes of RW and the senior center for these funds. And so I think clarifying the process by which they would apply for them makes a lot of sense to me. Can I throw a couple other things out there? Please do. So as part of the Hope Davies study, Monica Callan and a few others have talked about public art. I had a meeting a little while back with Waterbury Arts and they talked about similar concepts, no project yet per se, but just talked about the idea of expanding public art throughout town. The park study calls for some town investments for sure. Now that'll be likely on your July 17th agenda. And the short-term investments that come to mind are some of the ADA improvements that were discussed in the study. And I think we're noted by the study group as a higher priority. And then finally, soon enough, I'll have some results from Alec Tuscany and his analysis of the pool. So just a couple themes to think about. And there's obviously roads and bridges. Yeah. Which we'll be never ending, right? And then Alyssa. Well, just to throw some of that out there, I mean, I will say one thing that we had in the report last year was this reappraisal funding. I know we keep revisiting it and I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but I would say it's $200,000. So to me, that might be like an interesting bucket of money to think about more creatively recognizing that there might be other apt uses, but thinking about community projects and again, not designing time, but thinking about, to me, the exciting opportunity of a community application form is just like you don't know what's out there until you put something out like that. And I think there could be some potential small projects that a small investment could really make a difference. I think in terms of the allocation, makes sense in terms of if it's gonna help with compliance and also thinking about for community orgs, hopefully that would help take away strings. I do think we have, there's some general public knowledge of ARPA. So to the extent we can work sooner than later, I do think it's a nomenclature that's known right now as a resource that exists. So I think it's wonderful that we potentially have an opportunity to be thoughtful, but also think that there isn't a need to wait unnecessarily if we feel comfortable moving forward, even if we have it kind of off the books, technically. And Kane, you've expressed concern about what might be considered more of a vanity project as opposed to a more utilitarian. Yeah, from my, I guess, perspective, from my reading about ARPA funding and the way other towns and cities have been spending theirs, everyone does a different, so there's not really a whole lot to go off of. No one does it the same way. So as far as those statistics are concerned, most other towns were just shooting in the dark. They're spending a lot of their ARPA funding on whatever they wanted. Some of it was, some towns and cities were, they would do things like the senior center, they'd benefit homeless shelters in some cities. We're spending them on giant paintings on the sides of buildings. So I guess past comments that I've made regarding ARPA funds are kind of dead in the water in that regard. But I still do believe that it need, that money should be spent on making sure that Waterbury is a place to live for all people. It's still affordable for people, seniors included, young people included, anyone who wants to move to Waterbury. And I do think that a project like the Alleyway Project would be beneficial in reaching this goal. I just think if we can benefit them in another way, other than just handing them cash, if we could help them some other way, I think that would be a better start for us. All right. Jane. Yeah, hi. A few years ago when I was on the select board, we did a, I participated in a scoping study for a sidewalk that was, so a scoping study was like a feasibility study with the agency of transportation that's required before you actually apply for funding for a project. You have to do a conceptual plan on a feasibility study in hire designers. So at that time, it must be at least five or six years ago now. Select board, okay. The sidewalk was from the corner at Stoke Street up to Colbyville.  So at the time, we talked about shrunken it into like four or five different sections to be built. And I guess this is authorization, are you, it's been approved to move ahead, at least just straight now, when that bridge gets redone at the corner of Stoke Street, that's a start on its whole thing. But anyway, that's just like one other, here's a need, you know, a need, is it a need? It seems like it's a need to have safe ability to walk from Stoke Street up to Colbyville on a sidewalk. But I mean, you know, I don't really have to decide yourself if you want to find something like that, but if these feasibility studies that are paid for, you know, and good faith to sit around for too long, they're really not worth anything anymore. After 10 or 15 years, you have to re-scope the whole thing because things change and