to order here for Monday April 15th through the agenda the first thing on the list changes or additions date with that just for this year 2019 I don't think you can actually add it to the consent agenda because it's being added you have to you have to specifically pick it up so just you put it on there but it can't be just consent agenda you're going to have to have a specific issue talk about that she asked to put it under the consent agenda which means you automatically approve it if you approve the consent agenda and you can't put it on the consent agenda is what I'm telling you you can add it to the agenda but not put it on the consent agenda okay so we're just going to add it to the agenda then let's add it after the entertainment permit for the meeting now all right then with that addition would somebody like to approve the agenda I'll make a motion to approve the agenda with the modification second second that for the discussion none all those in favor say aye aye now approve the consent agenda which is just the minutes for the April 1st meeting there are motion to approve that please make a motion to approve that second second okay all those who wish to approve it say aye aye public anybody here from the public wish to speak at this time ever if they should be anybody want me to mic but yep can you go there or not either way under the public it's not a complaint it's a concern the meeting last week of the two state troopers it was supposed to be here unfortunately they were both tied up on emergency situations there were five people in attendance including Annie and myself and we need somehow getting on WDEV the morning of happenings or whatever and I would think that maybe WDEV would give us a couple more shouts to encourage people to come and learn what the police are attempting to do and how safe we are and how well people are accepting the new changes from a former police department to real trained police officers any questions I'm not following anybody for that but just we've got to get out into the back country and get people out here to come and listen thank you that's probably as difficult to do something like that there ever is to get them to come here so we'll do what we can okay nobody else from the public we'll move on to committee re-appointments and there's a fair list of them start out with the first one which is Mary Cohen planning commission re-up for a three-year term ending April 30th 2022 Steve Pelkey for a recreation committee for a three-year term ending in April 30th 2022 Steve Hagenback and Tracy Sweeney for a conservation commission each for a four-year term ending April 30th 2023 and then Barb Blauvel and Jack Carter for the tree committee each for a three-year term ending April 30th 2022 next is Steve Lott's speech a tree warden for one-year term ending April 30th 2020 and again Steve Lott's speech representative for Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission for a one-year term is there a motion to approve those re-appointments please I make a motion to approve the slate as presented second but he wished to comment further seeing none all those in favor say aye aye library directors quarterly update on me is that not working on there? I believe it is yep it's a switching round do I have to be real close to this? yep almost got to eat it right into it what? is that good? well thank you first of all for giving me some time on your agenda I appreciate it some of you got some swag over there we have some new magnets for the library it gives patrons an easy way to keep track of our website and our hours and put it on your fridge when you get home I wanted to give you some highlights from the first quarter of 2019 I also have some statistics to share with you I have a handout which I'll give you at the end that tells you it gives you a look at the use of the library by taxpayers and community members for the first quarter but first I just wanted to share some of the highlights with you of our work in January, February, March probably the biggest exciting thing that happened in the first quarter was we launched some new content, new digital content for our patrons we launched a new service of audio books and e-books that are downloadable that offers a much bigger collection of titles than the previous one and it was cheaper and we also launched something called RB Digital is the company entertainment platform and that included movies, television shows, SAT prep tests the great courses which some of you may have heard of and indie flicks so that entertainment package is now available to patrons on a sort of a pass basis so they can get a pass for one of those services and use it as much as they like for one week and then the pass expires so and the launch for that went pretty well we of course had some questions from people about how to get on it and how to use it but for the most part it's gone very smoothly so we're excited about that we are also adding, you may be familiar with our passes we have passes that patrons can borrow they get them either free or reduced entry into area attractions and this spring when sort of the season starts we are adding four new passes to area attractions for residents to borrow from the library and those include the Montshire Museum which is in Norwich, Vermont Shelburne Museum, Birds of Vermont Museum which is in Huntington, or Hinesburg, Huntington the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum which is in Virgins and also an organization called EEE Vermont which offers classes for senior citizens workshops and lectures and things like that similar to Osher, you might have heard of Osher but it's a different organization so we also hosted again this year the AARP volunteers who do free tax preparation I guess you could say for folks who need it mostly senior citizens and they did a great job and I think they helped 64 different people file their taxes this year so it's a wonderful service that they provide they do it all on a volunteer basis and we just provide the space and we help them a little bit with the logistical things but it's great for patrons and we also made tax forms available to people to walk in and get, as you probably know both the state and the federal government are really pushing people to do their taxes online and it's gotten harder and harder to get actual paper forms so we made sure that we were able to help people with getting paper forms if they needed them also what happens in January every year is all Vermont libraries are required to fill out and submit a very detailed and lengthy report about all sorts of things to the Vermont Department of Libraries so that was completed in January as far as programming we have added two after-school programs per month that we didn't add before they're mostly craft projects for kids 8 to 11 to come in after school and do we also have added a Saturday program once a month we're showing movies for families to come in and watch and we also have added several drop-in programs during the school breaks, both February and April for families that are looking for something fun to do with the kids during the school vacation I wrote and submitted two successful grant proposals this quarter one was $1,200 for nine pairs of snowshoes we haven't purchased them yet but they're coming it's not snowshoe season yet so we have some time and the other one is $450 from the Vermont Department of Libraries but it's really a federal grant funneled through them for one staff person one and a half staff persons to attend a conference that's being held in Burlington this year it's a national library conference for small and rural libraries and from everything I've heard it's supposed to be a really excellent conference and we're excited that they're in Vermont this year they rotate states every year I think they're in Kansas next year so the other thing I had been thinking about the fact that we have this generator in the building now and what does that going to mean if people in town lose power it's possible that we would see in the library we would see people coming in to use the computers the bathrooms etc etc and so I purchased a bunch of different charging cords figuring that people are going to need to charge up their devices if they're without power for any length of time and they're still trying to communicate with family and so on and so forth so we now have the capacity to have people come in with their phones and their tablets and their whatever and even if they don't have their own charging cord with them they can charge up their devices just trying to be prepared ahead of time we trained and recruited and trained two new volunteers during this first quarter and they are mostly coming in once a week to help us with shelving and some of the other sort of clerical type tasks that happen every day let's see we're preparing for a new staff member as you know that was approved at town meeting for us to add a 25 hour a week patron services librarian so far I have received 19 resume slash applications and pretty soon I'll be going through them and narrowing them down and we will proceed with interviews probably by the end of the month so we're very excited about having some extra hands in the library for that some of you may have seen me at town meeting I had a table that I staffed during the town meeting full of all kinds of library information and enjoyed talking to folks and I'm still new to the community so I'm trying to find ways to make the library more visible and get to know people I had a handout at town meeting with some statistics on how to share that with you you may have already seen it on the table there in the back so this is just a nice visual snapshot of a couple of key statistics for the library this was for the calendar year 2018 along those lines working to integrate the library more deeply into the community I have been attending revitalizing waterbury meetings as well as the rotary club meetings and I've become a member of both of those organizations well the library has become a member but I'm representing the library I have found that a really nice way to put faces and names together and try to get to know people in town so the capital campaign has a small amount of funds left from when this building was built and the staff and I have evaluated kind of the use of the space and how things are being used now that we're in this new building and we saw that we needed some more flexibility and we needed some more furnishings so we came up with a proposal and it was approved by the commissioners and the friends of the library who actually have the checkbook so those two groups both have to approve spending