How's it going? good everybody's well fed and Got extra cookies if you're into that thing because I am I Got extra cookies and I had a hunt for the chocolate chip, but I found one so that's good Yeah, so I I my company's papaya internet and I started papaya internet in 2004 We do SEO SEM and analytics and then a bunch of other stuff that help businesses rank And sell things online And I did get my start at Florida State and I have a baby face At least that's what my mom tells me But I've been doing this a while so I started in 1998 which is hard to believe That I've been on the internet that long and don't have like a paper troll and people still want me to speak So but but my focus really is on SEO and SEM and today we're going to talk about site structure for SEO So I'm single so I'm going to give you a list of the things that I like So I like technology I like WordPress duh I like puns Much to my friend chagrin And if you laugh at my jokes, I will tell you more I love RuPaul's Drag Race is one of my favorite TV shows on on TV I love improv and I love flan. I'm from Miami. So I Eat flan wherever I go and I love vinyl records. So this is my record collection It's sort of ordered you can't tell maybe unless you recognize those those spines But yeah, I have it in order alphabetical order, but it's a little messy You know, I'm I'm kind of keeping I'm not having enough space for all the vinyl records that I have But it doesn't look like this Thankfully this Right exactly it looks like some some websites right now you you got the metaphor So this actually this would be a beautiful dream of mine I would just spend all day looking at this stuff And I'm sure that the person who owns this collection knows where every single piece of vinyl that is in this collection for the most part But if anybody else comes to this collection, they look at and they're gonna be like, where do I go like? Where do I begin? I don't know. Do I begin here? Do I begin here? That link with that record cover looks pretty nice Yeah, so there's no order to this madness right except for the person who owns it and as we know on the web We have people coming to the sites. We're not the only person visiting our own website I mean maybe but most likely not right. We're on the internet. So We want people to come to our website. So here's an example of organized record collection This is by mark apple if you haven't met him. He's over there He showed me this record collection when he knew I was giving a talk about that includes talking about vinyl records to show off his Beautiful wood carving carved tabs that how he organizes it just to show me how I can do it If I ever organize my record collection, but anyways, so that's it's a nice looking collection, right? You know holidays There's country music. I think that soundtracks at the end. So You know mark knows where everything is and if any I wanted to come in and steal his records I could find all the stuff that I want, you know, so Yeah, so what is website structure, right? Side structure is how the pages are on your on your site or link to one another So why is it important to have a good site structure? It does two things it easily helps visitors find the content that's on your site and It allows search engines to easily find that wonderful content you work so hard to create So if we look at the different types of site structures, there are there's about there's two of them One is a flat site structure Usually this is a site structure where the home page Links to all the content that's on your site right It's your one click away from the home page Your you don't have to click so many different links in order to get to the content And so you find that a lot with like brochure sites, right? Or if you're just starting out and you only have like a handful of pages that you're linking to so you can link all the Stuff on the home page problem is is that it limits the number of pages and The problem is is that it you are once your site starts to grow Then you limit yourself as to like how many links that you could put on your page, right? So but the good thing is is that people can find all your stuff easily, right? If we look at deeper site structure There's a longer click path that's involved, right? Their content gets grouped into different types of themes and buckets So like for instance, we have different categories and then other pages that fall into those categories And you're increasing the number of clicks To get people to your content however your content ends up becoming more organized as a result So if we look at the disadvantages of having a flat site structure You you get minimal clicks for the content but your content all your content ends up on the roof folder So as you start to develop your content because you've all attended wonderful talks like April's talk when she was talking about developing content and having a content schedule then You your website is going to grow and grow and you can't really link all those pages from the home page because When you when you're when a visitor comes to your home page, then you're giving them too many options, right? What's a click so you want them to follow a path when they come to your site So as your site grows then having the deeper structure becomes more important additionally Search engines have trouble understanding the context of the content that that you have if it's all all Off the route so in fact John Mueller who is the the webmaster trends analysts at Google And hosts this great live stream called Webmaster from webmaster central says that if we're only seeing these URLs through your site map Then we don't really know how they are related to one another And so it makes it very hard for Google to understand how relevant this piece of content is into the context of your website So when you start thinking about like say you go to a library for instance, right? You walk into a library and You don't see just books scattered all around, right? There's a system in place so the top-level system is like fiction nonfiction And then you have like reference books, right? And then even into those different sections of the library you have different types of books that fall under it like biographies, right? If you're talking about nonfiction talking about biographies, you're talking about historical books They all have their place, right and then within those Within those subsections are different Are different books even within those subsections so? Google looks at it the same way where you are It has a better understanding once you start grouping your content as your site starts to grow so It's like a pyramid, right? So you have like a hierarchical hierarchical I always have trouble with that word hierarchical organization of your content So it's like the top-level like I was saying like fiction nonfiction then you have like biographies And it all grows comes down off the top just like this triforce and And so when as you start sites start to grow let's say you have an e-commerce site You might have even subcategories that fall under each of those categories and then you could have pages that are connected to those different Different categories so and examples like product categories on an e-commerce site blog topics Company departments if you're thinking of a news site like different sections of the newsroom at a like the New York Times For example, they all have they all cover different topics, right? And so their site is actually designed in a way that you can find different topics You can go to the different topics and find the articles that are part of that topic so if we go back and look at at the If we look at the deeper site structure This is where it all comes into play where you have different categories and pages that are connected to those categories So how do we establish hierarchy in wordpress? Pages so pages is a great way to organize your content into hierarchies Has anybody done that in in wordpress before on your pages? Okay, handful of it. Yeah, so In for this example The Georgia voice is the client of mine and we organize their their pages into different types of topics And so they're covering different organizations that are within the city of Atlanta And so you can see that they have or organization as the top level and then they have art organizations business organizations health organizations and then nightlife of course as an organization so they're Organizing all their different content into buckets the other place where you can set hierarchies within categories and so When you think about your post all your posts get assigned a category, right or you can assign them category And so even within the categories themselves You can set up in a hierarchy so that if you have lots of articles that are associated with categories You can have even you can drill down into like for instance culture We drill down to art book and books and dance, right? So how many of y'all are using categories for your posts? How many of you are have zero posts assigned to uncategorized? You guys are awesome How many do you have posts assigned to uncategorized? It's okay. I won't shame you Yeah, so like think when you start thinking about your posts and writing your posts for your for your block For instance, here's where you can assign these different categories so that you start putting the logical structure where your content is is associated with the specific