budgets change and everything. So I'm just putting that out here because it seems like it's something that's kind of falling to the wayside. And just want to point out that pedestrian needs are important too. Yeah. Am I dreaming or was there a commitment by Shaw's to contribute to the construction? I'm having trouble hearing you. I'm sorry. Am I dreaming or did Shaw's commit to contributing to that sidewalk? Do you weigh back when Shaw's was built, they contributed, they said they would pay something like $20,000 for sidewalk for kind of walkway improvements. I don't know if that was ever, I don't know what ever happened to that lofty commitment. It's not very much money. Yeah. It's not going to build a sidewalk necessarily, but it's something, okay. Okay, thank you. I don't know where that stands. That's held quite a while ago. I just want to point that out there. No, I appreciate it. There's a lot of other pedestrian needs around town too. And I know that the pedestrian, a new pedestrian walkway is part of that bridge, new bridge design. Yes. It's one piece of it. One piece of it, right. My follow was actually for James. Do you remember the other barrier? I didn't have to do with the timing of V-Trans redoing the 100 and StoStreet intersection. I just remember the whole thing was scoped and then there was some challenge where either the lights need to be upgraded or am I misremembering? But I thought there was some other barrier and then there was a concern with the grade of the proposed sidewalk going up to the best Western that they thought the town would be able to maintain with current equipment. I'll just say like anecdotally, yes, the intersection of StoStreet and Route 100, I see people running across and it's terrifying. And I remember, I think at the time of $435,000 price tag, which is not insignificant. So I appreciate you raising it. And again, we don't need to get into tonight, but just to say, I think there were...  It's just, it is an important area. It included a way to cross Route 100, which was tricky because of traffic and site distance and the crossing, potential crossing was at the other hotel there across from the bank. A little, yeah, so anyway. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Jen. I'm going to bow out. All right, appreciate your input. Thank you. I guess, you know, certainly one of the things that Alyssa brought up was the fact that we have this $200,000 question mark, which is significant amount of money. And I'm just wondering if we might revisit now how much money we've got and then what we might potentially have if the state decides to take over the re-assessment of town properties.  If that could perhaps serve as a guide over the next month for us to sort of identify potentially where this ARPA money would go and then how much we might have for community projects because I don't think we want to overstate our capacity to fund something and invite 100 people to 100 organizations to come forward if we only have $25,000 left to spend. Alyssa. And I think to King's why, I think, I mean, we can also be selective, you know, I threw out $200,000, but then in my head, I'm going, well, the sidewalk is that, you know, I think we have the ability to create parameters around that bucket, you know, in the context of how much we have overall and other priorities. Yeah, and, you know, for example, we might say invite community organizations to come forward with proposals up to $25,000 for projects concerning beautification, improved access, or that type of thing. Would we consider it like tiering it or specializing it?  We'd have a tier for, like, I guess I'm just throwing it out there, it's not, you know, relevant, but like a community garden and things like that. Like things that, no, it was just an example. And then like, sort of the same category from my mind. And then I'm going to throw this one out there, maybe, you know, something for, if we eventually need like a houselessness project of some kind, would we have like these different tiers for different projects, instead of just throwing them all in the same bucket and having them vie for this cash? That, you know, that was my idea. Danny, you had mentioned the application form. Was there a town that you saw that had an application form that you think we should look at? Yes, and I don't have it pulled up. There are ones I had saved, maybe in an email, but it would take me probably a couple of minutes to pull up. I'm just forward those to me. Yeah, I can do. Milton was excellent. Right. Yeah, you said, I think you're the one who sent me the list. So it would be from you. They had one. I also am noting, I'm on their page right now, that they passed a resolution outlining how the ARPA funds are allocated, and we had that content, Tom provided it in the town report, but I'm just saying out loud. I thought it was an interesting mechanism to really like articulate the rationale behind the spending. So it's not something we've typically done, but I thought it was interesting. Yeah. Mike. Maybe I'm out to