and we are in the process of receiving some new furnishings including another work table upstairs in the back of the library we find that oftentimes all of the study spaces and tables are full and there's still people walking around looking for a place to sit with their laptop or have a brief meeting or so on so we're trying to add some more sort of nooks and crannies along those lines we also bought two new racks for holding DVDs and audio books because we are running out of room and I would like to expand those collections and in the youth area we purchased a number of new furnishings and storage bins for toys and puzzles and things that we'll be purchasing just to kind of liven up the youth area and bring in some more seating options for people and a craft table that will be available whenever families come to the library so we're kind of excited about that and I'm sure you're aware those funds are restricted to use for I guess long term furnishing type of things not for general library budget so the other thing that we did with some of the capital campaign money as well as a $500 donation from a taxpayer and a big library user is we have ordered some additional blinds mostly for upstairs where we love the sunshine when it comes in that building up there but it does make it hard to sit at that table outside of my office on a sunny day you can't see a screen because the sun is so bright so we worked with the same outfit and did all the rest of the blinds in the library and those will be installed within the next few weeks I believe so now I'd like to turn to telling you just a couple of things about some programs that we had in the first quarter I'm going to focus on a couple of adult programs this time maybe another time I'll tell you about some children's programs one of the services we provide the community is to help sessions and these are done by our tech library and Delia Gillan and she makes herself available on an appointment basis three days a week when she's here and she sits down with people one on one and helps them with a whole range of technology questions so just this last month in March I'm going to show you the range of some of the things that she helps people with she helped an artist submit her application for an art show she helped a writer submit a children's novel to several different publishers she helped a local businesswoman get her business listed on Google she helped another patron organize her computer files who doesn't need that right and she helped a senior citizen figure out how to play a Tai Chi DVD on her laptop so that she could practice at home another program that we had let me back up a little bit Vermont Humanities Council sponsors a statewide reading program every year and what they do is they select a book that appeals to a wide age range and then they provide grants to libraries to fund multiple copies of the books that can be kept in the community so in other words we give them away and they also provide support for PR and programming around the book so our adult facilitator Judy Byron this year again applied and received for this grant in 2019 and this year the book is March volume 1 it's a graphic novel which if you don't know graphic novels are basically very long story length comic books this was written by Senator John Lewis who was one of the big six of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and so this is his it's actually three volumes the first volume is the one that we are focusing on for Vermont Reads so one of the programs in the series that we're doing around this book was a talk entitled a history of the concept of race with a man named William Edel I think I'm saying that right and I'm just going to read you what Judy wrote about the program afterwards she said we had 17 community members come the talk was fascinating participants were attentive questions were interspersed throughout and at its conclusion many shared their experience with race and racism attendees stayed late to continue talking and what grew out of this was a general consensus of wanting to meet again to continue discussion of this important topic William told us after the workshop that our group was the most sincere post-talk he had ever encountered and Judy commented to me that she was really floored by how open people were about discussing their experience with racism and race in Vermont so that seemed like a really great opportunity for people to delve into a sensitive issue so the last time I was here you asked me somebody asked me what the number of non-resident library members was and I told you that I would find out and so I did it turns out it's not as easy a question to answer as you would think I was able to get a report on the number of non-resident patrons that are currently in our database and I have this on the handout for you so don't feel like I take notes there's currently 975 however many of those are no doubt expired and the system would not give me a report of how many of those users are expired or up to date on a given date so I also generated a figure of how many have joined or renewed their non-resident memberships in the last three years to get a sort of a more narrow down picture of it and that number is 133 you also asked me how our library compares with other libraries and I couldn't remember if that was a question that was specific about non-resident users or just more of a broad question so I did prepare a list of let's see list of other libraries that charge non-resident fees and what those are and that's on your handout so you can take a look at how we are compared to other libraries I also included a link to the report that I mentioned when I first sat down that all the libraries do in January and give to the department of libraries they collate all of that data into a big spreadsheet and I included the link to that spreadsheet or to the page with the spreadsheet on here so that if you have a mind to you can go and look at that spreadsheet and see how the library compares in all sorts of statistics including programming and staff and budget and all those kinds of things to other public libraries in Vermont and you can sort it by geographic area or you can sort it by the size of the population served and so on so it's a really handy tool and with that I will close unless there are any questions Call me your non-resident fee it's $10 right now $10 per person right but that does not you don't charge children right that's correct so in the budget for a budget report we're taking in $710 this year so far in the non-resident fee so that means 71 adults have paid so far this year the budget is $2,200 last year I think we took in about 23 to 2400 so thank you it's kind of on pace to be what we will last year I think cool one year yes one year how do you get your number of visits do you have a counter at the door right we have an electronic counter and there's one at the door where you come in from the larger parking lot and there's also one inside the library on these doors here from the hallway into the library on the other side of our doors you have some sort of fudge factor for people going through that car to get a candy bar or something yeah well there's a number of reasons why it's not a perfect science of course the staff usually uses the door to the sal room which doesn't have a counter on it but sure we have people that might make multiple trips we have the mail delivery person who comes every day and we have some of the staff go in and out our door from the other side of the building on the other hand it's also set the counter is set about this high so it misses all the children who are below that height so I can't tell you that that's an exact wash but the important thing is to look at the trends and the trend since the new building opened is the J curve I just want to make a comment over the last few years I think that especially the interactive talks and stuff like that have been much improved so where I wasn't attending a lot of library programs I've actually been in a library a few times we try to make sure that we are presenting programs that are going to appeal to people with different interests so I'm glad to know that that's worked that's real important because I know you used to never seem very much on hunting, fishing outdoor activities but now you know there's even hunter education which I think is pretty neat great, thank you for the comment I'll pass that on to Judy so while I was sitting here listening to you give your presentation here tonight what came into my head was are you sure you're operating our library or are you operating all things for all people it sounds like the scope has gotten real broad over time here that's good to see because obviously people are, you know some people are benefiting from it the statistics link is that generated by statistics that each library sends in? Correct it's just collated into one great big spreadsheet yeah well I appreciate your observation Chris because you're right that libraries in this day and age are no longer warehouses of books, yes of course we have books in a variety of formats but the sort of in our business what we talk about is being community centers and community hubs with lots of things going on that support an active and interesting community and that support literacy in all different ways and lifelong learning in all different ways. On that theme what does the library need 21 21 say that you got a grant to get I thought you said 21 I'm sorry the grant was for $1,200 and we're going to be buying nine pairs of snowshoes of various sizes for people to borrow and check out just one but that's okay I'm sorry if I misspoke the grant was for $1,200 the bigger question is why does the library need snowshoes at all? Okay I'm not criticizing I'm just wanting to ask that. Okay so libraries are more and more collecting what we call non-traditional items and our telescope that hopefully some of you heard about is one example of that and so the snowshoes is an idea I brought with me from Franklin County we had an organization called Rise of Vermont which started off just in Franklin County and I believe now they're trying to expand statewide but they are all about supporting healthy choices and healthy activities in the communities that they operate in and they offered a grant to all the libraries in Franklin County for nine pairs of snowshoes and most of us took them up on it and so the nice thing about being able to borrow a pair of snowshoes from your local library is if you have say you have guests coming to town and you want to all go out on the trail you can borrow some snowshoes for them let's say you're a family