Yep. Great. Ready to put it right at the beginning. Okay. Any other changes? I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as amended. Second. All right, it's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. COVID. Yeah, hi. So I don't have COVID, but I don't want to wear a mask tonight and try to talk. It's, it's hard to hear. Maybe it's hard to hear me now. We have three positive cases of COVID in our recreation program. I spent a good part of the day today with Nick, and I don't think he has COVID. But in case there's a possibility that he might hear I am in here and I'll attend the meeting from here tonight, just not to be near any of you. We have, as I said, we have three positive cases. One was tested positive. I think Friday last week did not attend camp. And then two more over the weekend, as far as I know, none of the positive cases have attended camp. But we have reached out to the Department of Health explain the situation to them as to what's going on. We have camp in three different locations. The Skell Hall, the Wesley Methodist Church and St. Leo's Hall. All of the cases that we have had a positive test for are located at St. Leo's. The Health Department has asked us to not have camp at the St. Leo's venue tomorrow. So if your children go to camp with the rec program at the rec building near the pool or Wesley Methodist Church, they can still go. We're hoping that the suspension is one day for St. Leo's. The Health Department wants to do a little bit of research and some additional contact tracing, evidently. So there will be no program tomorrow at St. Leo's. Children who have siblings that are at the other locations, potentially, those siblings should be kept home as well tomorrow, if at all possible. We didn't learn this from the Health Department until after five o'clock tonight. So it's a little bit challenging to get the word out. Nick is working as we speak, trying to get information out to the to the folks, especially those who attend the day camp at St. Leo's. This, I think, should be stated, is out of that abundance of caution. The Health Department does not think that this is a widespread outbreak, but just to be to be safe, they've asked us to do this. I've talked with Nick. You've already, as of the information we had last week, campers were told all staff members are wearing masks now. And the participants were told that masks are optional. I would like to select for for the rest of this week anyway, to make the masks mandatory when the children are inside. It's not something that the Health Department is mandating, but, you know, the kids will masks at school. And I think that it might not be a bad idea to do that. So that's my request of you. Staff is wearing masks in the in the buildings when they're outside at the pool, scattered out around. There's much more opportunity for social distancing. Most of the time the kids are outside. They might eat lunch and while they're eating, they obviously can't wear masks. So this is a very narrow window that we would be asking asks to be worn. But I think it makes sense in all the locations for the rest of this week, and then we can reassess from there. So I'll stop with that. See if anybody has any questions. Thank you, Bill. Questions. Just a quick question, Bill, are any of the three cases were all three? Are they the Delta variant? I don't know. OK, as far as I've heard, most positive cases. Yeah, that's what you know, that's what we are. Any questions or comments on what those are requesting? No, just curious if you're expecting or prepared to handle I assume it would be any pushback or yeah, any pushback from families who don't want to have their kids. Students wear masks indoors and whatever that might come back on you and that. To me, pushback is if you don't want your kids to wear a mask, take them home. No, I don't. I think that that we're asking to do something that's reasonable, given the circumstances, we're not asking them to wear the mask all day long. I think that they they should do it. They're the board, so. Bill, Lisa has asked if the cases are campers or staff. Only campers right now. Nobody on staff has tested. Nobody on staff has has got COVID, so it's three campers. I'm I'm totally fine with that. I think it's reasonable and I know that kids at least under a certain age can't get vaccinated, so I think to try to limit spread. I think it's reasonable across. So I'm in support and we'll take a motion. So. Second, can you define the just this week or the remainder of camp? So you're asking for at least for now, just the remainder of this week? Yeah, what I would ask you to do is do it for the rest of this week. Or until we hear that it's not, you know, necessary. And then I would ask that you, since you're not going to meet again until. You know, two weeks from now, that if there's a need that you'll authorize me to make that decision going forward, if we have to. I'll amend my motion to. Make it for this week and subject to extension by a by approval by the town manager. OK, second, second. All right, any further discussion? All right, all those in favor, please say aye, aye, opposed. Right. Thanks, Bill. Any other conversations about COVID and in terms of town office any changes? No, obviously, we're doing these. We're open and, you know, we will, obviously, most of the rec staff don't come into this building. Nick is generally the only one he can make himself scarce and work other places most of the time he does anyway. I think we will certainly take whatever precautions we feel is necessary. I don't want to be alarmist about this, but, you know, the health department did suggest that we close down that one venue for tomorrow. And I think that in the masks for now is is all we have to do. And we'll just keep people, you know, when I out. And if if this becomes a wider spread outbreak, then obviously we'll have to consider doing doing more. But I'm hopeful that this will be it and we'll return to normal pretty quick. Yeah, thank you, Bill. We will move on then to consent agenda items minutes from July 19th meeting outside consumption permit for full hours. I'm going to make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Is there a second? It's been moving in a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. All right. All right, public, is there anyone here for the public this opportunity to speak to anything that's not on the agenda? You're more than welcome to be called upon for items in the agenda. But anyone here tonight wish to speak on anything that's currently not on here? Can I get a couple of names back there? Mike and John Griffin. John. OK, thank you. We are passed so to wait. So I guess if there's no one for the folks to speak, we'll move on to the introduction of the library director, Christine Wolfe. Can I just walk from here? If you wouldn't mind coming up just because they're microphones and this has to be out for anyone who is on Zoom. I'm Christine Wolfe, currently the chair of the library commission, not the new library director. Just hear this evening to let you all know that we get hired by the library director, Rachel Mewes, she's here tonight, thank you personally. And I also wanted to use this opportunity to publicly thank the library public library staff, especially Michelle Willie. We had about two months of an interim between directors and they all stepped up and went above and beyond in order to keep patient services running without introduction. And then we opened the library for in person services. And it's very incredibly slowly because of their hard work. And Rachel started last Tuesday. She's here. I don't have any questions for her. He stole her from Fletcher earlier. Do you want to come up and say any words or anything? Well, I just wanted to say that I'm thrilled to be here. I've always really loved Waterbury and I think this is just an amazing library. And it is a very interesting time to be stepping into the role of library director. But I'm so lucky to have the staff in place who seem to be on top of things. So if you have any thoughts or suggestions, stop by the library anytime, chat with me and we'll talk about what you want to see from your library. Do you have a general vision for the future of the library? Well, my general vision for the library is to do all of this and to be a resource for the community, especially for the people who most need it. But right now at this time, my goal is to get that library back up and running and back to pre-COVID standards. Although also, well, it continues to remain cautious and thoughtful as we continue to navigate the