lunch, but you could all tell me so, but didn't we do our survey that gave us an outline of what people want in this town? And I think we should, that was a pretty extensive survey. And I think we should honor that survey as to what the folks in the town want to do. We can't be everything to everyone. And I don't know, that's a fiscal conservative of me. The people have spoken kind of what they thought were important goals. And I'm not saying we should stick to that 100% but we should really try to honor that process. That's all I have to say. I think we respect that. And as Alyssa pointed out, I think we did respect that in the allocations when we went through this at the end of last year. But I think it's worthy to put it out again that the town has generally expressed their preferences. I'll just add one other thing that the rec committee has also developed a rubric for prioritizing rec projects and this is relevant in part because they're gonna be using those to prioritize what they bring to us for funding. And so that's yet another sort of screen with which we're using to prioritize and part of that is the degree to which it benefits a large number of people, which I think is worthy of consideration. So while the town has said they want to prioritize number one infrastructure, it might help us to identify types of infrastructure that are gonna benefit a larger percentage of the town and others. Yeah, King. I agree completely with you on that. But I agree with Mike a little bit as well. So we can just build a top three on this list. And if we were to further poke and prod, infrastructure, housing and recreational resources, we can just take those top three and go from there and ask the community once again, in those three categories, what is most important? Obviously housing is it's like you can't, you can uncategorize it, but like what kind of housing are they speaking about when it's infrastructure? What bridges are you talking about when it's recreational resources? What fields, what trails are they talking about? And then we can definitely have a perfect understanding of what the community wants if we do it that way. Danny, Melissa. Yeah, I think kind of evolving that idea a little bit. We had some feedback in this regard as well is rather than that open-ended question of like give some examples, give some possibilities. If we, this is our work along with the staff's work is, what have we identified? And can we give them three options in the sidewalk category, in the road category? I think we can always leave that open-ended other and open to suggestions, but if I was just myself and was not super involved and know what was going on, I wouldn't know where to start, but I would still wanna offer my voice. So if we could pose some of the priorities that we might have in mind and just make it a little bit easier for folks to feel like they have enough information to weigh in, I think would be more beneficial. And then I forgot my second thing, so carry on. Alyssa. And I guess adding to Danny's points, I just wanna recognize for infrastructure, I think personally, I value very significantly staff input on infrastructure. I feel like the municipality and EFUD are the infrastructure entities in town. They're the ones with a stable of projects. So just acknowledging like, a citizen may have interest in the infrastructure outside their home for whatever particular reason, but candidly the reason I supported the bridge recommendation is that it was a recommendation from Tom and Alec and staff with a long-term history in the municipality. So in vetting what a valuable infrastructure investment would be, I weighted their input very heavily personally. So it's not that I don't wanna, I think it is really wonderful that we have this thumbs up from the community. The way we did the survey, I mean, it was just a question of among these buckets, which would you prefer? And candidly, we didn't have an other community investment bucket. I was on the board at the time. I think also some things have evolved. We have this piece around the quarry. We ended up budgeting general funds, not ARPA funds to fulfill that need. So I don't disagree, but I think I would hate to be limited just to those three. I mean, we could choose to do it. I think it's a question of scale. Like, and again, that's why I said that 200 and now I'm talking myself maybe down to 100,000. I think we can honor the intention to have those be the most important investments and have a once in a generation opportunity to have funding just cause candidly, I don't envision in a future time of the select board being able to say, this is an open call. I do think having the priorities is really great cause I think one piece of feedback we did get is this letter felt like we have free money. Like, how do you want to spend it? It's a party. So I think rooting it in the goals of the board and how it furthers community priorities is a really great framing versus just like, what could you do with money? And I'll just add to that. I think it is a good