topic so You can start digging into those uncategorized posts and start assigning them specific specific categories to each of those posts So sometimes you have a theme that has plug-ins or you install a plug-in right for to help make things easier like a portfolio, right? Or like for instance this one here in particular where they have employees where they use a post to custom post type for employees It's another way to organize information and it and automatically puts it into a hierarchy, right? and if we get really fancy we can customize our URL structures so that We can set these different categories like the top line is actually the page level right that we were looking at in the first example the second is for for blog posts for the the post category and Then the last is the team That's the custom post type where we have the URL structure where it shows team and then the name of the the employee at the at the firm So you start to see some hierarchy within the URL structure itself So as I mentioned these are the different types of Groupings that what you can have You know e-commerce product categories is probably the most common but blog topics too and and like company departments within your in your business or within your clients business you can set these hierarchies within that as well and Another pro tip about the the categories is that you can actually optimize the categories themselves a lot of times when I find with WordPress sites is that Categories are set, but then there's no content that's on the category itself, right? The category just lives by itself with a bunch of posts that are associated with it But you can actually start to optimize those categories so they can serve as landing pages If you heard about like HubSpot and their pillar content Methodology where they have like a large topic that links to other different topics that are related to it That this supplies here where you can optimize the category for SEO So you can get those keywords for that general topic and then your Topics that are related to that topic that are get a little more granular They can get linked from these within the category page and then you're helping feed That relevancy all the way down into your posts Because a lot of times what happens with posts is that they get buried, right? If you go through your like if you just have all your posts under your blog for instance And you go through your archive of your blog posts and you have a lot of blog posts They they end up on page two and page three of your blog, right?  That's related to that category But you're also Making it easier for search engines to find those pages that have been long buried down within your archives Does that make sense? Okay, cool All right, so let's talk about site navigation and how this all applies to that Yeah Good question. Yeah So limit is trying to get to four levels So you don't want to get too granular with your subcategories because then you know you're You can come up with a sag subcategory for just about anything, right? But ideally you don't want to get to more than four levels deep Yeah, so Looking at navigation We're gonna use eBay as an example because I think eBay does a really good job at Putting putting all the important elements on there in their navigation And so you can see that they're thinking about different people who come to the site, right? And this is on the this is basically going to the eBay homepage and looking at the navigation up there They have the selling tools, right like my eBay to look at your account on the top right hand corner, right? They've got that big search bar They they've got the login and sign in right those are all important things that they see that clients need to do But a lot of the focus is all the different categories that they have, right? So having a good navigation helps people find the content on your site that you want them to find, right? It also can help show the hierarchy, right? So you can break down the hierarchy into these like different menus that you have within your site and Then like I mentioned before If you start having lots of content then you don't want to link to every little Page that you have on your site and that's like where categories can come in where you can link to all the different Categories that you have and then they can get to those important pages So if we start looking drilling down into the the navigation for eBay You can see that they have different categories, right for all the different shopping so motors fashion They see these as the most important, right? electronics collectibles Home and garden and so even within electronics you can see that they're linking to subcategories, right? So under electronics you see cameras smart smart home Tablets and then there's these additional categories, right? Because eBay knows that a lot of people are looking at these sub sub categories And so they want to put those front and center within the navigation So they're not linking to every single category like you notice. There's no turntables up here, right? I mean not that many people are really buying records, right? But some people are likely and like Mark and so but you're not going to find that up here more people are going to be more inclined to buy iPhones and laptops than vinyl records Breadcrumbs are also a way to help Navigate people within your site and so it improves the user experience for those who land on maybe some of your pages that get higher rankings And may not be coming to your home page directly and it also tells search engines the site structure and how it looks right gives them a good idea of what that site structure is I'm sorry. How do I how do I make a break a break room? Yeah, so with depending on your theme and depending on the Plugin that you use Some themes like Genesis will allow you to have breadcrumbs and you just have to check a checkbox to enable it Yoast also Yoast SEO plug-in also offers some breadcrum abilities Yeah, and you have to put some extra code into I think your functions PHP in order to activate the breadcrumbs So and it looks like your current site structure as you have it set so for instance in this navigation here This is using this is like a product navigation where it's looking at the home and then there's the category for cookware and then we drill it down to the brand and then the actual Subcategory there so and the and the plus side to doing this also is that Google will sometimes display your breadcrumb navigation within the search results if you have the metadata put in and Most of those breadcrum plugins will will allow you will include that that that metadata Cool so thinking about your navigation make it easier for people to find the important parts of your site Usability is key Don't overwhelm the visitor with all the different navigate all the with your menu basically Use anchor text that makes it clear that what the the link is that they're clicking to and Organize it as it mirrors your your site architecture So let's talk about the home page Okay The home page serves as your navigational hub for all the visitors that come to your site A lot of people will come to your site typing into the domain name Or they may be searching for your business and then your site comes up right and so they're most likely coming to your home page Not always but most because sometimes you might have a piece of content that gets viral right and that gets more traffic But most of the time is they're coming to your home page So use the home page to link to those important pages This example is using Amazon from when it first launched right around the time it launched And so you can see even then they were linking to these important pages like the spotlight and 1 million titles and bragging about the fact that they have a million titles right and Then your account just like we were looking at eBay right they know that people want to look at their account and see the status of Their order so they make sure that that's on the home page More recently, this is eBay's homepage. This is in January. So The big thing was like tidying up right like Murray condo sparking joy right and She's about to pull all that stuff out of her closet and you know start deciding which one is gonna spark joy And she's gonna hug it and get rid of it, right so So they eBay knows this so it's like okay We're gonna link to a bunch of products that can help people organize right and so there's a lot of winter Things going on there's the big game. So it was around the Super Bowl So they know people are looking for TVs right got to have the nicest TVs in order to bring my friends to watch the Super Bowl and And then there's like winter gear. So this is all the important stuff that they want They also want people to click on ads right and because they know a lot of people come to their site And they also want people to sign up for credit cards. So they put all that stuff on their home page Okay, let's talk about contextual linking Contextual links are links that link between the different pages within your site and So that the contextual linking Links to important pages and provides clues and search engines as to which pages are important Right it helps connect related content and allows visitors of fine content that they may not be aware exist on your site Give an example of this This is an article about this very obscure band I don't know if you guys remember