pandemic. So that's very much on the top of my mind. Thank you. Thanks a lot. All right, with that, we'll move to the Stowe Street Bridge Project presentation. And do we want to move off the table or I don't know how this is set up? I think it's OK if you stay where you are. So we're going to have a presentation up on the screen here. So everybody that's joined via Zoom should be able to see this as well. I'll speak somewhat loudly so everybody behind me can hear. So welcome. This is the Alternatives Presentation Meeting for Bridge 36 over Thatcher Brook, known as the Stowe Street Bridge. I'm Laura Stone. I'm the B-Trans scoping engineer at the end of the scoping process. This project is going to be handed off to a design project manager. And that's Jonathan Griffin sitting in the back here. And we also have Tom Knight here today. He's the Stantec project manager. So this is going to be designed by a consultant. Stantec, we've brought him on board for the design of the bridge. So the purpose of tonight's meeting, we really want to provide an understanding of the trans as approach to the project, provide an overview of the project constraints, talk about the resources around the bridge. We're going to give you some of the existing conditions of the existing bridge and ultimately talk about the alternatives that we consider and the recommended alternative. At the bottom there, it says provide opportunity to ask questions, voice concerns. I'm happy to take questions as they come up. It doesn't need to be at the end of the presentation. This could be a little bit more of a collaborative presentation. So there's a location map. I think everybody's pretty well aware of where it is. It's just east of the I-89 interchange at the intersection of Route 100, Flush Hill and Stow Street. So first, I'm going to talk about the B-Trans project development process just to give you an idea where we are in the project development process. And again, we're going to go over project overview, talk about the existing conditions of the bridge, the alternatives that we considered in the scoping report and the recommended alternative. Ultimately, we really want to build consensus towards that recommended alternative. We're going to talk about maintenance of traffic, the schedule, so when you can expect to see this project in construction, a summary and again, questions are at the bottom there, but we can really take questions at any time in this presentation. This slide is really just to show that we're at this really, really early stage of project development called project definition. Projects been funded. This is where we're identifying the resources of the environmental resources, the cultural resources, identifying the constraints around the bridge so we can take them into consideration while we're evaluating alternatives. Public participation, that's where we are right now. And ultimately, we really want to build consensus towards towards a recommended project. At the end of this presentation, we'll be looking at the to the town to make a decision on how they want to proceed. That's when it's that's when we consider it project defined. That's when we're going to move into the design of the bridge, quantifying the areas of impact that we're going to do, environmental permitting, the right of way process if needed. At the end of that contract, it will be awarded and the project will go to construction. So Act 153 of the 2012 legislative session per Act 153, the local share is reduced by 50 percent for rehabilitating versus replacing a bridge. Again, it's reduced an additional 50 percent for closing the road to traffic during construction. And that is vehicular traffic and pedestrian traffic. So in the past, all projects were 80 percent federally funded, 10 percent state funded and 10 percent town funded for the town highway bridge program. So this could potentially drop the town's funding share from 10 percent to 5 percent or 2.5 percent, depending on you see in the chart there, the different options. So hi, I'm Tom. I'm going to jump in here and just give a little overview of the existing conditions of the current bridge. Talk a little bit about some of the alternatives that that we looked at from an engineering standpoint. And then I'll go over an evaluation matrix that helps kind of define how the different choices stack up against one another. So just the picture up here is really to define the pieces and parts of the bridge that we're going to talk about starting from the top there. You've got the bridge deck and the bridge railing. Underneath the bridge deck are the bridge beams. Sometimes referred to as stringers. This particular bridge we're talking about the existing one out there. Those those stringers are concrete and they're actually they're actually integral with the bridge deck like port all together. As one piece, you'll see that in some of the inspection photos later. But just so we're naming pieces, you know, what we're talking about. And the concrete that supports the bridge on either end, we refer to as the the bridge substructure. Those are bridge abutments and windmills and the really bottom pieces of concrete out there where everything needs to ground if we refer to as the pudding. As far as the existing conditions go, we actually had the opportunity to look at a lot of these existing conditions and constraints on the product site in a study we did for the Regional Planning Commission back in 2018 and actually presented on that back then. So a lot of these slides are rehashing that information. We wrote that existing conditions report. We were really aiming towards turning into eventually the scoping report that we presented to the town recently. So the road classification for this Sturdy Street Bridge is considered a local class two road. It's only a 44 foot span, which is kind of small. Existing bridges concrete TV construction from 1928 and by the time a lot of village. So there is currently a five foot sidewalk and it's on the downstream side of the bridge. We recognize this residential area. There's a ski on the bridge. There's a sewer line that parallels the bridge and is supported on a separate structure that's in a really good condition right now. To break it down here to talk about some of the issues with the current bridge, a lot of them are geometric. There are some structural issues, but nothing urgent from a structural standpoint, really functionally. The bridge is built like a typical 1928 bridge. It's narrow, you know, 10 foot to 10 foot wide lanes. Unfortunately, we have that sidewalk on those bridges without a sidewalk. One of the things we identified in the 2018 study was that the current sidewalk is really on the long side of the bridge for the way pedestrian traffic moves out there now. And for the for the town's plan, the pedestrian traffic, the town would prefer that to be on the upstream side of the bridge. As far as the structural condition goes, right now, the bridge is on a completely manual inspection cycle. The normal inspection cycle for P-Trans would be to inspect bridge every two years. And it's gotten to the point now where the deterioration is accelerating a little bit. So he's actually watching it on an annual basis. And it's pretty it's almost a regular annual event that Alec will call us up and ask us to go look at a country that had fallen off there or something. So it's an important structural condition right now. It's on its way out.  Another issue with the with the structure is the services, the parking ride. And they're transit buses that come in and out of there. So the turn in geometry with those narrow lanes is kind of difficult. The intersection alignment is a challenge. And we've heard that the traffic human to get on to Vermont 100 is also kind of an issue. So we also see some opportunities here. You know, back in 2017, broad reach planning looked at ways to improve the pedestrian mobility in the region. And, you know, one of the things that was looked at here was moving that sidewalk over possibly providing improved wider shoulders for cyclists. I think there's been a retranspedestion improvement project or sidewalk improvement project that's been brought into design. And then it was paused into the site. We really need to figure out the rich part of things here first. But that that sidewalk improvement project identified, you know, a little section of sidewalk up on Vermont 100 at the town of Lake Deville, a crosswalk across from our 100 section of sidewalk on what I'm going to call the north side 100. And some improvements down here. At the industry section. So again, this product was table because it was decided that the bridge product really need to go first. The most efficient use of this improvement is improvements. OK, so back to existing conditions of the of the bridge itself. You know, it's falling concrete. That's when the exterior portion of the concrete pops up due to the corrosion of the rebar. That's happening on the stringers and in various locations on the apartments. It's very difficult for bridges this age for cracking. Just you've seen all the signs of this thing being 100 years old.  