opportunity to take advantage of the fact that we do have a number of different committees serving the town that have deliberated over these issues. So that the REC committee has been looking at a prioritization list for years now and has had several discussions and has a lot more involvement, understanding of these issues than certainly I do. So getting that recommendation from them we have now have a housing task force that's looking at prioritization of different issues and I would respect their due diligence on something like this as well. Next steps. Next steps. Again, I'll suggest that we take a look and maybe we can do part of that right now just identifying how much money we've got and perspective projects in some of the priority initiatives that Tom has just identified. Yes, but I can tell you quickly. You've got about 300,000. If the reappraisal piece is put back into that pot that was $200,000 allocated. So call it a half a million in rough numbers. There's a $26,000 commitment to the senior center being subtracted out of that. Although we might be able to find a way to do that better. And you haven't made a formal commitment yet to RW for the LA way. So about 475 and is it good to think about in rough numbers? Your understanding of the reappraisal situation is that the state is doing a study on this. And any idea which way the study is likely to go? I think it makes fundamental sense for the state to take this over and to do it on a regional basis. I think the study will say that. I'm hoping that by this time next year the process is done and there's a bill that's passed. And we're going to ideally get a presentation by the SE Committee on the 17th of July on their recommendations. And I think part of that will also include some indication of prioritization from the WREC committee. So we will have potentially some ideas on WREC projects. And the problem with infrastructure is that any bridge would likely absorb three fourths of this money. Or all of it. Well, the pool could absorb all the money, yeah. So, which would make an easy decision. We just wipe this balance right off the sheet. But maybe we should just, if we could ask you to bring forward a couple of those. I don't know if the pool will be, have a price tag sent to it. It'll be quite ready by then at that level. But hopefully we'll have something. Yeah, I can bring forward plenty of those ideas that won't be a problem. All right. And I think maybe we can put it on the agenda maybe towards the end of that evening. And that way help us decide whether we even are going to be in a position to open up a community fund or whether that makes any sense whatsoever. Something I'm beginning to think of during the course of this meeting. It would be the town doesn't have, hasn't had for a while any sort of formal capital improvement plan adopted by the select board. That's essentially what we're starting to talk about here. Right. So I can sort of start that for recreation and some other projects for next month. But we should think of it also as potentially a bridge to a local option tax that we can pretty quickly, I can pretty quickly come up with a plan that looks out three, four, five years depending on the category and requires many millions beyond what we have. But if a local option tax is a possibility it's a little less aspirational or more realistic to do some of those things. So in a way this process could be the process that happens all the time. And we are anticipating that the local option tax will be on the proposed charter and that you're getting a legal opinion of the language on that. Okay. Any further discussion tonight? Does anyone feel like we need further clarification as to next steps? You're none. Okay. Then I guess we're ready to discuss the agenda for the next meeting which is already been warned is gonna be at 5.30 Wednesday the 28th which is from next day after tomorrow. And then we'll have the training on inclusion for Wednesday night and Thursday night that will be with EFUD and the chairs of the town committees. Correct. Two hours each. Yes. And to quickly preview the next meeting which is just the meeting to adopt the tax rate. Dan Sweet, our Lister, sent me today the 411 which is the form that essentially is the current grand list. And that form using the estimated tax rate in the budget gets us slightly ahead of our budget for taxes which is where you wanna be to the tune of five or six grand. So we're not. Just scraping it. We're just scraping it but last year we were I believe about $35,000 behind. So just scraping it I think is pretty fair. If you scrape too much and at some point you went too high on your rate. It's good to be in the good side of things even if we're scraping it. Yeah, unfortunately if I can just piggyback that your grievance hearings aren't until so you're gonna be looking at an abstract grand list that doesn't take into account the grievance and it will change, ultimately it will change. And Dan has the legal authority to make some adjustments during those hearings. I was talking to Dan this morning and the trend that you see in the grievance world is we're below that 80% threshold of in essence our values compared to the market. So if you built a house in Waterbury in the past year, you're gonna get a number from our list or that looks low to you.  