the KLF, but they were like an avant-garde techno band from the early 90s Who are famous for having a big pop hit and then burning a million pound sterling on stage? Because because of art So so anyway, so like this is an article from the Guardian talking about their big comeback in 2017 but really they just wrote a book and so The the article itself links and I know the text is a little hard to read because this is not really good usability Because you're using brown text and it's hard to tell that that's a hyperlink text, but it is Those text links link to individual articles within the site So this is an article about their comeback and about their book and That link on the lower left is linking to the book review itself And those two top links are linking to pages that are about them on the Guardian's website So this is and if you notice the the text is Bill Drummond Jim Coddy, right? So those texts are actually articles about those people and it's using Anchor text, which is the text that's underlined To just inform and describe what that page is about Notice there's no click here right Click here no more no now, you know hyperlink it is Telling what that page is about and that's important for Google to understand and for people to understand what that Information is I don't know how many times I've seen like this here, and I'm like, I don't know what that is like click here What is this click here? Yeah, if visually if I'm trying to get to something then knowing what that page is about and knowing that text that informs that hyperlink helps me another example of contextual links is like on Amazon I was shopping for for Protein shakes because Or protein shakes, whatever so These are all suggested items based on me looking at this this protein so Obviously the text is very informative right it tells me exactly what it is and you can see somebody really SEO the you know What about for these listings because they put every keyword within that title? But it tells me what that page is about right so I if I'm interested in a different flavor I may click on one of those other links rather than the one that I'm on So it's helpful another contextual link is tags So if your content if you're using tags on your on your site, that's another way to help people find other content on your site But they don't have a hierarchy so they're not like categories categories have a hierarchy tags do not An example would be like on a recipe site you look at recipe ingredients those could serve as your tags And they shouldn't compete with your categories so if using the same tags and categories interchangeably then It's time to rethink how do you want to use your tags? Especially tags I see it all the time with tags because a lot of times you have People involved with your content who may not be aware and they're like oh, I know I need to add keywords So I'm just going to start adding tags And then you look at you go into the wordpress dashboard And you see all the tags that you have and all of a sudden you have like 500 tags that you weren't aware existed each of those tags do generate pages on the site right within wordpress And so what you might find is that these tags just don't have enough content on those pages So I always recommend doing an audit when it comes to that and we'll talk about that in a second So as I mentioned audit your blog posts like look for Look at your content that you already have on your site Is there a page that's related to the content that you just wrote then link to it? Make sure to have a link that within your content that links to that other piece of content That's strongly related Use descriptive anchor text and avoid things like click here. All right, so All right now that I've bombarded you with all this stuff What are we going to do next? Well first don't burn down the house You don't have to do that. You don't have to set everything on fire But there's some things you can do to just get a good assessment and good idea of what to do next So One good thing is to look at your site structure if you haven't done this so already There are tools that you can find and use that can help crawl your site and give you a picture of what your site structure looks like Screaming frog SEO is a great tool. It's a desktop app that you can use in Windows and on the Mac It is a I guess freemium model where it's free for like 500 links But if your site is large or 500 pages, but if your site is larger than that you have to pay It's like a hundred fifty dollars And it is an indispensable tool not just for like SEO work But actually just getting an understanding of of your site and looking at the technical pieces around your site So I highly recommend screaming frog SEO SEO chat website crawler. It's not one that gets mentioned very often, but it's also free tool And you can just have it crawl your site and they'll give you a Picture it's not pretty picture, but it is it's a it'll give you an idea of what your structure looks like Power mapper and dyno mapper are all paid tools But they also do similar things and they can generate site maps for you Although it we're using WordPress so we we can find a plug-in that works for that, right? So another thing you do is sketch out your your structure so grab a pen and paper Look at the important things that That are the important content or the important subject areas that you want to cover on your site, right? Can you group these ideas together? and and step away from the computer for a second because a lot of times we're just plugging in content or writing content I Need to do that more but you know we're adding more and more content We kind of forget what we're doing with our site and so just getting an idea of what our focus is can help Put all this content together that we have and like I mentioned don't want to go for more than four levels deep Lucid chart is where I created these that the site structure before is a tool that you can use and glue maps is also another tool Where you can just map these out? But yet using pen and paper Mind-mapping tools those are all great ideas that take you away from your site itself and think about restart thinking about your content I mentioned this a little earlier like audit your audit your categories and tags think about What your categories are? Look at the list are your cat? Do you have a plural and a singular version of a specific word, right? Have you put too many categories that you don't need is your Uncategorized have a bunch of blog posts that are associated with it clean those out And also if you have contributors come up with a plan so people understand when they're adding content to the site There are categories that should be assigned and not to create additional ones and Clean up your tags, but we already talked about that, right? You guys are all going to do that right clean up your tags All right cool site maps, so we touched on this a little bit Look at your site map displays the side hierarchy on an HTML site map displays the side hierarchy on your site Those are less and less common now But you can still do that Google will crawl your site and crawl your HTML site map if that's something that you want to add to your site and XML site map is like one that is generated from Yoast and generated from And from any other site map plugin that you can upload to Google and Bing How many of y'all are using a Google search console? How many are not? Okay, when you go home today those who haven't You can easily sign up for Google search console It basically gives you a sense as to how Google sees your site how Google crawls for your site And you get email alerts in case they find something wrong with your site But it's a great way to see how Google is when they crawl the site What did they see are they seeing a lot of errors and it's free? It's a free tool, so I highly recommend you do that and you can submit your site map to it Yeah, I mean Not necessarily. I mean it what what it could do I mean if you're really concerned about that you could also set it to no index so that Google doesn't index it and send those links through but Is it helps users so like the thing that I find especially with when it comes to SEO is that? You know never trump usability over SEO right like you want to find a happy balance for the two and so if it's gonna help your visitors come to your site to find content Then I think it's a good thing plus you don't have to link to every single last page in your site map You can limit it to a certain number of pages just so they can get through and get find the word what they're looking for so Cool so if you start updating your Your site your site structure start updating your URLs you want to make sure that You have 301 redirects in place and 301 is a is a directive that's sent to browsers and crawlers that This page has been moved to a new location permanently and so It sets a new canonical for the URL So if you have a page that has links pointing to it Then you want to make sure that if you change that URL that it gets redirected. Otherwise, you're gonna have four or four errors so Hopefully this helped you guys Think about how to restructure your site so it doesn't look so much like this and it looks more like this Cool. Thank you very much We have time for Q&A 130 now, so we have about 20 minutes. So you have a good bit of time for questions here. Okay? Yeah, you got it. Yeah It depends I mean it could But