This is the 2018 photo. And actually the town's a nice job. They actually repaired a lot of the issues with this abutment. And we at the time we advised them it wasn't worth it to fix these spalling areas on the beams. Because those are that that reinforces going to be really difficult to to patch over. It's just going to be a spall of concrete. All right, so looking at the bridge from the upstream side. That it partially includes the waterway right now. Ideally, we would have a 45 foot. You have 45 foot stream. You'd like to you'd like to have about 50 foot, 50 to 55 foot opening there. So when the wires comes up high, it has plenty of room to get through there and not infer debris not to get enough on the abutments. All right, so here's an existing conditions layout. And the reason I'm using this rather than the Google map image is we're going to overlay a bunch of pictures of bridge and intersection options on top of here. So I just want to get everyone familiar and oriented. I kind of flipped the view on you here. So north is to the right in this picture. So this is the Blush Hill intersection. You can see my cursor on the far right side. The river's flowing from the bottom of the page up the page in that plain view picture. The Lincoln Street intersection is over here. And here we have North Street and the lower questions. So Street included here. We also have a existing bridge typical section that basically just shows what we saw from those pictures. Excuse me, Paul? Yes. Bill has asked that you look at your computer rather than the big screen. Just the owl, if you want better. I'll do my best for that. Yeah, sure. Is it just the way my voice is productive? I think so. Okay. You have to talk into the owl. Ah, thank you. Technology. Okay, so looking at my computer now, the existing layout. And we'll also present a series of these typical sections to show what width of roadway we're proposing and width of sidewalk we're proposing on the road and on the bridge. A lot of these are very similar except the graphics of the type of bridge we're showing will vary. But here we're showing that the existing travel ways are roughly 20 feet. And the sidewalk is also 5 feet wide. Okay. So one of the things we did back in 2018 was trying to establish the design criteria for this structure. So when we got into the scoping process, we could kind of hit different ground on any kind of alternatives we'd be looking at. The average daily traffic over the bridge is 3,000 vehicles per day. The design hourly volume across the bridge is 430 vehicles per hour. So that's like the peak hour from a design standpoint that you look at. There's about 3% trucks. Designs to use 25 miles per hour. I think I mentioned the sewer line is one of the utilities, but there's actually also a water line just upstream of the existing bridge. And there's an overhead guy wire. I'll put that to the existing condition plan and not highlight that from the cursor. So there's an overhead utility line that runs just upstream of the bridge here. There actually aren't any utilities carrying on that. It's just a cable that connects poles around both sides of the stream. So it's one of the tricks for not putting extra anchors in the ground. And almost all of our construction options would impact that. So I'm taking that on a little bit. Okay, so now we'll talk about an outline of the alternatives and above that. And I don't spend a lot of time on this because I'm going to go through any of the legal pictures for these. But basically, we do look at a no action alternative as part of our matrix. And all the alternatives we looked at, we made almost the same roadway geometry decisions. We looked at adding a right turn lane to the structure and increasing the width of the lanes.  That'll make more sense when I bring up some pictures there. But any of those alternatives we're going to show, we're going to show this 3, 12, 12, 12, 3, 5 configuration. That could easily be substituted for four foot shoulders, which give a little better, more room for cyclists and actually a little less room for cars. And that can slow traffic down a little bit. Sorry, while we're looking at that, can you tell say the current numbers as well? Sure. I know we have a 10, 10, 5, but I don't know what the shoulder is. But right now, our actual, the sidewalk is right on hold. We might call it 1, 9, 9, 1, the way it is right now. Because usually a car or motor will shy away from a sidewalk curve or a bridge rail, even though there really isn't a painted shoulder out there. But essentially you have no shoulder out there right now. So we'd be improving that in any case, improving it to a minimum of three feet and depending on the town's preference there, it could go to a four foot shoulder. Is this affecting the sewer on that? Yeah, pretty much almost all of the alternatives. World Tech, the sewer, we're not trying to work around that. I think it's worth mentioning at this point that the sewer is a participating cost to the project. And so if the town has a 5% share for the project, they would only have to pay 5% of that rehabilitation. So we did look at a superstructure rehabilitation, which is technically a feasible option. You could repair what's out there, you could put it back in condition, but we don't give that a lot of value. It's really a short-term fix and we assign it a 15-year design life. And that'll kind of show up in the cost per year analysis that we look at. So then another option is superstructure replacement and widening of the existing abundance, which is also feasible. That substructure that's out there, if you repair it and we're able to widen it, you can get 15 years out of that before you have to do more work on it. So if you feel like that's feasible, show that in the next of all alternatives here. And then we also looked at a full bridge replacement. One of the two options for the full bridge replacement, one was with a buried structure, which I'll describe a little bit more with the pictures. And the other one would be a full bridge replacement with a steel beam bridge. So again, I mentioned that all of the roadway portions of the design kind of have the same features or similar features. And when we looked at this back in 2018, the way we explained it is this really is more of like a roadway intersection type of project. And it just happens to have a bridge in the middle. There are some issues with the turning geometry on Lincoln Street. There's some queuing issues and really the need for a right hand turn link coming down to Vermont 100 in order to improve traffic. And the bus turning geometry really dictates things here. So I'm going to look at that slide here to show the bus turning movements. And the things that dictate here are buses turning on to Lincoln Street and buses turning off from Lincoln Street. But the one that's not shown here is there's another right hand turning from Vermont 100 onto Stoche Street. That one's actually not that tricky to put a bus to navigate and it doesn't dictate the geometry. These are the three, four critical certain movements that define everything. And you can see the shape of the intersections we've drawn here are just built to accommodate those turns. So we end up with this kind of sweeping corner down here where Lincoln Street is Stoche Street and really realigning the end of Lincoln Street to make it to 90 degrees instead of that sharp angle that comes in there. So that's kind of the common features. I mentioned the three lanes. So we have a straight and left turn lane coming off of Stoche Street and then we also have a right hand turn lane coming off of Stoche. On that right turn on Stoche Street on the Lincoln Street is that gray area there to shorten the pedestrian crossing? Why do you bring in that radius like that instead of allowing? Yeah, that actually has to do with the bus turning. I've been over to a lot. Oh, over there? Right there, yeah. Yeah, we're just trying not to have too wide pavement area there also. I think there is a benefit from shortening of the pedestrian days and