Right. After you reappraise that you're on the other side of that coin, you get a lot of grievances. Yeah. But I think right now we'll generally be okay. And a lot of grievances in my experience someone comes in and they say, you've got my house worth 350, I think it should be 345. So even if there's an adjustment made it's not gonna have a human impact on the bottom line. It's not gonna cut deeply into our pocket. That's nice. Do we also wanna invite Monica Callan if she's available and see if she's interested in either of those two positions at this meeting on the 28th. I'm just saying that because I feel as though the meeting on the 17th is gonna be pretty well charged but we can maybe determine that after we take a look at what's already on the list for the 17th. I think that's a good idea. All right. Could we ask Monica if she's interested in either of the two remaining positions with Central Vermont Regional Planning? And if so, if she would care to present, then we'll put her at the top of the agenda. Thank you. All right. And then on the 17th, what is, what have we got so far? We passed 54 and a half and that's a sense of touch age. That's what it's based on. Thank you. Here we go. At MOU with the Rotary Club. However, they said they don't want an MOU. Is that the same MOU or different one? A different one. The Rotary Club at their last meeting and I believe Mike knows about it, was there. Adopted an MOU about Rusty Parker. Oh, okay. My understanding is that- Is here in Feeding of Rusty Parker Park? Yeah, their board chair came by, took him a while to adopt that MOU. They were a little concerned about committing to things that they can't live up to in the future, given there's a small cadre that does a lot of work. Yeah, like Al Lewis. Yeah. So I told them tentatively, let's try to see if we can get on the agenda for the 17th, but I will fully admit I have yet to read the MOU. All right. Just a little addendum to that. Yes, there was a little consternation by the Rotary about the MOU, more that they're concerned because you don't create people like Al Lewis every day and Al's been for like 40 years care taking that park. And I think the Rotary was more concerned about what they might eventually have long-term if they can fulfill some things. And I explained, this is just kind of a framework and they're gonna do what they can do. The problem is they realize that there are some things at the town that are not directly related to Rotary. They're good for start up and tear down of the gazebo, the concerts in the park and stuff, but they can't maintain every event that happens at Rest Street Park or park. And that's gonna be, that was the real concerning point. And I had to do a little bit of a sales job because I think it's really important that the town has a MOU with Rotary that kind of spells out what each party is gonna do. And we made it to be a 60 day exit contract, say they can't do that, that it doesn't bind Rotary into kind of perpetually taking care of the park, stuff that they can't manage. That's all. Yeah. Probably a good time to take a look at it given the transfer of ownership. And I guess I did question even last year why Al Lewis was holding the keys to the pavilion, but you know, again, if Rotary wants to do this, that's great, but it's probably getting to the point where they're no longer able to do as much as they have in the past. 100% right, Roger. Yeah, okay, good. Well, it'd be good to review that. SE Group presentation. I imagine that's gonna require some time. It's gonna require some time and something to consider. I talked to the SE Group last week and I mentioned that there at the steering committee, maybe we should try to target the 17th. You may want to consider as a board having a special meeting with just the SE Group because I'm fearful that it's gonna be not fearful. I expect there's gonna be a fair amount of public comment related to that report and that's fine. We should either just plan for the 17th probably to run awful late, if that's the case, or maybe, but I think a special meeting might be a good idea in this case. There's certainly not gonna argue if you wanna give them another week. Well, if we give them another week, then we'd have to give them another two or three weeks because that would be the next time we meet would be sometime early in August. I mean, we can certainly plan for it. I just guess for that one, it's a little hard to anticipate how much time we'll need, but I expect it might be a big change. At least an hour, I would expect. But we may have time. I don't think there'll be a lot of controversy about the MOU with Rotary and if there is, we can probably allow that one to slide for two weeks. How about the charter? The charter shouldn't be too complex. The language around the local option tax is fairly simple. The language around the manager's appointment authority is also fairly simple. I just like to have an attorney review that. I sent it to the League of Cities and Towns where there's a free legal review. And in essence, he blessed the language but he raised some questions based on some experiences in other towns. I wanted to kick that up and spend a little bit of money and I'm gonna, I'm playing phone tag with a guy named Jim Barlow who's an attorney who really specializes in this sort of work. I'm not general counsel. He's more really a specialty in laws, charter language, things like that.  