usually what's that? Oh, I'm sorry does you're asking whether the the 301 redirect goes into the head of the page Where does it go? It depends sometimes it's handled in ht access file It can be handled within the database itself It can be handled within the HTML or within the pH like PHP itself. It depends. So it depends on the plugin you use But all and there's a way to check it so you can check there are free tools out there So that if you set a 301 redirect you can check to see that it actually is functioning as it should Yeah, so the I believe I believe within WordPress it automatically will redirect some posts if you change the slug And there are and Yoast will do some of that too But the redirection plug-in is like my favorite plug-in to use And even within redirection you can set how you want the redirect to Without getting too technical you can decide with how you want the server to act on that redirection Yeah Yeah, so 301 sets it permanently So 301 makes it clear to browsers and search engines like we this page is now over here So used to be at this URL now. It's in this URL So with 302 the question is whether 30 what is the benefits between or the difference between using 301 and 302 and what the benefits are so with the with the 302 You're setting it temporarily and so let's say you have a holiday some sort of holiday special and you want the specific page to go to Another page for a temporary basis and then you want that page to go back to the original page Then that's when you would use a 302 However Google said that they they look if it the 302 redirect is in place for a long period of time say like six months Then they'll just treat it as a 301 redirect But then you're tell but you want if you if you do want it to be permanent Then you want them to know that it's permanent rather than having them guess, right? Yeah. Oh god Yeah Yeah, right So the question is do you have how long do you have to keep that 301 redirect if you've created this structure change and Do you have to keep it to eternity or not, right? And so the answer is the if if there are backlinks pointing to that old URL Then you definitely want to keep those 301 redirects in place And so otherwise it's gonna still generate a four-four error because we know that a lot of people don't update their links, right? you know, that's a very common practice and so You want to keep those 301 redirects for those pages specifically and Google said like if you After a certain time like after a year or so it doesn't matter like they don't look they they know now that that redirect has been is Permanent and these are pages that don't have backlinks, right? These are URLs with no backlinks They realize that okay, this new URL is the new canonical So which means the new this is the new correct URL So then you don't need to keep those three through one redirects for those other pages. So it depends If there's backlinks, yes, if there's no backlinks, you can probably ditch them after a year Yeah So I yeah, I think I talked about a little bit about met so Which meta tags are useful and not useful so the Important meta tag when it comes to like SEO is the meta description. There are a lot of meta tags For starters and you can create a meta tag for anything because it's all information, right? So you you can create a meta tag to do like site verifications and do all kinds of things But when it comes to SEO that the meta description is the most important only in the sense that it Allows that meta description to appear in the search results if the search query matches The content that's in that in that meta description There's no direct you can stuff all the keywords you want But it doesn't give you any kind of ranking boost because you have them in the meta description All it does is it allows you to show that text within the meta description itself So that when people are searching for it They can see that text get highlighted in the search results, which may lead to more clicks on your listing, right? So that that's the most important when it comes to comes SEO Yeah, sure Yeah, if you the question was like if you have one single if you have a single product Do you and you're using will commerce and you don't want to use that? product With product within the URL. Do you pull it out? I mean you could and you can market it easy more much more easily, right? I mean you could tighten up that URL so it looks prettier So even outside of like any SEO benefit that you get like even just There yes, I believe there's a way you can pull the product and this is where it gets dangerous mind you There's a way you can probably put a pulled product out of will commerce And I don't know the answer to that But there could be a way to pull the product out of the URL But if you do that you have to make sure that you redirect But then if you start adding products, then you might want to rethink your your strategy and You know ultimately it's about the interlinking it's about the structure It's about like thinking about your categories and how they link to one another ultimately So yeah, uh-huh sure. I'm sorry. I missed the last part. Yeah Right. Yep. It's a brochure site. Yeah, correct. Yes Yeah, the question is do if you have a brochure site like a minimal site with not that much content There's only so much benefit you can get from site structure and the answer is yes Yeah, yeah The question was about pages and whether tests be able to assign categories to pages and tags Well, you can't you can't you can't assign Categories and tags to pages themselves, but you can set the hierarchy within the pages themselves So if you go into pages, you can actually set a Structure for the pages themselves Yeah, yeah Uh-huh, that's totally different different topic that yeah. Yeah, so we can talk about that after yeah. Yeah Ideally, yeah Oh, so the question is whether you can use the same Keywords or same words for tags and category you can You can but I mean Which part? Yeah, well, I don't know it sounds it's No, no, it sounds it sounds like something that it Here's let me let me answer it this way With categories you are creating topic areas right like you're organizing your content to fall under specific subjects, right With tags you're getting a little more granular Right, that's and that's just thinking about That's not thinking about keyword stuffing. That's not thinking about like any anything like that it's more about Ultimately, what is it helping the user is a helping the visitor, right? It's not about gaming Google or what is gonna knock you down, right because this is This is all about like how do we make the content easier to find? How do we make it more user-friendly, you know for the most part most I would say most blogs don't need tags, right? Like unless you're getting very granular about things and that's when you the tags come into place because like, you know Because those tags will generate pages and then you end up with a bunch of pages that Google has to crawl, right? That don't need indexing. So Does that help answer? Yeah The yeah, the Yoast actually the Yoast website does a really good job with their content talking about site structure and The the the Yoast blog the Moz blog the AHS blog also Those are all I would consider those to be really good resources for SEO. Yeah Yeah Yeah Sure. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely Yeah, kettlebells the kettlebell because you know Google understands the difference between the two right like it even knows the difference Between lawyer and attorney, you know, I mean it knows that I should say it knows that They're one in the same right somebody looking for an attorney. He's probably looking for a lawyer vice versa. Yeah. Yeah It's okay, Matt Uh-huh. Oh, yeah, okay. You could yeah No, I I don't I wouldn't use no follow for for any really much of anything Yeah, unless you like maybe blog comments, right like that's bite on by the fault, right? Or if you're talking about somebody, maybe you don't like or you're talking about a subject matter That is controversial and you're just using it as an example Then you might no follow that link, right? You're not endorsing that site. You're just linking to it because it's informative. Yeah the readability score This is a little off-topic too, but as far as readability score like I Wouldn't get too bogged down with it, you know The important thing is to create unique original content that's compelling And I know like a lot of people get bogged down with the details of like of metrics, right? When really and then you spend so much time doing that that you don't you're not doing the work that you need to do Right like which is create compelling original content making a site creating a site. That's very user-friendly, you know So it's I think it's good as a as a benchmark and to know that you're moving in the right direction And so then it's like oh, I'm gonna improve my content going forward But yeah, I I wouldn't get too bogged down in the details. Yeah, you've even Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, I so the question is whether to use like landing pages as if you're using if you already have landing pages created to use those landing pages versus going into like categories that you already have and I Have I'm figuring that out still It is a tough one because if you really I mean if you have that landing page already and it's and it's already connected to that content You almost don't need it I'm experimenting with that now is is The category versus landing page because there are there are some instances where you end up with the site that has all these landing pages already created Have backlinks pointing to them. They're they're already doing well. So then you don't want to Mess with it, right? And you already linking to all that good content. So it's applying those best practices So then maybe you don't need the category in that instance Yeah, yeah, yeah So the different the question is the difference between category and tag and and so the categories are are hierarchical Yeah, yeah, yep No, it's it's a page right so It Google index it the same way being will index it the same way No, no, no, no, but you want to optimize both So like if you have tag pages and category pages you want to optimize both of those pages as best you can Yeah, any other questions? Cool. Awesome. Thanks guys. Thanks for sticking around