with young kids and you don't really know if it's going to be worth the investment is everybody going to like snowshoeing maybe maybe not so you can borrow them from the library and try them out and see if you like them yes ever very quickly I'm over at coffee and I would encourage when you have a speaker like this somebody walked in on channel 15 to 17 the meeting other than being the library director doesn't know the name of what a real title is so when they speak they would say I'm Mary Smith and I'm the library director or the program director I think that would be helpful for people watching that don't have an idea who this lady is can I do it now or is it too late I'm Almy Landauer and I'm the director of the Waterbury Library I started on basically September 1st thank you I just have one quick question I appreciate you coming out tonight and I think the library is definitely on a good path with the non resident fees can you remind me is there an option where they can actually buy a pass that this is a per visit fee right no that's an annual fee so it's ten dollars for a non resident to be able to use a library to get a library card yes and is that it seems like we're on the low end of the average obviously yes we are is that something that you have talked about raising and where is that sweet spot of yeah I have talked about with the staff and I'm planning to talk about it with the commissioners to see to get their take on it and what they think the department of libraries recommends and I think it was actually a requirement in the standards before they stop kind of stop doing the standards they're revamping them anyway that's another story they highly recommend that you don't have your non resident fee higher than the per capita support that you're getting from your town and I think there's there's probably maybe two on that list that are anywhere close to their per capita support so we have a lot of room that we could go up but on the other hand it would be quite a shock to people for it to triple or quadruple in one year so most likely if the commissioners do decide to raise it it would be incremental would be my guess I notice on your new patrons here your little chart 2015 is 196 2016 was 551 then it drops substantially for 2017 there you must have an idea why that happened I'm pretty sure that it was the excitement of the new building that brought a lot of people in that first year and now it's sort of leveled off to sort of our new normal when was the Stowe library out they still are they're planning on reopening May 1st and I think we had about I'm going to guess I haven't looked lately but I think we had maybe about 40 Stowe people come and get cards here for the duration of the period where it was closed and then if they want to continue that once the Stowe library opens then they will pay the not nothing to do we gave them a we gave them a incentive well we gave them a free membership while their library was closed figuring they would do the same for us if we were thank you again for your time and I will see you in the next quarter we appreciate it thanks I'm sure Ann's got plenty of batteries okay Barb a little overview on the emergency management plan thank you I'm Barb Pharr and I wear a number of different hats in the community tonight I'm wearing the hat of preparing the emergency management plan and every year there's a new plan that's required by the state to be on register and there are a number of things that when communities adopt their plans they're eligible for certain incentives meaning if there's a disaster a federally declared disaster and funding becomes available and Waterbury has had some damage you get a higher percentage of a match it's responsible for a 25% match and if you have an approved plan or an adopted plan the state will pay half of that match so and then with other grants you're eligible for hazard mitigation grants buyout grants other grants as they become available so this year there is a new format for the plan which is different from prior years and this plan that's in front of you is following that format that's been requested so a couple things since you received the draft last Friday as of this morning Bill Shepluk we learned that Bill Woodruff who's been the emergency management director we knew all along that he's been building a house and going to be moving out of town but he is no longer going to be the emergency management director so we had a very brief conversation and it's me if you approve anyway I think most of you know my history with emergency management and so I'm glad to fill in although I think I got the short end of the stick on that one so I did change that on the cover page the information that's in here the contacts that are in here and there is a cover page that if you approve the plan you will have to sign it Chris on behalf of the select board that you've approved it and then Bill will also have to sign it it goes to the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission for their review which they've already tentatively approved it it's all set to go and then it goes to the state and the state has requested these to be in by May 1st so that's one change the emergency management director second, it's not really a change but it is a change for this plan because it was never in any of the old ones but we had an internal discussion about if there's a disaster and this becomes our new emergency operation center and the select board isn't meeting for another week or two if Bill Sheplucks out of town on vacation and just a number of things if in an emergency situation can the emergency operation center director whoever in it may be Bill but can that person have the authority to make up to $5,000 worth of request for could be anything could be for truckloads of gravel it could be for mutual aid it could be for dumpsters it could be any number of things that we have that ratified at the next select board meeting so that's language that was in the draft plan that you got it's in here it's a change from current practice I think staff haven't have an allocation of up to $500 right now the purchasing policy that we have in place requires department heads to get purchase orders signed by me if they're going to be purchasing more than $500 of any single purchase we're already talking internally about maybe that should it's been $500 for a little bit but certainly for emergency management purposes it's not a problem as long as I'm here I would sign whatever statute to make any purchases for the town in the name of the town but if I'm not here then you're stuck with the policy so I think $5,000 is a reasonable so that's a new one so with that if this is approved that language will then go into an update and revise the purchasing policy for the town as a general policy moving forward at a future date this will be if you approve it tonight what I'll do is ask Carla if she can put it on the website so that the emergency plan is available for the general public to see what we've done in the past I would ask that the section that deals with private phone numbers for 24-7 contact information come out so that that part is not posted just it's a personal type issue used under emergency purposes by those who need to use it during an emergency same thing with the school crisis plan we have a copy of an older I think it's two years old school crisis plan they've got 24-7 contact phone numbers and that is going to be an attachment or it'll be a resource to this plan it'll be something that's not published because of the personal information there does anybody have any questions on the plan I was just going to ask you that other than what you've spoke about there hasn't been anything substantial that's changed then no the plan itself has changed a bit and they're how it's structured do you mean the information, well the plan the way that we would operate is still the same but there's a little bit more structure to an incident command system structure in the way the state is looking at how they'd like to move forward they have asked for who is likely to fill positions in a community and right down to naming the name and what's their phone number and contact information we've included that in here before we were kind of like well we'll find somebody we know who it will be but we're not going to put it now it's in the plan and Chris you'll see your name in the plan in the select board we would imagine if we got to a point where we had to have volunteers in here and we really had a critical need like with Irene that all of you at some point would perform some kind of a valuable function for the operation of the town we've got Bill in as the public information officer and sort of the voice for the community who would be communicating both at the local level state level and to federal level if we had a large enough emergency that we needed to get federal aid and federal assistance in here we would have a communication team as part of that role where we would also part the rest of the team would be doing social media outreach making sure that the papers front porch forum Facebook everybody would know what's going on so that's a little bit more specific than what we had in the past minor issue is there both an emergency management coordinator and director well there was so in the plan that you got before Bill Woodruff was the emergency management director and I was the emergency management coordinator because I'm trying to get back away from that role and as of today that switched so Bill Woodruff will still remain a critical piece of the whole emergency response for infrastructure public works and all that but he won't be the EMD I don't know if you want to speak to that Bill and we won't have an emergency because the way it's written now is it has you as coordinator in one spot and director in another spot yeah it's is that the plan as of today right that's where you just hand it out all right I'll have to go and check that and just because just reading through it when we had this it gets confusing because it then refers it talks to you as being emergency management coordinator but then it goes EMD which probably doesn't define EMD which I knew it's emergency management director but someone reading this it's a minor thing I just want to say it's a really good because I worked a lot with FEMA in my professional job and this is a pretty good plan I think you did some good thought on I'll take one more breeze through it and make sure that we've got consistency with that readability because you really want the right lines of authority so is the reason that Bill Woodruff is not holding that position because you