Great. How long? 15 minutes. I would think 15 to 20 minutes. 15, yeah. Presentation of financials from the auditors. I think 15 minutes would be 20. You like the position of these at the end of the meeting? I used to, you have tree care ordinance and then I think you said something about recreation and infrastructure costs, the market fund investment, or it could be coming back at that meeting with that. That's, at a minimum, should be in the parking lot. Oh, okay. I think it's a matter of what we think we have time on the 17th. From my perspective, I'm here, so I'm not the one arguing time. Yeah, I think that the tree care ordinance is ready to go. We'd be in a position to move that through without a lot of time, like 10 minutes. And maybe that should go above Charter. Yeah, this was really just a collection of things. Yeah, I got it pretty sure. But yeah, I mean, I think most people will be there for the presentation by the SE Group. So put that first. So yeah, let's just put that first and bite the bullet right away rather than keeping everyone on a tenterhooks. And then we can take up the Rotary Club and then the tree care ordinance, the Charter, and the presentation of the Fire Enchants. You're inviting the operators to come? So you want to come? Oh, really? The orders have to come? Okay, then we need to. The orders, of course, I want them west. Yeah, well, none of the attorneys have the power to sit here and put them in the desk. Yeah, no, I thought those would just zoom in.  They might care about, they work for us in the end, so we can figure it out. Or we can put them at the first meeting in August. Oh. Yeah, I don't think they're going to want to listen to the SE Group presentation. Can we put them before the Rotary Club? Or you, like, Roger, you just said move up to August and then just give yourself more time for the SE Group? Yeah, let's move them to August. This is nothing that's going to change between mid-July and the beginning of August. We have parking lot of unhoused people. Or we have updates on that? Yeah, the big update is the, so the state, I believe today was the first day of their veto session and that's the open-ended issue in the state budget. And so the pretty substantial number of people that will run out of housing as of June 30th, I think, are still in some limbo and it sounds like the state is working to, legislature's working to continue the program. I'm not sure at what level, for how long. But that's the major topic. Continue to have conversations with a number of folks about this. And every indication is that everyone who's an expert in this field, I would say, is telling me that you shouldn't expect any substantial impact on Waterbury, even if on June 30th the hotel program ends, that the individuals impacted are flocking toward their services. So Barry Montpelio, you are disproportionately impacted. Water, to the, on one side of the coin, we're the other side of the coin. It doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned and cautious about it, just the information I have. And that makes a certain amount of sense to me. And even before that, my observation and from talking to our troopers was that in the late winter, early spring, we had a small, visible population of homeless individuals in town that seems to have gotten smaller the past few months, for whatever reason. Okay. Any of the other issues in the parking lot need attention? Yeah, we should. Address road salt use sometime this fall? Sometime this fall. I am giving a presentation to the State Department of Forest and Parks, July 10th, about utilizing the old state quarry. That'll be a public meeting. If anyone wanted to join in, I can get the Zoom link at some point. Where did you say July 10th? July 10th, I don't have a time yet, but it's just gonna be a presentation via Zoom. So if a PowerPoint. I'm definitely gonna participate in that. This will be exciting. Yeah, I completely wanna watch this. Do we wanna add what Tom mentioned about capital improvement planning as a parking lot or do we feel like that will come up via charter or other items? We can put that in the parking lot. And it sounds like the first, for my notes, the first area is WREC, what we wanted to. Mm-hmm. Do we address that maybe in August? On that first meeting in August? The same thing that I mentioned. Is that something different? I just wanna make sure I'm not. You have mentioned