Good evening. I'd like to call the Monday, October 3rd regularly scheduled Berlin Select Board to order With us tonight on my left is Flo Smith Ferala Carl Parton To my right is Joe Stobb Dave Sawyer is with us on audio I'm Brad Town. This also is Vince Connie Town Administrator and Diane Isabel Town Treasurer Additions or changes the agenda Public comment traffic sign request Tim Mason So I love it 1264 at your port road And I reached out to this About the issue that we're having as you come over the hill head towards Berry Our driveway is the second drive at that hip just as you go to the hill ours is the first actually on the left The second one is window And we're finding that As we stop to turn out to our driveway waiting for oncoming traffic from coming from Berry that vehicles are coming over that hill quite fast and We have had a few near misses where they actually have to hit their brakes Swerve to the right So my I really reached out to Vince in August. It was to see if there was some sort of Sign that might be able to go up that way where it says 40 miles via per hour, which is not what these people are driving If we could get something that just said caution Hidden drive on the left or something like that When I reached out to Vince he told me that The select board had said that that would not be something that they felt I'm not sure exactly the wording I haven't written here that wouldn't help improve the situation He also indicated to me that the police were going to monitor that area between the Dodge Hill Fawn and the Berlin line Now We're home all the time. I'm not going to say they're not monitoring. I'm just saying that we don't see it very We might see a cargo a piece of cargo down Two three times a week turn around and come back up It doesn't feel like the police are actually monitoring it with radar or anything like that and I have spoken to the Chief of police About getting what over the last couple years getting one of those radar Try things to monitor what the speed is between the Dodge farm and the town I don't I'm sure you all know that road. It comes over a hill. It's a big dip and that goes up past Benoids and they're using that road as a racetrack Not everyone But a lot of people And my fear for us is that we're going to get rear-ended right there Trying to turn into our driveway We're very cautious coming up the hill. We we have our flicker on early Trying to drive as slow as you can without them getting irritated behind us But I thought I've seen those signs. I don't know that they would deter somebody But my thought is So that's why No, you say sign. What are you talking about for a sign? Well, just something that you know that one of those or yellow signs It just says slow hidden driver hidden drive on left or you know what? The ones that yeah, that you see it may not do anything, but it might So for a hidden drive, what is the distance do we know? Well the under the probably under the state standard, which is 50 feet So I don't necessarily think a hidden drive ahead is gonna work or be the right sign Just because of that. We do have a sign that has the speed limit that opposed It gets moving around a little bit cheap Yeah, we have a couple of options that we try to rotate through the town. We have a Speed sign that will track some data night We think we put it out there in your area before this in springtime And I can't recall what the data said off the top of my head You're absolutely right some people are just flying through there and sporadic enforcement Which is pretty much what we're limited to guess of staffing issues Isn't very Preventive, I guess we do have another sign that will we can transport around it's like an actual sign post That will track people's feet again. I'm not sure how much of a deterrent that is Or that is pretty much always available to us If you think that would help I've seen the sign on the flats by the airport But I have not seen anything between the Dodge Hill the Dodge farm In the town line, that's the trailer you're talking about right the speed trailer that yeah, yeah There's something else. You see we have an actual sign, too That doesn't track data Solar powered And we're Pretty flexible, I think and where we put that and your some restrictions Yeah, I Mean I've I've called 911 several times and the person I spoke to it always says yes They're driving between seven to eight miles now on that road That's what the person had told me that I'm more than I'm more than happy to have I mean I even offered my driveway as a place to monitor if There was a need for that I just Sorry The officers are directed to patrol that road at least once or twice during each ship I can't dedicate any more Big state police answer our phones on 9-1-1, so I don't know how they know how fast people are going on that road I don't doubt that people are speeding You feel that having the speed trailer put up there would help out We can hurt. I don't think there's a spot for the speed trailer, but the speed sign sounds like a good idea There's probably a spot On the flat side She gives out your residence isn't bad location What do you do with the data that's collected with It doesn't say it will print it out Once we put the trailer out somewhere we collect it after a period of time and we can print out that data It doesn't save so somebody will usually hand me the print out after it's been there for a week or so Do you use that data these determine maybe patrolling an area more than that more than another place? Usually it does help us prioritize things because sometimes people Think the speed is a lot worse than it actually is and then the data will kind of show us that it's very sporadic Yeah, there are a couple of bad players that are speeding throughout the day But it doesn't really want to sit out there for a whole period of time There so it's not every vehicle that's going by but it's a lot of vehicles I'm not trying to make any kind of statement about your airport road That is a bad stretch for sure But there have been smaller streets and people have this impression that it's All day long people just going crazy Dave Sawyer has a question. Yeah, Dave Yeah, it's not so much a question is I'm sympathetic to our situation, but I will say this in the last month I've been working up there We've got a project right there, so I have seen increased patrols over the last month up there But but she's very right there. There's times that I've come down to the sign there at the end of the airport and they're there Vehicles are a lot of vehicles are well in excess of the speed limit going through there In the problem is it's it's not any certain time of the day It's it's you know all hours of the day between that I've been up there between 7 a.m. And 5 p.m So that's all I wanted to say. I just say I I've seen the increased patrols up there the last month So I don't know it's it's going to be hiring less I think you know I do believe that sign with the solar sign showing the speed limit Put before her driveway coming from the airport side would probably would probably be it would probably help a little I don't know how much of a deterrent it'll be but it would probably draw people's attentions to the speeds that are actually going Is there a vehicle's turning sign warning sign? I thought it was a sign to say whatever you want, right? Yeah The trouble with signs is speed limits also assigned People are ignoring that apparently For what it's worth I would support a blind driveway sign or something to that effect The cost is minimal compared to it may do nothing, but it's better than doing Is Would put that up to him. Yeah, yes, I would put that how much of a sign In his budget Anything else on this Motion I'd make a motion to approve a sign in that Do you have a blind drive or something to that effect in the area of of the residents on the airport road? Yeah, I recommend to one from each direction One for each direction Any further discussion on this Hearing none those in favor My motion carries Thank you Airport road pothole issue Brenda lamp here I Was required to replace all my tires due to a pothole that I get on your road That was rather large and deep and there was no way for me to avoid it because of oncoming traffic My concern is that there was no comb no flag no indication of this whole in the road and I Feel a blessing on this because I hit it because there was a group of motorcycles that came after me And if one of those had hit