have to be a resident of the town is that you don't have to be a resident of the town wish not to do it a little bit he was pretty happy both of us we had a short discussion on that this morning I don't know Bill how you feel well I was under the impression that he couldn't be he could be but he was I guess he was told on Friday and I wasn't here for that for some of the other appointed positions for the town that he'd no longer be eligible for those and there was I think an assumption made that oh okay well I can check that one off as well so that's what led to the discussion this morning and we could put him back on that would if you want to I mean he'll still be here he'll still be playing a critical role he's pretty much your your fill in when you're not here anyway he's got that authority so there would be I didn't know if he was even considering if retirement was on the table as well at this point no wonder if he can't retire before I retire yeah yeah he may end up going stir crazy like my wife did anyway so yeah alright well everybody's all set with that just a motion to approve and adopt the plan as proposed with the edit tweaks I move that we approve the local emergency management plan dated April 15th, 2019 with minor editorial changes second to that more discussion I feel like you had a question there my Eric no my mic is red oh I'll um I'll let it open a second no further comments or questions all that wish to approve the emergency management plan say aye please aye thank you for passing that over um did you want a quick update on the mainstream? absolutely would love it yes I'll take care of it um so just quickly with my other hat on um as the transportation liaison with the transportation projects in Waterbury and VTRANS I've noticed that there has been some start of activity there's not been an official start to the uh digging on Main Street yet which should start up hopefully next week or so um they've been doing some drainage work they've been doing the tree cutting um getting ready putting the sign package up getting ready for the soil deposit area that's right up off of um the interchange that's gonna go towards the uh it'll be when they're digging up the soil and they need to put it somewhere it's going to go where the self-bound entrance to I-89 used to be is that up by Armory Drive? yes yep so you have seen some work up there um interesting note of all the trees that came down about 99% of all people who have had expressed concern um about what's going on oh my gosh the trees are coming down they were from out of town people from out of town Ducksbury, Moortown, Hyde Park Montpellier the list goes on so it was uh really there was one person from Waterbury now is it were they just not uh aware of the fact that Main Street was being reconstructed or I think that has a lot to do with it they were people who uh either traveled through Main Street down and were surprised to see the trees do you need another battery? okay so um yeah it's coming along they should start doing the um ground well breaking ground right on Main Street as probably most of you know they're going to start at Park Street which is right by Rusty Park Park and South out of town that way that'll take place all of this year um this summer and into the fall they will start doing some work um we call it Segment 2 the way that the plants were initially developed this was Segment 1 from here to Stow Street Segment 2 Stow Street to um Batch Elder no Park Borough Park yeah it's right in between there Park Street to Batch Elder and then Batch Elder to Demarra so they're working on Segments 3 and 4 um primarily this season and a little bit on Segment 2 around Prohibition Big and Elm Street in the fall late summer fall and when they are done with their work this year all of Segments 3 and 4 will be paved over they'll have new sidewalks in infrastructure will be in and then next spring about a little bit later than now they'll go back in and plant the trees that are scheduled to go in next spring 3 and 4 will be done and then they'll start back on finish Segment 2 and then Segment 1 next year so they'll be bringing the the material that they pull out of the ground there they'll be bringing it down Armory Drive then no they're going to go up on the interchange oh they're going to dump it over the bank from up above so they've opened that uh guardrail that's there they've got barrels and we had a discussion last week well you know we've got to be real clear we've got to follow those trucks in there um because we don't want that to happen so it's not clear at this point if they're going to have uh flaggers to open up um that area when the trucks come in for right now they're anticipating maybe one truck a day for the next 3 weeks and then after that there's going to be you know it's going to ramp up so how are they going to I can see going up the ramp and driving in there they'll dump their load and turn around or will they back out or will they back out and I don't think they have said they're not going to come down Armory Drive but they're going to come back out and somehow make that corner and then come down Stow Street so take a right right pretty sharp hairpin there it's a sharp hairpin and it'll be interesting to see how they do that yeah they got it figured out I'm sure they can do it well question back to the trees was there any would it be possible to talk to I think it was Potter that took down most of those trees to get a sense of how what the health of the trees were that were taken down just as we get further and further into you know having these diseases and to know if there was any pathology done afterwards to say you know this amount of trees yeah so Jane Brown really is the person who evaluated the trees before they came down along with there was a state historic preservationist there was an arborist and there was a team of people who evaluated the trees for their health for their root system impacting the infrastructure and right of way where were they in there anecdotal story that I didn't hear directly from Potter but I heard from the construction crew who did hear it from Potter that about half the trees were diseased and rotting on the inside roughly half so that's third hand that I'm telling you that the one tree of interest that has sparked a lot of interest is the big red oak tree that came down at 131 South Main Street you gave me a call on that tree Jane Brown was very interested in it anyway Chris was interested in the tree so there have been a lot of meetings that tree has been saved and either tomorrow or Wednesday there's a gentleman that owns a sawmill the largest the one that can saw the largest logs in the state and he specializes in large heirloom trees this is considered a large heirloom tree and a quick scan of the rings in the tree indicate that it's about 143 years old which would make it planted had been planted around 1876 which would have been 100 years 100 year anniversary from 1776 the founding of our country the terminology I believe is a century oak or centennial oak and I didn't learn until today that it's the only red oak that was on Main Street so anyway we're preserving that tree and having discussions Chris is part of that discussion about how do we really honor that tree and how do we tell the story of that tree so that's in the works want to add to that my question was is there a sense of what type of tree is going to be replanted in Main Street every there is a if you go on to waterburyworks.com each of the segments is on there and each of the segments shows where the new trees are being planted if we go back to the plans it tells exactly what type of tree will go into that place so there is a plan that's out there and it varies between deciduous trees we've got some evergreens we've got flowering plant trees so there's an assortment I've just wondered from a disease perspective I think that was all taken into consideration I wish Jane were here to speak to that because I wasn't part of that next time thank you anything else thank you very much alrighty next thing on the agenda is to choose a trustee for the waterbury ambulance service I've been doing a little bit of thinking about how to handle that deal it's come to mind that in all fairness I think that the choice should be done by paper ballot it's not an easy choice I wouldn't want anybody to have to sit in these chairs to make a choice like that both candidates were very qualified so to save hard feelings amongst the public or whatever I think on behalf of the board it'd be best that we just did it by paper ballot if that's okay with the rest of you does anybody wish to have any discussion ahead of time or based on last week yes sir never drank coffee maybe it would be better for the people watching it on channel 15 or 17 if they knew how this came about because now more down in Duxbury I believe each has a trustee on the board of trustees we covered that all at the last meeting yeah it was all discussed at the last meeting apparently I wasn't here anyway am I correct there will be two members from one of the towns to make the total of seven that's correct one will be elected by the ambulance members themselves and the other one is appointed by or elected by us there's a tie we're going to be in a little predicament very good that was hopefully relatively painless I want to thank Mike Frank for certainly coming in and offering to be one of the trustees maybe there's something else that he might be interested in and I'm sure that we'd love to have him on as a volunteer and congratulations to Sally okay next thing on an item on the list is to consider an entertainment permit for music in the alley and well outside consumption permit for stagecoach in right start with the music in the alley first Whitney Eldridge from Axel's Frameshop has been doing music in the alley for several years difference this year is that there's no more village she used to call out her four dates are June 28 they're all Fridays July 26 August 9th and August 23rd and they run from I think 6 to 9 would you mind giving those dates again please June 28th July 26th August 9th and August 23rd and she's also coordinated with the black back to do some catering which means many wish to make a motion to prove an entertainment permit for music in the alley with the dates that were suggested motion for the discussion one quick thing is August 9th is that the weekend of the car show I think it is I don't know if that's and I don't know also with the whole construction rerouting is there going to be any issue there probably not I can't speak to that well then if you have a question and you're concerned that it might