pedestrians getting across but that's a stop sign condition. So it's really just we try not to have wide open pavement entrances because then cars tend to wander and do whatever they feel like. They like to give them a defined place to go. Some of the more dangerous, you know some of the more dangerous like plaza entrances are these big wide open things where cars can come in now wherever they want. So I think from a safety standpoint it's better to just narrow that entrance. To that point, Tom, that I'll call it a bull belt for lack of a better term. How's that going to work when it comes to plowing, during plowing season? Yes, so what we're proposing on this corner and I think you'll see this is more common throughout the state now at intersections is giving a truck island type of curve there similar to what you have down in the roundabout where there'll be a curve there at the edge of pavement but it'll be mountable by that bus so the bus can go up on the concrete portion but they won't be on the sidewalk and I'm not I'm not sure if that creates an incredible difficulty from a median standpoint but I would think that they would just be plowing the the paved portion and then using that as a part of snow storage. Yeah I was more interested in the left side where the sidewalk is. Okay, I'm not sure about the the cloud geometry but I think I think the cloud would still navigate that kind of corner and I guess this would be considered storage. Yeah I was going to say because typically on intersections like that that's where you get a lot of buildup on the snow because you got you know snow from two different roads coming into an intersection typically have more snow deposits in those types of areas. My other question is you can see on that drawing that the brook uh bottlenecks there a little bit um as part of this project proposal um you talked about widening that mouth between the two abutments would widen it enough to make it similar to the the two wider parts of the brook above and below. It would we're shooting for that for the natural channel lift and any of these options and we haven't we haven't changed that graphically in any of these pictures because the the blue lines just kind of follow the existing stream but all the all the bridge replacement options we're looking at do you give a wider opening a wider storyline? How do you deal with kind of the I feel like right now when you come to that intersection you're blind to the traffic coming up snow streets and you either want to take a left on the snow street up Lincoln or even just the right and just coming off Lincoln yeah like wondering how you deal with you know if you stop right there yeah how good of a visibility visibility do you have to the traffic coming from where that light blue bus is? This is something I don't have a graphic available for this but it is in the in the scoping report that we looked at we did look at sight lines and one of the one of the things you allow the analysis to do is allow the driver to cheat up even beyond the stop bar and and even go on to the crosswalk when they're when they're kind of creeping out to see that view but I think as part of this project that one of the things I didn't mention was sidewalk limits is in order to tie in sidewalk we'd be introducing a crosswalk here over near the top of north street and adding sidewalk on the upstream just to be consistent here the upstream side basically along here on the upper parts of the street that's going to improve sight lines by keeping the vegetation back a little bit and we'll be kind of pulling that bank back a little bit as part of the project because right now there's no sidewalk there to suggest that. Correct. Let me flip back to the existing conditions. The sidewalk on the yeah on the downstream side right now so so flipping that that piece over so that that's going to that's going to help improve things a little bit and then I think that this this geometry of essentially getting yourself 90 degrees to the roadway when you come in there it's also going to help see what's going on in both directions. So I should mention a little bit more about sidewalk connections here. One of the things we discussed with the trans when you're coming up with a recommended scope here was the limits of the sidewalk work and what's appropriate to do as part of this project and what would be appropriate for the town to take on in future endeavors and one of the things we decided was it made sense to bring this project all the way after that crosswalk area under mile 100. So basically this new sidewalk portion here we have also part of recommended scope for the project. Can I talk a little bit? Yes. You know when they were doing 100 that intersection came up a lot because a lot of what I think many of us know a lot of people do cross there when there's no crosswalking and basically as it was told to us there wasn't a safe way to create a lane on either side of the road so it wasn't part of that project. But then this project comes and now it's maybe limited where that project would have picked up at 15 versus like a little chicken egg but to me it seems like we should consider making sure that there's a safe crossing over 100 that could have been part of that other project and then you know whatever that landing zone is on the other side. I really do think that this intersection I'm surprised people haven't gotten hit on this. I think it's crossed way more than it's realized and I see it on a daily basis and I'm sure many of us do as well and I really would hope that that would be considered as part of this because I think that is crucial and it could have been involved in that other project if this bridge was imported so it's unfortunate to think that it would end there and not pick up what was missed on that other project. Mark, could I just mention something on that? Check it. Steve Law speaks of planning zone record. So we have an active bike and ped grant for this project that has been put on hold so I think my understanding is once the bridge is reconstructed then the that bike and ped grant project which which was shown. Tom showed earlier this would be redesigned but the sidewalk on the on the upstream side of the bridge and then this project would actually be built or the additional pieces would be built through the bicycle and pedestrian program so I think the V-trans is committed to that crosswalk on route 100 that's my understanding that that will be an add-on project. So it's part of this STP 17 prime 11 project that is still funded and then how does it work for the cost in terms of signaling and everything that was the infrastructure put in place when 100 was pre-done for this? No, that would have to follow this would be a separate project from the paving project so none of this was done perhaps with the exception of some of the signal improvements. I think there may have been some accommodation there. I think there might be some conduit design projects. There may be some conduit under the roadway which is which is one of the more costly pieces. That's my recollection too Tom that the conduit is there but the pedestrian signals will be dedicated crossing with the pedestrian walk sign and so on. So they have a place to screen the wires on the front of the road there but they don't have the pedestals on the full side there. That was driven by the bus turning geometry and talking about sidewalk minutes. Let me get into the alternatives and then if you see anything else that touches your eye about current conditions then I'm happy to answer any questions. So in the scoping report we looked at alternatives and one of them was a temporary pedestrian bridge to this community traffic during construction and just to give you an idea of a possible layout for that, this is one. There are multiple places you could put this temporary pedestrian bridge, you could put it further upstream and you could actually put it just downstream of the construction. I think the end result here is that it's about the same impact and has the same kind of influence on our decision making so this is just really a placeholder that's shown here location. So the other thing we will talk about is potential for a temporary bridge. I've also shown that and really you could put that in other places also but the idea is it would be pretty close to the existing construction kind of the existing bridge and it would be no near the construction zone which is I think yeah and this would be for cars, this would be for cars. The purple one in terms of the cars, the yellow one in terms of just for the temporary