that I would hate to have seen what happened Unfortunately because I have an all-wheel-drive car. I had to replace all four of my tires And I would like to request a reimbursement Because I feel that this was neglect on the highway department I realized that there are people everybody short-staffed and I get that but this was something that was very dangerous to the community and I think it should have been handled much better manner Before somebody really gets hurt and I do understand that it was filled the following day I want to see in quick defense of the highway department. I saw them fill it one day and With cold patch the best you can possibly do It was already it was already hollowed out the next day. So I would I'd be Pesitant to say neglectful. I know they were there But there's you have a pothole like this no matter where it is you can fill it in the next day It can be it can be torn up again I'd like to I'm also here for the same thing. I had to replace my rim and my tires I was lucky because we were my nose on Friday Mine was the 17th But I've also been told I I'm ever modern but I've lived in Maine for the last five years I was here visiting got here the day before dream and Didn't have no idea but everybody else seemed to know and it's been here for over a year I'm what I've been told that same kind of hole and people have hit it That's what I was told from the hospital when I got to the hospital Go ahead a flat tire. I probably wouldn't be here complaining about how much it cost me I have a $400 bill for that my tire and my rim and a week and a half of war and someone's hard because I couldn't even get But I like said I probably I don't know how many people haven't come Because if I was able to get KW to fix my tire or there's at the doctor's office with my granddaughter that morning I probably wouldn't bother but because I had to wait for a man and find a rim and I could afford And the fact that everybody said you should go to town because that's been An issue and this really caused the heart financial hardship for me. I just retired in So this is like my rent So I would like three plus three What's precedent you've been on the select board for Usually the way it the way it flies is If the tap if it was somebody hits a pothole in the town or the town road crew is unaware then It's Give it to an act of God There's like a windshield in the stone. However, if the town didn't know about it and They were there was no Side put up a mill cone or anything and it's on the town so this spot looks like it's a reoccurring issue It's right in the wheel track Outside wheel track, it's gonna be one of those things that's reoccurring how many times have we been out and fixed it? So the pack they cold patched it now By the sounds of things maybe a couple times you said it they beat it out I'm seeing it passed and I mean, I love on your poor road, too And you know where the balls are I am afraid that the patrol might think I've been drinking because I serve It's been repaired and the Slogger an issue the issue right now is Reimbursing for the two tires and the five tires in the room See our motion on this what for discussion say? Yes Does anybody have your documentation Oh, Brad, I have a question just on the four tires there It is there the tires that are there is there any indication or anything on the map what the where was on those? on the four tires no the Service center took in their their take on it was that a new tire would throw the Ratio off for the four-wheel drive. Yeah, no, no, no, I understand all that on a four-wheel drive vehicle My question is is how much use was on the tires that were there? How old were they before this bottle was hit? So do we have an estimated mileage that was on the on the four So they'd be fair to say they're probably a 30,000 mile tire that you got about 50% use out of the ones that were there You know the trouble the trouble is it's it's it's not It's not the percent of where is that they have to be replaced No, I understand that I just that it does have in my mind. Maybe it has a little bit of value I mean if you hit it if you hit these things and they've got 5,000 miles on them most of those tires are a 30,000 mile tire Well, then then that's an issue But if you got half or three-quarters what what part percentage of them reimbursement? Should we be talking about full cost? I you know I in my mind. I don't know that I could go that way I'm pretty sure it's full cost. Yeah, I can see what David's talking about I mean About done I might aim for that Well, I mean this one here that has the sidewall issue the tread looks fairly decent on it There's that one picture in your Even the even the bars on the top of the blocks is are still there Any more discussion on this just the second one Yeah, my son tied it so they need to get a receipt with 86 bucks But on the other ones I end up a I got a used rim because it was 120 first So now you said your total bill Came to $210 mine was Years was 610 last when I sat on the last board I was on this half and it folded up the apron on the car I was worried Okay They've interrupted so emotion on this one for discussion at least or Reimbursed both victims of the airport road pothole for their tire and tires and rim respectively Your second a second Okay, so how's the board feel on this? I know what statute says If no other discussion all those in favor of reimbursement Hi now I do I Thank you Thank you everyone. Yep. Okay, planning commission appointment? Yeah. I have a question for you. So is this going to step up the patrols on Potholes? And do we have the material on hand to take care of it? What's going to happen probably not next week because I think we're paving Johnson Paving's in town with the following week. Tim has got a motor, a hot box and he's going to be covering all the paved roads in town with a hot box in a day or two time to fix all the Potholes again for this season. Hopefully to get us through the winter and we'll do more of the same. Probably make that a regular schedule, maintenance routine if we can learn the hot box from Barry. That certainly sounds like money we'll spend. Do we have locations that are just constantly at Hassel? Again, it depends on when the coal patch is put in, right? And how it gets through the winter if the plows peel it up or not. But it's usually within the same areas, right? Some of that coal patch, like Carl said, it's in one day, it could be out the next summer last for a couple of months. But routinely it's, if you look at the road on Scott Hill there's something going underneath that's not helping as well because you can see the wheel ruts leading up to it. So there's some other issues to look at but the plan is going forward to use regular hot mix instead of coal patch at least once, if not twice a season and we'll keep record to that and see how it holds up. See this one here that they hit. It's almost like it's sand underneath and it's like it's shifted. My suggestion moving forward would be that people report it to the police department and submit it to insurance. The state wouldn't reimburse certain expenses without somebody going through their insurance first. If you cover either, it doesn't get covered by insurance or whatever remaining amount might not get covered by insurance, it's just a double or something. And if somebody brings a claim here, then that's it. Like, you don't have somebody come back and say I'm not in my frame's damage, too. So once you make a payout, that's it. Okay, let's see what we're up to. Another box. What's that? That's good. What's your plan? Let's see here. Planning commission appointment, Sarah Lace-Sleeper. His interest, his mother is in the package. It's an email. Mr. Sleeper is with us tonight. Should the board have any questions for him? But he's certainly expressed an interest. And the planning committee is, commission is waiting with open arms for him as well, I believe. So I served on the planning commission 10 or 15 years ago and I had quite an interview process, but I will ask you what made you want to become a member of the Berlin Planning Commission? Hi, folks, I'm Theron. So I've been interested, I mean, I've been interested in getting more involved in, in the town and doing something. I did apply to be on the select board a couple of years back and didn't quite get the votes, but heard from my neighbor that he was leaving the planning commission and that they would be looking for somebody else. So I figured I'd try to join up and see how I can help and work on some of the big projects that I know the town has upcoming. So. Any other questions for Mr. Sleeper? Your motion? I make the motion to appoint Theron Lace-Sleeper as a member of the planning commission and thank you for your interest. Thanks. I'll second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. That's in the package. That's the one. Recreation committee requests, Tim Shea. Mr. Shea is here with us. Okay. Yeah, so we've got two requests within our budget. First one is we want to put up a scoreboard at the baseball field at the school. We need to get permission from the school. They thought it'd be a nice addition to that complex. It's nothing fancy, you know, it's manual. But we'll keep it out of trouble hopefully during the game and attentive. And we do have Paul Winter, who's made these. He didn't want an Eastmont player, there's another one in Middlesex. The request for $940, we