be too much you can approve the other three and then get more information put that last one on but to me it just might be I think they're going to have to do a rerouting of the parade for the antique car show the car show starts on Friday but the parade last year was on Saturday so this would be on Friday Friday night I've actually participated in this event it's in the alley completely it's not on the street at all so it's not doesn't really interfere too much with traffic all these things are Friday okay great all right so we got a motion motion and a second I wish to approve the motion say aye please aye okay outside consumption permit for stagecoach in so you've already approved his liquor license but he inadvertently mailed his outside consumption permit so the motion for that we'll take care of that as well I'll make that motion second all those in favor say aye aye managers items fire departments Easter parade this is on the agenda because there was a little bit of mix up I think I don't really think you need to do anything but since it's on the agenda the rotary club sponsors an Easter parade they've been doing it for 25 years plus kids march from the school down Stow Street to Main Street and then down to Park Row and then into the industrial park where they have the Easter egg hunt and you know it was formally the lottery police department provided escorts and everything else for it in years past a year ago the police department was already gone the Easter parade went off without a hitch they had volunteers from the rotary club and from the fire department somehow word got out we got an email from Jeff Smith who's a Rotarian adjusting that there was an issue with the fire department and they couldn't do it and what was the problem so we put it on the agenda but I reached out to Gary last week and he said that there was no issue they already had a number of firefighters who had expressed the willingness to volunteer so on Friday I sent an email to everybody and said go forward you're all set just like it's been in the past so you don't have to take any action all right vendor ordinance would be the next thing yeah so I emailed out to all of you proposed ordinance to regulate vendors the town has an ordinance that was passed in the 1990s 1994 and the town ordinance that was passed in 1994 really spoke to vendors in the parks it explicitly said that no vendors would be allowed in the Anderson field where the summer recreation program happens and the pool is there was provisions to allow people to be vendors in the dark road park in Hope Davey park you know to provide food during tournaments or what have you and it also kind of deferred to the village to regulate vending on the village streets and other village properties so the village as we all know dissolved on July 1st last year 2018 before the village dissolved we took care of adopting parking and traffic ordinance which we have to amend again just to deal with the speed limits on 100 and haven't got to that yet but I didn't think about the vending ordinance and it doesn't come up people last year bought vending permits while the village still existed you know kind of forgot about it so now of course spring is coming so food vendors are starting to call saying I want a vending permit well there's no authority to regulate the vendors now because the village is out of business we can't use that so the village trustees in 2000 I think it was 2015 or 16 not very long ago they did a complete kind of repurposing of their ordinance and we had Joe McLean from Stitzel and Page municipal attorney review the ordinance that the village wrote he helped actually draft it and what I sent to you the other day is pretty much the same ordinance that the trustees adopted in 2015 or 16 I did put in a couple of other areas to speak directly to the recreation fields because the village's ordinance didn't regulate that it specifically excluded them because they were counting property and the town had an ordinance so the ordinance that prohibits this ordinance still prohibits vendors from Anderson Field and the swimming pool it would allow vendors in the back row field and the hope-davy field I know that you didn't get this until just the other day if you want to take some time and adopt it read it over suggest amendments I think it's pretty much ready to go the way the law works is that you don't have to have a public hearing for an ordinance can just be noticed on the agenda if you adopt an ordinance it does not take effect for 61 days from the time you adopt there's a I believe it's a 44-day period don't ask me where these numbers come from in the legislature it's fine but you adopt an ordinance there's a 44-day period in which a petition can be circulated to call a town meeting to nullify the ordinance like a recent but it's a town meeting so anyway if you adopt this tonight it won't go into effect until the end of June if you want to wait a little while more I don't think we're going to have a run on people vending every year there's people that come in convinced that they're going to make $50,000 in some huge business that they're going to have and they come three or four times and then they go Julie Goy has been the only long-term vendor that we had and that business goes back there were two people before she owned it that's really the only stick to it in this I answered my question because I did read through the ordinance I was going to ask how many people actually took the whole years worth of nobody by the day or by the month that was the big change that the village had the village for years regulated vending through its charter and it was $3 a day and when that provision was put in the charter back in the 40s or 50s $3 a day was a lot of money but by a few years ago $3 a day was really not much at all it does this does incorporate the village's language I think it restricts vendors from being within 100 feet of a restaurant or other similar business what is not generally understood and I say this because it applies everywhere but this ordinance really only applies to vendors who are vending sidewalks streets or public parks if somebody I had a call last week from a fella who wanted to put a hot dog cart up at the Sonoco station up across from Pete's Greens and I asked him where he wanted it well in the parking lot I'm going to make a deal with the guy that owns the property and so on and so forth so if a vendor sets up on private property it requires a zoning permit and the vending ordinance so it's only vendors who are on streets, sidewalks or public parks that have to get this kind of permit if they're on Mark's property and selling ice cream that's between Mark and that person and the zoning permit is traded but anyway how does it work like for instance like the 4th of July parade where you see vendors selling easing from coax to and you know hats it's difficult to do that are they even applying for permits? most of the time they don't even come in and frankly when people come in if somebody comes in and says I want to sell balloons on the 4th of July parade because nobody else is coming I just say just go and sell your balloons the one day deal it's Independence Day because if you end up charging and people come in there's eight people out there who are doing it for free and that person is paying you whatever so I just kind of close my eyes on that probably give them an at a boy just for at least coming in and asking you know trying to do the right thing how do the rest of you feel about it do you want to take some time to review it have you reviewed it are you happy with it and one last thing before you all answer that question somebody probably brought it I didn't bring it with me the fee structure that goes along with this and there's a fee structure for I think it's a month 30 days so there's a monthly fee $65 which is valid for 30 consecutive days there's a $700 fee for the whole year and then for special events and special events would be like the NQID or something that an organizer is going to have so like Ben and Jerry's has had our staff give away and things like that the people who get that special events license they buy a license and things that show up for those events don't have to get a permit it's covered other than the special events license anyway that fee structure is not part of the ordinance the ordinance specifically allows the select ward to establish a fee that's outside the ordinance because if the fee structure was in the ordinance anytime you wanted to change it it would take days from the day that you did it so the fee structure says you get to set the fees once a year don't worry about it going up and down but the structure itself the fee structure itself it's outside the ordinance just so right we can say we're going to change the fees what's your pleasure gentlemen I took a brief look at it I didn't really study it in depth I didn't see anything it was pretty inclusive and it was pretty detail covered anything that I thought as I was reading through it I said is there a paragraph in here that covers insurance as well as there was so that everything else seemed to be well covered so I'm probably going to recuse myself from the vote just solitional conflict I think it was comprehensive enough for me okay alright then we'd like to adopt it then I need a motion to do so to approve I make a motion to approve the vendor ordinance as presented that great any further discussion seeing none all those in favor say aye aye and your go Bill just so you know we'll have to publish a summary in the newspaper summarize a lot of the sections we don't have to print the whole thing because that would cost a portion but it's going to be a little bit more expensive than just a simple government notice because it has to have certain things in it so that'll be in probably both in the record first quarter budget report I did not send this out the other day and you'll see why in a minute thanks Everett for coming I tried to provide a budget report at the end of every quarter so I've done that but the first quarter is kind of smoother interesting for a couple of reasons one we have almost no revenue received by the time the first quarter ends so you can see there on the first couple pages that out of $2,921,000 of revenue through the end of March we received $89,000 so no revenue the spending is kind of kept at bay because we don't have time to be until the third month of the first quarter and then it takes 30 days before the appeal period goes by so we try not to do any major spending obviously we have to pay people and payroll is our biggest expense anyway but there's really not a lot to report on