pedestrian bridge. Would the vehicle bridge also accommodate the buses? It could still accommodate buses. I think the turning challenge would be a little tricky with that and in general, I don't mean to steal the thunder with the alternative discussions here but in general any temporary bridge alternative is really tricky to get to work in the traffic so you have that this end of the temporary bridge is close to the existing intersection as possible. That's necessary or you create an offset intersection condition which gets really tricky from one traffic light trying to serve essentially two staggered intersections and that does weird things with the way that traffic chews up to the turns and when you're coming out from one leg of the intersection it can it can kind of cause other intersections that can currently go simultaneously. This traffic signal here is already at capacity and in introducing a temporary bridge here in any kind of offset intersection makes it really, really tricky so it's actually something we're not looking at but I just want to show a picture so we can talk about this a little better. All right so then this is just looking at different bridge alternatives so the way the alternatives report was set up you could kind of mix and match any bridge alternative with any traffic alternative and so you could have the superstructure replacement option and you could throw a temporary bridge on there you know in a way we can compile them this you know it was option two and then two A was with the temporary pedestrian bridge and two B was with the temporary traffic bridge or you know some some some variation of that kind of numbering organization system but so basically we look at these kind of independently the idea would be just choose a bridge you want to pick here and this is this is to just depict the superstructure replacement option with the widened substructure and that's kind of depicted down here by the light gray in the existing portions of the existing abundance remaining and then you would build on both sides to widen it out and then obviously widen the new superstructure on top of that. We show this profile picture so what this is to show the slope of the roadway in the final condition and I think that they take away with all of our profiles here is that the connection is the same as it is out there right now and I'm trying to rate it ready or fold it ready or anything it's it's kind of challenging enough with the hill as it is right now and we have we have plenty of clearance over the over the street even when the water comes up high there you can still get a fit of water under the bridge so really not going to mess with the profile this thing now the same thing with different brackets okay so alternative three the bridge replacement with dairy structure so this one's a little bit harder to to describe the words but it basically we're putting in like an arch type structure underneath the roadway and the picture down below here is is that better okay um so basically you would you put the arch type structure underneath and then you would have a layer of roadway structure um and and it would essentially for the town it would behave a lot like a regular um piece of road they'd be able to move the pavement and everything just like they treat a regular road so in profile view that that shows you what's going on there it's this arch um slightly wider than existing and we actually give up through the three-dimensional graphic to give people an idea of what that looks like that's a that's a cutaway just to show you the arch underneath and the roadway all right and then we have a full bridge replacement this would be new bridge abundance set back from where the existing are and steel beams one of the tricky things about this design is we do have this little corner of grace here that needs a little sprain underneath it certainly when you have a theme that rains out that little triangle which is just like it's a little combination of grace um but we're done here um again profile doesn't show much and there's one more graphic to show on the turners you have any questions you want to back up on those if you do that can I just can I just add that with the third structure option one of the benefits of that option is that the sewer line can be placed it can be placed right in the fill above the culver yeah so if you ever need to to change out your name of the sewer um basically basically it's treated like any other piece of sewer in a roadway and so it's a little more accessible but it's comfortable into the bridge I should know that these these bridge barriers to um what are what are showing here is a concrete area because we're assuming that the self preservation both would like to replicate some of the features that are out there so I'll just picture it for a little bit more here so what we did look at for options were an offsite detour um which which means you put a detour side close the bridge area then construction and then traffic on this way around through another another room um this ends up being the responsibility to choose and sign that that detour location but we looked at some options that were mentioned during the um previous existing conditions study we did a little bit of analysis of those should we consider that we just relocate the parking ride for a period of time so I think another parking area absolutely that is that is included some discussion of that in this report but I think that's that's key and that actually fits in a little bit with the um temporary pedestrian discussions here um so again off site detour option temporary bridge option temporary pedestrian bridge option there's also a fees to construction option that we usually look at and that would be like cut the bridge in half keep traffic on the half that you're keeping while you rip away the other halves and build a new room on that side and that just doesn't like that while we're just you know bridging this old bridge so we did not look at that option for this or we looked at it with this okay all right so so to talk about um off site detour options there's there's a really obvious detour is to send people down the mountain when they're back on the extreme and then you know back up back up still stream and that will take care of all the the vehicular traffic options and um Jonathan is going to be the private manager on this oh I drive it every day it's like actually I have to bring my kids to the under knob and I go to both places and I'm kind of equal to the traffic it's quick quick and easy from um second cars to the point and it is going to but it is going to send a little bit more traffic down the main street so we did some analysis on you know the main street intersection and the still street and traffic intersection and you might want to adjust the traffic timing on the main street and the still street intersection then construction all of that just you know get a few more of those cars there's a traffic movement but it is this is very feasible and I think easy from a vehicular standpoint from from pedestrians standpoint this would be the the shortest pedestrian route to send people around too but it's not safe to send people across the yeah it's currently limited access interchange and while we could could make some modifications to it to make it more safe for pedestrians in the short term we don't advise that at all I think that would just break bad habits that's really dangerous so we're not recommending sending pedestrians to you at all so then where do you send the pedestrians and what we're showing there we recognize not that's that's your shortest other other route there there's actually is a waterway trail route that was mentioned also that that could cut off a little bit of this ridiculous heat to our lane and we look at that we also think that one's very feasible so if you read into the scope of the report we recommend you here as considerations options in reality that there isn't a lot of pedestrian destination out there right now so if there you feel like not providing any connection for pedestrians isn't horrible as long as we can make it better with the final condition Bill's asking what length of closure for the construction right okay so yeah when we started out here we were looking at 90 days and you know I think we were confident we can go that down to a 60-day closure and that's pretty comfortable for any options another Shaw's employees that walk up still street almost every day yeah it it definitely is tricky for someone that doesn't have access to the vehicle and so during the discussion that we