the hardware updates, Karen. The financials from the auditors. Oh no, that one I know is moving to August, but something in the lines of recreation and infrastructure costs really part of the fund investment. I think it's kind of a combo of the two. So some of that was specifically potential projects that we could spend ARPA on in those categories. But then the piece I feel like it would be nice to capture moving forward is Tom was saying in doing that, that might form the basis of a broader capital improvement plan. And I just think that's a great idea to look at generally to inform ARPA and other things. Oh, Mike, I'm just gonna stand with you. Mike. Another thing we might, I don't have the parking lot but I don't believe it's on the parking lot. This came in my discussions with the DRB and it's something that's been a long concern of mine. I know I spoke a little bit with Tom about it, about, you know, they're really concerned about the lack of, you know, certificate of occupancy, certificate of compliances, especially with all mortgage companies now are looking for that. I think we have to get kind of back on track, you know, in our municipal system to start issuing those things. And I don't know how if we need to, you know, have a discussion about that or that's just something I think, it sounded like Tom said that's sort of in the works. Yeah, a lot of better things than happened there once we're up to staff too. So hopefully soon enough. As a new zoning administrator. Dina thought to get rid of that. Yes. And I think mostly because she didn't have the capacity to go out and leave that. No, as I recall, Dina thought to get rid of zoning compliance letters, which is saying this is definitely a thing. That and the idea of an inspection or occupation if you build something according to plans are different. And the planning commission has talked about those, which has also been a circular around someone doing an inspection to say you were permitted for a three bedroom house. Did you build a house with three bedrooms or 12? But I know Dina did. Yeah. The house in one of recent, it was built, wasn't anything like they would permit it to be. Yeah. So I appreciate what you're saying for sure. But I know she said and she's like, it's not even binding, right? Cause it wasn't that she would pull all this data and still something could have been there. Like it didn't really, they had a lot of. Yeah. So yeah, I think for her it just seemed, why am I writing this letter? Uh-huh. Right. So we've parked that someplace or guess what? It's a permanent repart anyway. Then we're back to all the permitting. Well, how about all this stuff has been in the parking lot since my first meeting at the select board. Oh, we moved a few things out. That's very good. Well, it's gotten smaller, but some of the things remain schedules of fees. Yeah. We adjusted for this room. So not everything. I don't know what you're saying. That was for rec fees. Okay. We haven't looked at it. So we did adjust the fee for this room, but that parking lot item was specific to recreation. And it was rec field fees, I believe. Oh yeah. Yeah. We can look at that in August. Why not? And when do we need to do emergency management training? That was Mr. Bards. There was. Mr. Bards. He had sent a message. Point taken. Okay, I'm unmuted. I think it's really important we could get the folks from the state emergency management to give us some sort of training, and they'll schedule it as to what we need. It doesn't have to be like, they give a class, an eight hour class, and I don't think that's something that the select board needs, but the basics of emergency management, I think are something important that all select board people should be aware of. And it's something we could just work with Gary Dillon on working with the state emergency management folks and scheduling some sort of training for them to do for us. All right. That'd be something that we could do on a public meeting in about an hour? Don't know if, and I'm going to reach out to the state and find that out. And I expected it's not something they'll do in August. I think it's going to be a little longer than that. Okay. All right. I'd probably Tom reach out to Keith Coven. He's really good about, you know, he's very, you know, believes in training select boards and stuff like that. He would be a good resource. Okay. I can do that. And this isn't something that VLCT would normally do. And so that's more of a state thing. Okay. Anyone else want to grab something out of the parking lot? I just want to note for road salt use, the conservation commission has some good data there. Okay. I haven't had a chance to go through it yet, but came the conversation, believe originated during budget discussions, December, January. So we talked about, after talking to public works, their observation was that towns that have little salt areas, it's a road sign, but it's not anything in reality. So they said, if there's going to be a policy to reduce salt, whether that's for cost savings or