here we're I've given you the operating fund budgets so the general fund the highway fund and the library fund and then a balance sheet so the general fund through 25% of the year we've spent just 11% of the money in the general fund budget in the highway department we've received 1.7% of the revenue so the only revenue that we've received was the orderly installment of the Vermont State aid to highways and a couple of the overweight firms and then on the spending side even though payroll is up about 30% through the first quarter that's very typical of the first quarter generally that's our biggest quarter over time so they're always a little bit out of hand of themselves in the highway department so that would be on page 9 just quickly even though the regular pay line is up and the salt line is almost fully spent and again Mike that's normal because we're on a calendar year most of our winter is in the first three months of the year you know last year we kind of had an old fashioned end of the year where we had snow on the ground but typically it's usually lately into December before we start spending we don't have a salt storage facility to speak of we typically buy salt by the factory trail although it comes in on a pretty regular basis starting one time you'll see throughout this budget that there are some things that are spent 50% or 32% on kind of across the board basis those that are our insurances we pay our health insurance a month in advance so health insurance in all departments is going to be ahead of the calendar and then what we pay the LCT passive and the the verb trust for workers comp unemployment and liability insurance we've we've paid 50% of that through the first quarter of the year it's just because we pay that quarterly the second installment is due the first week of April and just the way the calendar showed up we paid the April bill and the fire storage showing up here in the highway budget on page 9 one last thing that I'll comment on the second line there that says part-time pay says we've spent 191% of what we budgeted and if you look at this page you'll see yes we budgeted $5,000 for part-time pay we've spent $9,500 already that's a little bit deceptive that employee actually works for all three public works departments two of which are in the district the person's payroll is through the town so we don't have to run two different sets of books and give the person two W2 forms and everything else a good share of that work is actually for water and sewer and the water and sewer department will be paying the highway department back I just haven't got to balance that out yet so what I'm saying is don't worry about that the library already gave you kind of a update there Mark, just to your question I did some quick calculations and all we said that you know the non-resident fee the state library system kind of recommends don't have a fee any higher than your per capita you know per capita I'm not sure that's a great way to measure it but I did a couple of different things so you can see at the top of the page we've approved $484,000 of tax money for the library and if you divide that by the town's grand list the library's tax rate is somewhere between 6 and 7 cents I didn't have the grand list I estimated the grand list but it's somewhere between 6 and 7 cents so on a $300,000 property people are paying $202 a year for a $300,000 property for the library if you do that $484,000 on a per capita basis and again I estimated the population is somewhere between 5,000 and $500,000 I think on a per capita basis it's $95 a year if you look at the budgeted amount as opposed to the taxes it's pretty much the same the budget is $487,000 I mean just a $3,000 more than the taxes so you're on the same thing the per capita is about 96 and on the tax rate about 6 cents the one thing I noticed on her answer was fee, she said we'll see what the library commissioners were the ones that she was referring to as fees and the one comment I have there is I know that they have their own source of funds separate from us but it also seems like to think that any kind of fee or income is solely based on their decisions I'm not sure that's really true and I didn't want to kind of debate with her the way I understand the law is that the library commissioners are in charge of the day-to-day operations of the library they're in charge of their budget they're in charge of their budget that the town gives them so the town's appropriation is the tax appropriation so that's $487,000 so the way that we've always started here a couple of months ago it's kind of a collaborative effort they show you how they want to spend their budget they put it all in front of you and they tell you what the need is and you know can we turn over here or turn a little there but what the law says is that if the town decides to give the library $484,000 the library commissioners get to decide how to spend it so they can, you know if you said we don't want to buy books from giving them any money they can buy books because they're in charge of how to spend it but I think that really the way that it works typically here is that the library director clearly works for the commissioners she would make her recommendations answer to that but I think it would ultimately come back here and then be at least a discussion for the longest time the commissioners didn't want to have a fee at all and this kind of came to a boiling point a few years ago Duxbury always used to make an appropriation it appropriated like $5,000 a year and some of the commissioners Harriet Grenier Margaret Luce kind of in particular would say well they should be required to pay kind of what we're paying we're having a six cent tax rate for the library, they should pay a six cent tax rate kind of how we do with the fire department well I think folks in Duxbury feel that they really need fire department services the library services aren't quite on the same power when it comes to a need so a couple of years ago the commissioners did set a per capita fee one of the commissioners in particular felt it was important that non-residents paid something because everybody wasn't from Duxbury they were the only one that was making an appropriation we have a fair number of people that come from Bolton and some of the board have them so they put the fee in and then they tried they went to the Duxbury Select Board and they tried to get like $10,000 instead of $5,000 from Duxbury and the Select Board went to the voters and they let the voters vote on it and said if you pass this you're going to have to pay $10,000 if you don't pass this you're going to have to pay $10,000 in peace to go and what they told them was bring your receipt to the town clerk and we'll pay you your $10 back and they kind of rolled the dice that they'd be less than $10,000 worth of membership anyway but it is a reasonable thing to talk about and I think this board can have a role in that discussion well similar to what you had spoken about during budget season you had suggested that if the board chose not to chose to cut the library fund by $50,000 and not so-called not finance their new staff member that they could just find it elsewhere yeah they could have if you had cut their appropriation by $50,000 and they really felt the staff person was their most pressing need they could fund that staff person and then just drop something else off anyway the last thing the last two pages pages 12 and 13 that's just the general funds balance sheet and this early in the year is skewed however on the middle of the first page about halfway down under the liabilities you see tax anticipation don't pay well we are borrowing money now to pay current expenses it's a little earlier this year then we had 12 last year and last year was the first year we had to borrow a long time it was the one nice thing that happened with green we had so much you know grant money and feeable money and money coming in for the for this building the billion dollar CDBG grant that we got and it kind of came in in a cash flow fashion that we never had to borrow money for like four or five years but we're back to kind of normal now so we are borrowing that will go up eventually I imagine this week just before the office closed tonight I had to do the expense coding sheets for Michelle the interest on all the bonds half the interest is doing May and then the interest of principal is doing November so we're paying what's probably $80,000 worth of interest in this week's so we'll have to borrow a little bit more this week too anyway that's coming from Edward for our right now it is and as long as they have cash available we'll borrow from them just to keep it local we have to go outside to the bank so obviously just a small item in the highway department under there was a budget item for chloride and I know it's zero it's been an administrative thing to not apply chloride to the roads we ask for just for summer chloride is just for dust control so we don't use any we use salt we don't use for winter we don't treat our salt we don't add salt brine or chloride to the salt the chloride line is all for dust control okay great so with that that's everybody that looks like they're all sat not pending leave personal issues did you had something about what it was specific that you mentioned here but there was another item that you said you hadn't got to that yet we did the outside consumption permit I thought it was something else something about we went under the clock nothing was added in the beginning I don't remember saying anything okay no I specifically saying that we were talking about something and you said I hadn't gotten to that yet I don't know if it was a vendor's ordinance oh yeah I did I did say that I hadn't gotten to that yet what I said was that we had adopted the parking and traffic ordinance back last year because the bill was going away and then at the last meeting that Mark Mater was still a select board member he said that we should amend the traffic ordinance to capture the speed limits on and I said I haven't gotten to that yet so okay so I hadn't gotten to a man actually it wasn't gotten to a hero it wasn't for the night it was having done that so do we need to go in motion we're all set there we move the general public knowledge of the details of potential litigation involving the town of Waterbury we clearly place the town as substantial second to that all those in favor say aye aye I move to enter executive session to consider potential litigation involving the charge of Mr. Oak and KOV town of Waterbury and related confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing legal advice to the town and to discuss a personnel issue second for that one second all those in favor say aye aye so we will move into executive session for the time being