were looking at the parking lot um there might be some options for like getting a shuttle bus to that Shaw's location and making a connection from the Shaw's location down to the state office complex you know some kind of shuttle connection like that or even using one of the one of the buses that already do that one from parking night to the state office complex using them that's kind of another need to get around the other option is you know to hire the hire shelf that's a few days and have them on the regular schedule or on the on-house basis what's going to be our typical expense adding to crossing the temporary pedestrian um okay but I think that the rough number there is sort of construction costs that we probably got about $200,000 but for the town's share um it'll put you in that category you know you're paying five percent of the income so it really impacts the town a lot to do that there yeah that's for the 10-week temporary closure we have just been at Shaw's every day and I wouldn't have been answering a shuttle so that would be a shorter duration cost but that would be a temporary that's a bully town no that's a I'm going to pay the whole that would depend on the amount of the selection but if you close the deal for the five percent share you have to pay so if you're still getting the five percent share then that would be on your hand I think finding the efficient so now we get to the recommended alternative I can tell by the way I was talking about we are recommending the full variance replacement and we like the very structure option multi-plate sorry multi-plate it's not multi-plate it's probably precast complete but there's a couple options for how we build that structure but if you give the add-on complete and then so we also are recommending traffic means mean enough like E-Tour and the reasoning there is not only the town's share reducing the town's share with that pedestrian bridge not with traffic complications not that it's also a safety issue to have enough pedestrian walk through the construction zone so I'm going to put back and show the pictures you know any any connection we make that ties in the Lincoln street even if it's further all the construction you mess if you're if you're put further upstream you're still in routing pedestrians through a pretty active busy work site while we're trying to get the bridge built in 60 days so we don't we don't like that option that the vehicular traffic option is similar to that every time the case then in fact you introduce the vehicular traffic option and the the short duration we have to to build a bunch of tiny all the pedestrian or the timber bridge give it up and running and then do our construction and take it all down and there's the accompaniment things that are done so so for both safety reasons and I think cost reasons I assume that if we would do some sort of a temporary bridge you probably in that whole area need a sheriff's department you know helping guide traffic along boy you would we were trying to find it so that if we were doing something that so that we could spell out the route to the pedestrian so we're trying to go with just to our signing and corral it is possible to kind of take them through there but it will really what happens is the pedestrians and that got the construction and and pedestrians will be so all right so so I mentioned the 60 day closure duration that's one thing you like about this option again the whole 12 foot made and three foot shoulders and it's completely up to the pound if they prefer the slightly narrower traffic length and wider shoulders we're welcome to that in fact I think most of us we learn through that one so the span length approximately 15 that's that means all the high ground recommendations and our stream stream over the recommendations so this this is just a no more for the engineering standpoint the substructure is going down and on the edge out there so it wouldn't be possible to we probe everything out there and find where the bedrock is and you dig down and build it on the bedrock which is a nice style of this is great historic railing that's that's our recommendation to get rid of the concerns with the historical character of the existing bridge and they're they're like they will be right waiting for this for the infrastructure to be wider than it is right now there is some aerial utility location required and there's relocation of that sewer line which is usually known sewer line as part of the project there was a comment just okay and we'll have to figure because we don't have a village anymore and I'm not sure you're like you're aware and then we have some of the defug which is our utility district so we'll have to figure out in the town if you thought but I think we'll figure that out yeah I can okay so here are the the numbers I think of most importance is the this is total construction costs that we're looking at and the cost of the new eventual project costs okay so the replacement alternatives are in in the same ballpark as far as the construction costs you know when you add in a temporary bridge we're adding about five thousand dollars but it has other drawbacks associated with it not knowing that the town share is easy so all this all these numbers and more are included in the scoping report I tried to boil this down and get somewhat readable here so I'm not eating all the individual items for the highlight of the system structurally useful and but there's more detail in the scope of report if you want to dig into the numbers what we try to capture here is total project costs the the town share and then we also include a number here for annualized construction costs so this is not an incredibly complicated economic formula that reads interest rates and the time value of money or anything like that it's it's simply taking what we think the total project cost is going to be and dividing it by the number of years of the design life so an economist to come up with a completely different number and make a problem with several different numbers of things if they wanted to look at it and show a lot of different options as far as interest rates and inflation and all these things go but but this is just to give you a way to compare things over time it's not something most accurate but it's consistent across the course here we're taking that total product cost a lot of money a number of years of the design life and then the town share is in here construction duration there they were trying to get the total construction duration not the duration of closure and I don't think they had that but we actually for 60 days two months not things we started when we started this whole process with the so the the bottom line summary here we're looking for a construction start in 2025 and with this recommended alternative 3.4 million total cost estimate town share 170,000 and that's calculated based on inflation and all that for the next four years I've only spent a few years in consideration that four years from now you know I'm not gonna I'm not kind of trying to help with that number that's our best guess at the moment you know if you take the the inflation we've seen over the last 10 year period I think this is a reasonable number but but what's going on right now with the current construction price adjustments and you said that would protect that one of the three tasks agreed correct okay sure yeah can I see if anyone in the public is there anyone that wants to comment before we move on new questions is there is there going to be a closure on any industry yeah I'll just mention I have a few dozens of these open reports of regions had a very thorough job and so on the pedestrian but I just wanted to know I like the wider principle going to find out how many people reflect with more more could you describe a bit more in detail about how the bridge is being widened is it being widened on both sides or more on the other screen side or the down screen side we're actually trying to split the difference right there and and widen both directions equally or more or less equally so even though we're adding that traffic that traffic going essentially to the social traffic so the bridge length along the stream will kind of grow from the center of what it is now okay how much wide region is going to be what's the current need and what what will be the let me do the math on that number and I'll share that and right now we live at 116 stairs we're reaching the third house on stills green so that's why we're concerned about the details and the sidewalk right now goes on as we said the wrong side where the