environmental reasons to pick some roads and would just say, aside from maybe bridges or intersections, we're just going to, at some point in the winter, just pull the switch and not saw those roads at all. Would they be dirt, dirted? Yes. Well, we don't salt them anyway. We dirt. No, he's talking about the spreading dough just for public safety, as opposed to salt. Yeah. That was, thank you very much. Yeah, sand, dirt, whatever concoction we come up with. Well, it's also coming up. I know I was at the last conservation commission meeting and they're going to, shortly they're going to be having the results of their community mapping, the exercise that they went through in a public meeting and the results of that will be forthcoming. So probably what came out of the original community mapping and the results are probably going to be something that we should look forward to and geared to whatever projects we want to move forward with. Okay. So then maybe we would invite Billy Vigdor to make a short presentation to us at the beginning of August. I think that would be good. Again, in, I think July, they're going to have, I think it's, I forget if it's June or July is when they're going to have their community, have the folks from Monfish and Wildlife present in a public meeting the results of the community mapping session. So as they say, more news than 11. Yeah, 11 is the number of days left in June. So FYI. Okay, tentatively put Billy and the conservation commission in August and as to road salt use that could either happen in August or I think into September. Yeah. I think I'm just going to put those items right. I'm not, if I can speak for a minute. So as you see on here, I'm going into August. I'm not here for either meeting. So I'm happy to mourn and create the agenda for the first August meeting on the 7th. I won't be here that Friday. The next meeting bath will help as best as she can. I noticed today when I was building some templates for her that in September, your first meeting is scheduled on Labor Day after we're closed that day. And imagine you want to meet that day. I don't need an answer tonight, but just an awareness and put a placeholder on the calendar for the Tuesday the 5th. As if you do with the following week, then you start getting into the weeds with the planning commission and other things. So just an awareness about that because you'll be making that decision when I'm gone as to what they do. We can make that decision right now. Anyone having a problem meeting on Tuesday the 5th as opposed to Labor Day? All right. Mike, are you good? And Danny? I'll open my calendar. I think it should be fine, but I don't know unless I look at my calendar. Yeah, I don't need, I'm on my wife's cell phone. So I don't have access, but I think that's fine. I think we should maybe should have kind of like almost like a standardized policy when our select board meetings fall on a federal holiday that falls on one of those Mondays our select board meetings automatically revert to the following Tuesday, but be a nice easy thing to do. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think that makes sense unless otherwise noted. Go ahead. First, Emily have some struggles. My, I work for my profit. Our board meets quarterly on Tuesdays. So it's not every month, but it does happen to be that Tuesday. So I can't attend that September. We can find another words of, you know, it's okay, but that's the Tuesday schedule for me. Like I said, you don't need to make a decision tonight. I just want to put it out. Just wanted to mention for you. Any other, anyone want to make another suggestion like Wednesday? Yeah, I was thinking any time in the same week. Does Wednesday bump us up against any. DRB is potentially meeting in this room. Maybe you just put a survey monkey or something out to see if we could all do that. I don't want to know the survey monkey. I don't even know how to build a survey monkey. Where has the monkey? Okay. If we went back to the week prior and did Friday the first, still put us in our schedule. Friday? Okay, it's a suggestion. I did the 31st, I'm the third same person. I'm a hard fall. Friday of Labor Day weekend might not be a winner. I would agree with that. When I come in, there are people. You can guarantee no public will attend. Right, there you go. Yeah, let's bring up disc golf on that day. Okay, let's see. Alyssa, you got a suggestion? It's going to move to adjourn, but. Oh, wow. Before resolving the decision, the can will be. I said I would do warrants and I'd like to be on my Bismarck. Yeah, that's true. We are at the. It feels unresolved as acting secretary and all I guess. We'll work on this first meeting on September issue and try to get that resolved in July. How's that? Before you go. That's fine. We can resolve it in July. I'm going to leave the placeholder and the calendar just in case. I'm going to zoom in from Europe. Nope. It'd be fun. And we applaud that. I will entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. And you post. Hearing none, we are adjourned.