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Dr. Satyajit Rat and we'll be discussing the vaccination program which is supposed to be unfurled very soon. Satyajit, the government of India has said that it is doing various dry runs. They're going to start the vaccination program of the health workers followed by the frontline workers and then those who have co-morbidities and above 55. Now, if we take the first two, the health workers and the frontline workers, that's probably about three and a half crores, so we don't really have final figures on this. And the health line workers are probably at least about one and a half crores if we take all the hospital to dispensaries to the hospital staff, including the people who really run the hospital, keeping clean, give people food and everything. So you're really talking of a large number, but if you look at the number of vaccine doses the government has placed its order on, it's 11 million. Now, there seems to be a huge gap, 11 million is about 55 lakh of people against frontline plus hospital workers of three and a half crores. So how do you see this panning up? Do you think that this order is meant as a first shot and they will then start looking at alternatives or is it something else that we are missing in this picture? So I think this is a number of, shall we say, rate limiting points that are likely to be in operation. Firstly, despite all the brave words about dry runs and the Coven app and so on and so forth, I suspect, with some sympathy, that the government really is apprehensive about just how the vaccination program will actually roll out on the ground. The numbers are not going to be so high in the initial phases. And even then, it's going to be a massive exercise and I think what the government is hoping is that in the first couple of, in the first few weeks, glitches will become apparent and will become apparent at a rate at which the government can at least run about and find to God fixes for them. And I suspect that that's part of the reason why the orders are being spaced out a little bit, taking advantage on the other side of the fact that this is currently what's being made available at the price by the Serum Institute in all likelihood. Although, again, we don't know for sure what the discussions are about pricing and the schedule of supply. And add to this mix the other uncertainty, which is that the ICMR, Bharat Biotech Hyderabad based vaccine candidate Covaxin, which has been given a different kind of emergency authorization by the regulatory agency without any even preliminary efficacy data from anywhere in the world. I think government is hoping that those data will come out and therefore they can then begin to use whatever small stocks Bharat Biotech has available. So I think that there are jugglings and trade-offs going on where the government can be seen to have initiated a vaccination program, but is not going into it at a speed at which problems will become major public relations disasters. We're talking really about what, for instance, has happened in the United States, where a lot of the vaccines are sort of waiting in the refrigeration units and not being actually going in for giving people shots. So there's been a huge criticism of the failures on that front. And considering that we also have states, we've also have distributed mechanism for giving the vaccines. It's not a centralized military operation that the government would like to believe it is, that you are going to run into some of the same issues. Absolutely. So let me make two allied points here. One is a great deal of the vaccination dry runs appear to be based around the Covin app. The app is only as good as the connectivity of healthcare workers in far flung rural India. So it's quite unclear what percentage of the potential first phase recipients are going to run into major difficulties.  So there are many uncertainties in all of this. One example that you give of the uncertainties leading to credibility disasters for governments is of course the United States where supplies are getting bottlenecked. Another in a very different way is the United Kingdom, where the authorities started with arbitrarily expanding the timing of the second dose of the vaccine from four weeks to up to 12 weeks without any good evidence. Or more correctly, without strong evidence. There is sort of kind of preliminary evidence, but not really strong robust evidence on the one hand. On the other hand, throwing all adherence to even preliminary evidence out of the window. There seems to be now conversation about mixing vaccines in the United Kingdom. And that again is reminiscent of the Indian regulatory authorities opaque, rapidity of approving paratbiotics application for emergency use of the co-vaccine candidate. So governments across the world are responding in ways that are as much about saving face and avoiding blame to the extent possible as about actually dealing with the pandemic. So to put it slightly differently, they're not dealing as a public health issue, but as a political issue, a logistical and political issue and saving face could become a very expensive saving of face. If the pandemic lingers on because of the missteps we take in the vaccination doesn't really take place properly, we half vaccinate the people like is possible in the United Kingdom now as you were saying. And the share logistical nightmare of being able to space and give a second shot within the period which is reasonable maybe four to six weeks, but certainly anything longer than that. As you said already the data is very thin. So this is these are all the reasons you think government of India is going slow. So let us do smaller numbers but be sure of doing it rather than have more numbers and then fall flat. Add to this. Yes, but add to this yet another consideration. Let us keep in mind what the serum Institute of India appears to have indicated, namely that its price for the first 11 million doses to the government of India is 200 rupees a dose plus GST. But that it expects to sell the vaccine in the open market for 1000 rupees plus GST per dose. That's a five fold difference. Now, I gather from the media that the serum Institute to chief executive officer has commented that they are waiting to get approval from the government of India for open market states. Add to this. Let us remind our viewers that Pfizer made an application for approval for emergency use approval of its vaccine to the Indian regulatory authority this so far has not been approved because neither phase one nor phase two nor phase three data are available from within the India for that for the bio and tick Pfizer vaccine, but given that that vaccine needs minus 70 degrees storage. It was never going to be a practical component of a large scale public health care vaccination campaign response in India anyway. So what was the driver for the application. And a reasonable interpretation is that the driver was in metropolitan India for the urban upper class. The Pfizer vaccine would have been a straightforward sale. Absolutely. And let's face it, that there is enough segment of population in India, which can afford the Pfizer vaccine. And what you have already reminded our viewers a number of times in the past that all of these are for profit. And therefore, it's quite possible that serum Institute will deliver private and the public effort in different quantities. And if the government is not careful enough to block a certain number of files, certain number of quantities in advance. And that's what said I'm a student is also said, if you don't place orders early enough, what can we do, we would have other commitments and obviously the commitments is indicated are for the for profit private market as well, because vaccine should really not cost all that much, particularly when you produce in such large quantities, but that's another story, maybe for another day. So what you're saying is also that we are getting now into the market issue, but just taking a sidewise step on that. There are also other vaccines now slowly emerging in the market. There's the Somalia vaccine, which Reddy's Institute has already also started trials in India. Also, the Chinese to vaccine Sinovac and Sino farm, both seem to have very similar data though the details of the data not public, but whatever we learned from the Brazilians from other places. And also in the range of 75 to 85 in that range details aside so we're really talking about what you said earlier. This, this, this virus seems to be a wimpy one, and almost most vaccines seem to be working on it. So given that there are other vaccines available what about the Russian vaccine is there any step that you can see in that in terms of trials. And that's an interesting point. Again, if the, if the regular if the Indian regulators response to the Pfizer application to the reported Pfizer application, the reported response to the reported Pfizer application since we really don't know how to perform the horses mouth in any transparent fashion. But if that is correct, then Pfizer's application has was not successful presumably because there are, there aren't even phase one phase two data in country. In the next few days, then the fact that an Indian company is actually doing phase one phase two data for the Pfizer vaccine for the Malia Institute vaccine indicates that as soon as those data are in hand within another month or two. The vaccine will be in a position to be licensed exactly the same way as the Oxford AstraZeneca serum Institute vaccine is add to this, a vaccine that we are all overlooking, which is an Indian private sector vaccine which is the Zyda scheduler vaccine, which is a DNA based vaccine, which is also in clinical trials. Again, the media have not addressed the progress of the Zyda scheduler vaccines I just get a lot does not seem to have made any effort to foreground and publicize their progress. But that's yet another vaccine on the radar. So there's a whole range of vaccines on the radar. Novavax already has Indian agreements and their vaccine is in phase three clinical trials internationally again within the next month or two. We are likely to see preliminary data. I cannot emphasize this enough. All approvals we are seeing so far show perfectly good, complete, reliable phase one and phase two data, phase three data are placed only on preliminary evidence. Efficacy. So that's the other part because there's a lot of, I will say vaccine suspicion that is it safe that this is