downside comes up by our house is that it looks like you know just from the diagrams that that's going to be partially eliminated or you know I'm not sure where it's in that it looks like they're going to be taking part of that sidewalk or lane that's correct that's correct of course that that sidewalk will be becoming part of the traffic so the sidewalk will cut back will be short yes it will now as far as whether the limits of the sidewalk are maintained in front of your is this your roughly right here yeah okay we have not you know put put any design effort into it right I think to whether we want to right um but I think we can certainly address that yeah since that was dead end basically in front of your house and what what's your what's your opinion on what you would like to see with the sidewalk that's in front of your house it would not really have a happening well my wife's concern would be a little bit in front of our foot so you know but I mean that's the right now that sidewalk was reconstructed a few years ago and you know I am I mean I think we would like to name any in front of our porch so you can walk off your porch and get over to that process right in that section between our our foot our house and the I mean that started open long so we had less you know this way than that I'm working on moving the foot here anything else to uh anyone else with any comments right I'm concerned that you're underestimating the number of people that are using the right now for walking across uh cycling across and wonders so I would you know uh recommend they can figure out a way to get us to that street crossing in place their clearance instruction I think that there has to be a way to uh safely pass people through instruction class it happens all the time so I don't really think that's a a valid objection and I just think there's been a lot of people taking into account so that is something that the town can consider when you're deciding which alternative you want to go with it does increase the cost of the town uh doubles the cost of the town um but it's certainly I mean that ultimately we're not going to force a closure on you guys we're not going to force um it's ultimately the town beside but it is a substantial cost difference so just something to think about in consideration just to be clear what you're currently saying so 60 days is the closure time our typical construction season is uh mid-may through October and so once this gets into design um Jonathan will work with the town to determine what 60 days that is so any 60 days any 60 consecutive days um between that window so it could be it seems like they're always concerned with um school school bus routes possibly so it could be you know June 15th I don't know when your school season ends but it's usually around that time that's when the 60 days could end but there's um that's that's something that will work on the town day yeah and not trying to complete the entire construction in that 60 days we're trying to have it reopened to traffic remember that's true so it might still not have the final payment on but it would you know it would have the the wings available from the traffic to start doing again at the end of an area for the pedestrian cycle so that 60 days is the complete shutdown is correct that's when you don't have connected right I think maybe the town I'll look into what necessity pedestrian traffic versus um enjoyment pedestrian traffic is crossing that bridge and that short 60 day period figure out some alternative to get those necessities to where they need to be back and forth then the join walkers can just have to find an alternative for 60 days other than incurring an enormous cost to the town which you know a short span of 60 days right that's why if we get like a volunteer or trying to get people to somewhere yeah so information to people who need to use that access to get work actually so we might need to get back and forth when do we need to make decisions on it seems like the pedestrian is one of the main conversations to have when do we need to make those decisions so it doesn't have to be tonight it doesn't need to be the next select board meeting and we can if you need to do a pedestrian study to figure out the destiny in the shoes um and you can you can take a couple months the you know this goes out six months if you're taking a year to make a decision there's um definitely a possibility that that 1.5 construction will move out to 1.6 but certainly you don't need to make a decision tonight but I would I would recommend you know in the next few months we definitely won't do that Laura I would just add that all we're working with the town not any years to refine that culture here it is well I mean we like to come in here and you know we don't want to pull your lungs and under deliver but I'm pretty confident in the shape of you know that too we can do an incentive for the contractor um we can choose what substantial conclusions look like for that closure duration so like Tom was saying you know maybe there's no cave in on-road when you reopen it and then we do a couple of night closure in the state but it's open for the deep volume so there's some things we can look at as we get farther in design on the details they're going to be um you know we're still so conceptual across I think we're confident in the 60 days I'm pretty confident we can do better um I drive across that place today every day so you know I'm destined to work hard for you guys and and also one thing that you can note is the town so which chooses an alternative you know to get to 5% that's the next step finance and maintenance agreement that I would execute you guys which basically satisfies your funding so you take your your alternative and if you choose to go without the best we need for it you can then have the private liberation to finalize how you want to accommodate the best you can do this so some of these things can run through you as well that 60 days is that figure in the consideration any weather delays yeah it does right so it's there there's uh there are no considerations basically um you get the days you get and that's all the contractor deaths so um we do factor in some you know contingency time but but once we know what the alternative is right now we're not sure it's going to get pretty bad structure or uh you know still being very structured so once we know exactly what the town sectional furniture structure we can refine the design and get a better idea so those incentives disincentives um just to give you an idea of what that is so for every um day that the contractor completes the bridge ahead of schedule we pay them money we pay them extra money and then for every and I believe it's built by the power that they they don't need that 60 days they need to pay us and I can say it's it's worked in 99% of cases we've done hundreds of bridge closures at this point um very detailed uh construction schedules laid out um you know activity by construction activity by construction activity and um all but one project uh the contractors met the date for that time duration so any other questions or so next steps I'm I'm going to send a response to the town probably tomorrow or the next day I'm going to be sending along a form it's going to have all of the alternatives um spelled out on that form and the town when you're ready you can just check you know we want alternative 3a 4a whatever it is um so we're waiting for uh the town response to recommendation on the proposed project um once we hear from the town on how you'd like to proceed that's when we'll start um developing conceptual plans uh we'll distribute them to the town for comments if everything looks good um we'll process the local agreements so that's the finance and maintenance agreements um at that point that's when we'll start developing more plan sets we'll go through the writer boy process if they believe it is going to be needed on this project um and again just a reminder the town is responsible for being chosen right two questions I'm actually have a follow-up to the question of that so if my numbers are correct here it's like we're adding 20 feet of width 22 22 yeah you split by the center of the river trying trying to keep it as close to the center of the road that's possible so so on um center it would be quite well so rather than be on the other side yeah that's more or less what we're aiming for is to keep it in place how many feet of river would be reclaimed in this project because again we're seeing there's oh for the long for the for the wider span I'm not sure exactly on on