do have money in the budget for this and then we'll just use some labor to pick some balls and get some volunteers to help put it up. And hoping to do that before snow flies potentially. So that's the first request. The second is we've been working with the conservation committee and just wanted to update the signs at the parks down at the Dog River Park. There's really not a whole lot of signage there. So just signage that what the facility is and then just some of the information about it and also what it's not or what it should be used for. And similar, we're gonna update the sign at the parking area on the Berlin Pond there. It's just a little dated and update those. We work with the local work-safe on industrial lane. And that we'll probably need maybe a little bit of help from the town. I don't know, we can probably put them in but we might need Tim's help, we can see. I've been on the signage again, that's made good. That request is for $206. What are the signs gonna read? I don't have all the garbage, but it's basically informational, as far as I should have printed out what it is. And I can share that with you before we do it. But like I said, we work through the conservation committee as well, just to get their blessings and work. Obviously, hand in hand on some of these efforts. But it just updates it as far as some of the, what to do and what not to do in a fire arms and if you're walking around the pond, stay facing traffic, those sort of informational things that we're looking to update. The sign there is, I don't know, I think it's been there. So that was two requests that we had this evening. And I can, I do have a, what the verb it is, I can send that along if you want to table that one for now. That was a little easier and I'll be sure to later. What's their balance? I don't have that off the top of my head, I know it's at least a few thousand, I know that it's important to have that. And at this point, I don't, yeah, we, the ice rings seem to shake, we actually just had our work being found and got back. And suddenly, thanks to Vincent Tim, we did a lot of grades on the ice rink area. So we're gonna save a lot of water this year for flooding purposes, but there wasn't any requests there. We should be able to shake for the ice rink and we bought the removal equipment last year that we'll be using this year. So I don't foresee any other requests at this juncture, certainly in the near future. Okay, motion on this? I'll make a motion to approve the baseball scoreboard. Second. Second. Okay. Any further discussion on this? Those in favor? Good day. Just real quick, the motion was just on the baseball scoreboard on the other, the other side, okay. That's I just wanted to make sure. Yeah. Yeah. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries, there's the ball score. So on the verbiage, on the next one, I don't know how the board feels. Do you wanna take and wait until we see the verbiage or do you wanna take and make it a motion for it now? These are replacing older signs. Yeah. And the verbiage is gonna be similar. Similar, it's a little updated because some of it's, but yes, it's similar.  Dog River doesn't really have much signage at all there. So it's actually adding something that doesn't exist. Okay. I myself, Brad, would like to wait until we've seen the verbiage just to see what it is. Are you making a motion to the table? I would make a motion to the table until the time that we see the verbiage on the signs. Do I hear a second? Second. Any further discussion? Sorry if that makes you have to come a second time. No. Next one. Anything else? Those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Dodge Farm Road site visit decision on issues? In your package, there's a summary of what was decided from the board's site visit. Just looking for the approval of the board that didn't miss anything or didn't put in something that wasn't agreed upon that I can send this off officially to Dodge Farm. Dave, you have this information in front of you? No, I do not, Brad. You want to read it? Sure. You should have it in your email though, Dave. Yeah, let me grab that real quick for this check. I'll read it. It's in the PDF attachment. Yeah. During the site visit, it was determined that at a minimum the following would be required. More materials required from the previous cul-de-sac area to the Haskin driveway, approximately four to five inches. Need a crown in the road from previous cul-de-sac area down the entire road to pavement in accordance with section 21 of the Acceptance of Reclassification Town Highway Policy that was previously provided. The right-hand ditch needs to be deeper, an additional 10 to 12 inches. Need to find the head of the culvert and clean it out on the culvert that's located about three-quarters of the way up the hill. Cut the pavement back at the Haskin driveway as discussed on site. And the shoulder needs to be removed to allow water to run out the roadway through the S-corner area or raise the road above the shoulder. Yes, yes. And just want to remind everybody too, there's a note at the bottom of this as well that once the board agrees to accept the road, they're still a one-year waiting period as indicated in the policy before final acceptance is granted. And any issues that come up during that time are still the responsibility of the homeowners to take care of the satisfaction. Have a motion? Basically, we're just sitting this off to them. Yeah. I move to submit this to the Homeowners Association for their review. Second. Any further discussion? Go. I don't necessarily think I like where it says shoulders need to be removed. I think shaped. I think you could probably shape those to allow water to run off. I don't, yeah, I just don't like removed. So you're recommending a change removed to shape? Sure. Okay. And just for clarification, bullet point three, right-hand ditch. You're pulling up the hill, yeah. You all set with those changes, Dave? Yeah, I just want to go on the record that, you know, I'm still going to have problems only because precedent in my mind was set that these other developers in the past had had to pave those roads. But I'm okay with sending that in. I just, at the time it comes to accepting it, I personally I'll abstain from voting from it because I just feel the other contractors were made in the subdivisions to pave, I feel that they should have, they should pave that road up there. I wonder if putting a caveat along with what we have for requirements for taking it over, maybe a gravel tenure and if there's any request by the homeowner's association for it to be paved within the first 10 years or something, that they'll still need to contribute toward that, even if the town takes it over as a dirt road. I don't know if anything like that has ever been done, but it would protect the town from, you know, getting requests in two years to have it paved. Yeah. Did you speak to Bob? Morning. I did, yeah. One of the things I personally feel is any kind of development we have, there shouldn't be a gravel road, it shouldn't be paved. Simple because it cuts down on overall maintenance. Yeah. So the, I didn't correct me if I'm wrong, but the Partridge Farm was a single developer who owned all the plots that built and sold the houses off the paved road he put in, right? Whereas this is land plots bought by individuals and then developed themselves. I'm not sure just how that, go ahead Dave. Yeah, I just got that, that is partially correct, but when Fecto took over the bottom part of that, he had to put in escrow monies on the sales of those to pave the remainder of that Partridge Farm area. Sounds like everybody's trying to kick the can down the road. And Vince, I would include in bullet point number five, the way you read it, when you read it, including onsite at the end past the word discussed, just to include onsite where we discussed it. Okay, all those in favor, any more discussion on this? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Town clerk, NEMRIC module requests for discussion or decision? For decision. So the new town clerk has spent some time in East Montpelier, look at one of the things that they looked at was the NEMRIC modules. And she's done a little bit of research on that and has asked for out of her budget to spend $300 to enable those, that module for marriage license control. Again, it'll be digitizing it and that process that way and having them on record that way. So that's the request you want to spend $300 on that module to manage the marriage certificates. Is that $300 a year? Is that on just one shot? Usually that's one shot with NEMRIC. We pay a $5,000 a year maintenance. Okay. I want you to speak. My experience has been it's one shot. Is that $5,000 based off what modules you actually are using? So we're gonna see that go up a little bit, maybe. Maybe, because we don't really use them that much. I think it's also based on usage. But most of it, most of that $5,000 has to do with security. What is the biggest portion? What's the acronym NEMRIC stand for? Do you know? New England. Municipal. Yeah. It's a New England municipal record. Record, yeah. Mental record keeping. Information, record information. Yeah. Control. I make the motion to approve the $300 request from the town clerk to NEMRIC for the module request. Second that. Any further discussion? Now, where is that coming from? She has the money in her pocket. She