really the phase three trials and efficacy data, and this is not so much. It is really not about safety, safety. Yes, if something comes up, it's a byproduct of it, but the primary purpose is efficacy and almost all vaccines that are in phase three trials seem to show at least the 50% bar is being crossed by almost all of them. We haven't heard about the failure as yet. Yes, although in the British Medical Journal, Dr. Peter Doshi has had some thoughts to offer on that with regard to the bio and tech Pfizer and the NIH Moderna vaccines and where the trial data he points out are very narrowly identified and that raises questions about whether the efficacy numbers are in fact what the efficacy numbers are, but details of that sort aside, yes, that's all agreed with. This is a major reason why the criticisms for example, of the opaque and the hurried emergency use peculiar unspecified approval that the Indian regulator has given to its in house ICMR biotech vaccine that criticism is not intended on the part of any of the critics to say that the vaccine is unsafe. It's not even intended to say that the vaccine probably won't work because as we've said here, similar vaccines elsewhere, the Chinese one in this particular case have work. The question is about the integrity and the transparency of processes of governance of processes of official regulation. And what we have also said earlier, it's a credibility of the regulatory system which is very important, because if that fails, and for instance we find it didn't work properly as intended and so on, then reviving the faith in the regulatory institution is going to be much harder. So therefore, it is very important that this, this regulatory process at least the viability, the credibility of that process should not be disturbed. Coming back to the last question I had with you, you know, there is also, there have been various claims on the Bharat biotech vaccine that because it's a whole virus inactivated vaccine, it will work on the variants as well. Now, is there anything to say that the whole virus inactivated by vaccine works better for variants than other vaccines is anything. No, there is currently no evidence to say that inactivated whole virus vaccines will work better on variants than the spike protein specific vaccines at all. This is not the other way either. It's not that they are worse, it's not that they are better. At the moment, we really don't know. But speaking about variants, there's an interesting point that we should be noting, which is Pfizer has pointed out over these past few days that it has tested the most dramatic change mutation in the spike protein of the virus in the so-called UK variant. We really shouldn't be calling them this. And I like what the South Africans have done, they've called it N501, YV1 or V2, which is a smaller mouthful than VUI 2020-1201, which is what the British have called their variant. Can we make an appeal to them to give these variants simple but not geographical names that we can use the rest of us? Anyway, let us call it the so-called UK variant. The so-called UK variant mutation has been tested by Pfizer on serum from vaccinees and that serum works to neutralize viruses with that mutation. This is good news. It's small good news because keep in mind that the so-called South African variant has a number of mutations in the spike protein. All of them together, as far as I know, have not yet been tested. There are a couple of reports that are also both promising and cautionary in that many individual mutations seem not to be broadly escaping vaccine efficacy, but there is a cautionary note because there is an occasional amino acid in the sequence of the spike protein at position 484, for example, where mutations of at least certain kinds seem to cause trouble for at least some antibodies from some people to neutralize. So clearly, what we should be reassured by is that we don't as yet have a huge vaccine escape outbreak going on already. What we should be cautious about is that this is not the end. It's quite likely that as vaccination spreads, variants of the virus that are not easily and well-neutralizable by the vaccine will become more and more prominent and depending on the severity of illness that they cause, we might or might not need to develop next-generation vaccines against them. So it is a part of the larger biological war. So to say, I know you don't like these terms, but the evolutionary war between the microbes and us, which is not going to end in this year of 2021. But we will probably have a much better year with the vaccines than we had in 2020. At least that is the front hope that people with co-vormity like me have. Yes. It is quite true that I am disinclined to use the imagery of war in most situations and certainly not in this one. So I offer you an alternative image that's familiar in India of a crowded public transport bus onto which or a crowded unreserved railway train bogey into which yet more people come in and they say, yeah, just a little. Essentially, that's the given take between an incoming virus and us. How do we come to a new balance of coexistence? Equilibrium you say, but I don't think you would have the same equilibrium demand for smallpox. Or for Ebola virus, absolutely. Keep in mind that this is something we've been saying repeatedly about this pandemic for months, that if this was Ebola, we would be in a very different and a horrendously worse place. And the social response, the medical response would be very different or would need to be very different. But let's not, you know, inflict a horror story in our imagination. There are some of them on Netflix already going around. So I think we leave it to the Netflix and other such streaming platforms to talk about such possibilities. Question is, good news as yet on the vaccine front, nothing to worry about as yet on the vaccine front, cautious optimism. And the same time, it is a public health issue. And if we deal with it, like a law and order issue as an administrative issue, then we can run into problems. And the fact that the government has been extremely opaque. This can lead to problems of different kinds that people don't know what they have to do. They believe they're just objects. And if an open market release takes place, we can also see stampede for vaccines and causing other kinds of issues. So as I said, cautious optimism as Dr. Rath has shared with us, but fingers crossed on how the rest of the procedure to deliver and vaccinate the people take this. Thank you Satyajit for being with us clarifying some of these issues, and we'll come back again next week for this and other topics to discuss.


Hi everybody, Andrea here. So we look at the teeth, we look inside the mouth. That is what we do. If you're not talking about toothpaste and talking about your client's oral hygiene habits, you're really missing the mark because if you're not doing it, probably nobody else is. So let's say you look inside the mouth, whether it's for teeth whitening, whatever, and you notice cavities, or you just simply notice that the client has said to you they have cold sensitive teeth. Well, there are different toothpaste for all of those different things. You don't want to tell the client, we'll just get any toothpaste you want, it doesn't matter because choosing the right toothpaste can absolutely make such a big difference for them. If a client tells you in their medical history that they have cold sensitive teeth, there are so many toothpaste out there, but I let them know there are sensitive toothpaste out there. Some people do not know that. They don't realize having cold sensitive teeth isn't always normal. A lot of people do have cold sensitive teeth if they're eating ice cream. Of course, their teeth are going to be cold sensitive, but if they're walking outside and the cold air is bothering them, that's not necessarily normal, and it can't hurt to try a toothpaste. So they want to look for the ingredient called potassium nitrate. So please write that down. Potassium nitrate. I like to recommend Sensodyne because everybody knows Sensodyne. It's very easy to purchase. I can leave a link for you guys down below, the one that I talk about with my clients. That will make them and their teeth feel so much better, but please let them know. It's very important that they use Sensodyne consistently for at least two weeks. If they're just using it for two days, they don't notice a difference. It's not going to matter. They have to use something consistently for two weeks for it to be able to form that protective coating to start to work, and it's just toothpaste. So why not, right? Have them use Sensodyne.   Who knew, right? Not too many people know that. What if a client has a lot of cavities or you suspect there's cavities in there? Make sure they are using a toothpaste with sodium fluoride. You will hear me mention that a lot, plus xylitol if they can find a toothpaste with both of them in there. That is really good for cavity prevention, but also making the enamel stronger against little cavities that might be there, and you don't want them to get bigger faster. So there are so many different things. What if the gums don't look very healthy? They tell you, my gums bleed all the time. It could be because they're not brushing twice a day, but so kind of rule that out first. Let them know, well, in a perfect world, brush twice a day with a good toothpaste. Use the water pick to get in between the teeth, because a toothbrush doesn't get in between the teeth properly, and take it a step further and use a mouth wash. There are so many mouth washes out there to keep it simple. With mouth wash, I tell people to use one with sodium fluoride. You will hear me say that a lot, and xylitol if they can find it. Quite often, it has to be purchased by a dental professional, but now Walmart shoppers, depending on where you live, they are caring some of them now with xylitol and sodium fluoride.  Let me know though, if any questions, but just please remember, you don't just want to tell the patient, make sure to brush twice a day, make sure to floss every day. You want to ask them, how are you brushing? Are you using a manual brush? Are you using an electric brush? What toothpaste do you use? Do you like your toothpaste? Do you love your toothpaste? Do you want to try something else? Do you have cold sensitive teeth? People do not know that the right toothpaste can make all the difference, just as the right shampoo and hair conditioner can make all the difference. Guys, it's the same thing. Thank you guys for watching. Please comment below if any questions, and I'll see you guys in the next one.