doesn't have the exact line item. I think the supplies, we do have our line items. Any other discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Police vehicle bid opening. Yeah, you should have the two bids there. One is a local bid for one vehicle. And I believe that one is from the outside of the state corporation that has purchased vehicles from us before. And we'll assume that's for all three vehicles. I think that one that Carlos got is only for the single. Yeah, that there's one paper there with a handwritten bid for one vehicle. I have a bid. It's a sealed bid for three vehicles to the select board town of Berlin from Ringwood Motors, 5406 Austin Court, Ringwood, Illinois. And inclusive of the bid for the first vehicle 2016 Ford Explorer with 11, 119,504 miles, four by four with the bid number listed for $5,280. Vehicle number two, the 2014 Ford Explorer with 87,831 miles, also a four by four with the bid number for $4,280. And vehicle number three, a 2013 Chevrolet Tahoe with 69,157 miles, also a four by four with the bid number for 3,680. Handwritten bid I have from Wayne Siever is for the Chevy Tahoe for $2,308. Entertain a motion. Let's do them individually since we're gonna discuss. Because you can take this one and do it individually, can you not? Yeah. Okay. So motion on the first Ford Explorer for $5,280 since it was the only bid there. The only bid, make the motion to, I guess approve Ringwood Motors, the 2016 Ford Explorer for $5,280. Second. Any discussion? Yeah, so if we're considering keeping one of these vehicles for the potential use of our, we're not now. I don't think so. The money we take to keep it on the road. I don't think it's proper vehicle anymore. In that case, that's why I wanted to do them individually. In fact, that was still up for discussion. Oh, okay. Because we could probably just do this as one. We've started down the path. Okay, sorry. No, that's a whole question. Well, no, because you're gonna have to do it for the Tahoe, yeah. Anything else on this? Daring down those in the neighbor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Now for the. Want to do the last two? No. So it's vehicle number two, 2014 Ford Explorer with 87,831 miles for $4,280 to Ringwood Motors. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. No carries. And now for the Chevy Tahoe. The Chevrolet Tahoe with 69,157 miles for $3,680 to Ringwood Motors. And the other bid was? The other bid was Wayne Severs for $2,308. Second. No. No. Motion. Now we move to accept the $3,680 bid on the 2013 Chevy Tahoe from Ringwood Motors.  Second. Any discussion? Those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. So you can get a hold of them, Vince. I don't know if I can, yeah. Okay, RB Technologies phone system quote? Yes. We'll find that package in there. The total is 11,371 with a recurring cost of $650,72. Currently we're paying a recurring cost of a little under $600, was it like $582 monthly? No, I think it was like $520. $520? Five minutes, five, 28, dyslexic maybe today. But it's an old, you'll see a summary from RB Technology as well but the system that we have is old, outdated, it's complex. Diane can speak to how well it works when you're trying to make changes to it and the police have the same old system that they've had multiple issues with that we've had difficulties getting corrected as well and that's kind of the issue behind the driving to upgrade them and bring them more up to date. RB Tech came in and gave us a proposal to upgrade our system that will tie into our network as well, the new server equipment that we just put in as well. So again, although we can do it with the old system, we're not able to reconnect it without the additional service from TPX to get it up and running again that way. The new system will be fully integrated with that so if we need to access our phone messages or whatever from off-site, we'll be able to do that with this new system. It's pretty comprehensive and much easier to use and will be serviced by RB Tech as well. Where's TPX out of? I believe they're off the West Coast. Somewhere in California. They don't have a service. Everything is over the phone with them and you have to go online. They have to walk us through what needs to be done. For almost over a year, we didn't have any admin access. We just barely got it for Diane a few months ago from them to be able to even log in and deal with some of our own issues with them. They're not the most responsive. So did we solicit this bid from RB Technology? Yeah, yeah. Is this something that needs to go out for bid or should go out for bid for our customers? I put it out to a couple of other companies that were out of state as well and actually none of them bid on it. I should say none of them, but actually none of them submitted anything and the deadline has come and gone for it, so. And what is the age of the system currently? The one that we have now is more than seven years but I know of and I think it may be even more than 10 but I was able to go back at least seven. 2014, we had it. So eight, okay. Motion. I make the motion to approve the bid from RB Technologies for set up and one-time fees and installation services totaling $11,328.71 and the monthly expenses summary is $650.72. It's inclusive of recurring services and charges. You hear a second? I'll second. On that, Vince, what's the monthly charge on TPX? 520. It's a little over 500. So there is a bit of an increase in the monthly rate. A lot of our phones don't function just.  Get it. Any other discussion? I think everybody's, can the initial... I think everyone's is a big deal as well, I concur. Can the initial payment for installation be already funded? Yeah, I'll put one. That's a good question, yes, it does qualify for that. Any other discussion on this? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. The motion carries. Meeting minutes approval of May 16th, June the 6th, June the 20th, July 6th, July 18th. I make a motion to approve the May 16th, 2022 minutes as presented with just one adding the time that the meeting adjourned. I'll second that. Any other discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. The motion carries, June 6th. I make the motion to approve the June 6th minutes as presented with two exceptions adding in the time that the board exited executive session and the time that we adjourned that meeting. I'll second that. Any other discussion? All those in favor? Aye. All right, motion carries, June the 20th. Oh, there he is, well it's tucked under. I make the motion to approve the Monday, June 20th minutes as presented. Second that. Any other discussion? All those in favor? Aye. All right, motion carries, July 6th. I make the motion to approve the Monday, July 6th minutes as presented. I'd like to qualify, I think, on page three with one change, page 302, the underlying route 302 silver along replacement. Was that supposed to be silver? Silver? Yeah, it should be silver. Yeah, I was going to say I'm going to stop collecting silver. That's what it really is. Any other changes to it? If not, those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries in July the 18th. I make the motion to approve the Monday, July 18th minutes as presented. The second that. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries, approval, licenses, permits, vouchers, applications. I make the motion to approve payroll warrant 23-07 for payroll from September 11th to September 24th, 2022, paid on September 28th of this year, in the amount of $46,670.15. Also payable warrant 23-06, with checks 22-322 to 23-348 for payables in the amount of $78,336.55 and the August general journal entries. Second to have. Any further discussion? Lows in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Round table, full? Nothing, thank you. Carl? Just so they are fresh in our minds, getting meeting minutes approval a little sooner. Yeah. You'll see another batch at the next meeting and we'll be caught back up at some date on that, and it should be good from that point forward. I just want to say back on this tire issue and things going, anytime that an insurance company or anybody else, tire warranties or anything like that, they're all based on making the person whole again, not making them better than whole. So I think that, and I don't know what the statute is, how this thing falls, but I just think we need to do something to protect the town that we're not getting people at a, you know, like Carl Jokenly said, you know, they're at the end of their tire life. Next thing you know, they're hitting a pothole in town and they're getting four tires. I think we just need to be careful on that because I know insurance companies and the tire warranty companies, they take the mileage on those tires and they deduct that and they give them a portion of that. Dangerous precedent. Anything else, Dave? No, no, that's it. Joe? I'm good, thank you. Do I dare say events? You dare, don't I? I have a good thing, just to dare. You're all set? Are we in for an executive session? No, not tonight. I would just please remind everyone to sign the documents, sign the payrolls as well, look to work. I know we, again, that one was my fault, the last meeting that we missed it, that's going around tonight. Well, I almost, bring this one up, but a motion to adjourn. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? All right. All right. Motion carries, we are adjourned.