that one either but I think we're gonna get at least five feet wider on each side and maybe maybe a little bit more yeah it's what's flooding that's actually you know we have a pinch point that yeah yeah we're definitely going to keep that as open as possible okay any other questions thank you very much this was very well laid out I'll just mention so there's that link at the top of the page there that's the project SharePoint site so the scoping reports up at that site there's black sheet up at that site the next presentation will be up at that site and all future plans of middle so conceptual plans preliminary plans will all be posted on that website it's a public public site that anybody can go to that information one last question will the stream with chains under the bridge we're not going to physically alter the streams that dig it out and open up a couple of taking different structures out with this algorithm okay so the stream will have more use with the track it will never fit well people have one yes okay because I mean you know over days when we engage in rain you know the height of that patches where it goes up by right it's all right we will make sure that you respond thank you thank you thank you for your patience we know we're behind next we're moving on to interviews for cd fiber dug it and alternate alternate delegate I'm not sure we have two people here in person and one person is there anyone facilitating the conversations around even what for goals and responsibilities of these delegates are cd can you do that Steve can you help me sure okay thank you let me show up to the table here in a moment give a very great overview so cd fiber is our communication union district that already exists so you've already decided to join and the final step is to appoint a delegate and an alternate delegate so and the roles the board of cd fiber by extending they meet monthly and delegates or have for a variety of volunteer efforts one might be working on design for a library and then to hold on to the topic to take up another day so I don't want to put some so okay that's studying really the bottom thank you very much yeah okay we will start with Dennis come on up thank you for your patience so yeah Dennis you can tell us a little bit about yourself and why you're interested being a cd fiber representative the one that works for me so I've been fairly involved in trying to get internet up our way it's a real challenging problem and cost-wise for our residents I'm sure you all have been doing these common tasks which has been pretty frustrating but it was one of the more new ways to bring people were very clear so anyway that's why I decided to volunteer and I know there was a call for volunteers initially they didn't do anything bad and then they got a letter from my colleague to volunteer anyway I my background was in science that a phd chemistry in New York I graduated in 1977 you know I spent my whole life working for a seba pharmaceuticals which became no virus which occurred under one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world my role has been mostly managing research managing work groups of people learning development projects where we are spending large amounts of money trying to bring it throughout the market if you take a picture over the last year of the pandemic direct development is a lengthy process I know that I'm actually pushing playing that is out of my realm but I'm pretty familiar with the wheeling and project management like situations with large numbers of people the technology side that's something I've done when I was so like uncomfortable with technology issues I have no experience in internet design or anything like that it's just a project Any questions? Yeah What's the number of potential properties like this hopefully would help to guess what the fact is I don't have the data mark I know There is cd5 data that we can access and we can get back to on that they're underserved numbers of connections right now, but I don't have to know Well, it's better in one way because we have Able that it isn't fair But you know the majority of the community is conserved is served by But that's not quite No, but it meets the speed criteria Those are the kind of issues that I think the delegates with So I saw my problem because I Just There's a significant Um Oh, yeah Headquarters The answer is yes Um, any questions from the board sound like you got a lot of experience in a lot of different areas that I Do you have any experience in harvesting? Yeah It seemed like Comcast everybody has problems with bomb gas Well, I don't know what it is about their company, but Getting them to do anything was like pulling teeth They make a lot of money They make a lot of money and they seem like they don't do a lot for I mean once they get their infrastructure in I mean the town right now has had to extend their contract Get them to move their lines off the poles here so we can pull the poles down to them There's a last one. We knew that going into this You know deal that they were going to be problematic and in fact They have kind of gone over Over the line in being problematic and uh So I think that's going to be the huge number one issue are they going to be the supplier of the internet? I didn't know it would not be out there. It would be a separate system So what part of the book role do they play in this one? Who? Comcast? Yeah, I don't think I think this would be tied into a wider line that's coming from So potentially Yeah And they showed a map in one of our meetings it was Because I think our underserved areas upper street street road area So who's going to be running the lines Is it they would have a contract Yeah, I think maybe another meeting we can get So I would recommend you We'll get somebody in here to talk to you about No, it's okay. I don't know Great, uh, thank you very much. Um, and we will let you know we were picking a Okay Yeah My name is Linda Grevelle. I live in I'm interested in public service I think I have In this area and education And so I would like to just say that I'm Um, my first up look that is my education. I have a bachelor's degree in northeastern university in math and computer science and education Um, I had a double major there. I also have a master's degree from rent for later Um in a computer technology and then My experience is that I've been a software developer I have Worked on a bugger For example, I wired school systems with internet capabilities I Worked for sovereign communications When they were doing the broadband installation in southern Vermont So it's part of that activity I also work for hackershield with the cybersecurity company I ran the east coast office at that company I consider myself a software developer engineering project manager and I think all this experience that I have working with Internet already will come in handy with this job Um, let's see what else I have to offer. Oh public service. Um, I'm currently at justice repeat I'm a volunteer with stowe and library schools in ski programs because I'm a ski instructor and I I collect donations for the Vermont food bag and one of my Public services and I am the Democratic County chair for Washington County Where I do a lot of A couple of questions. Where did you do your software developer company? You use software development or You mentioned that Okay, how long have you lived in border bird? Thank you. Thank you I think Impressive background What do you mean? You're a better country In regard to that's right. I'm very fired The difference between the two Yeah, I know that's true Is that one you get paid for and the other one you work in the dough I know that feeling I also think that it's um good thing to have diversity on this committee and I think that the team that I'm with is bringing the first team Thank you very much any additional questions Thank you I believe prista for ur via zoom correct Yes, I apologize. I'm I'm kind of under the weather and I didn't want to bring that into uh To a public place. So thank you for having me No problem. Thank you for that same same thing if you heard the other interviews Just tell us a little about yourself your background with your interest is Sure, although I have to say Following linda may be a little difficult As as we're here to discuss my internet is a challenge. So I apologize if I cut it in and out but Um, yeah a little bit about my myself. I've been uh in technology my entire career I actually started in in a training program For a high-speed internet company Down in florida where i'm originally from I got into the software development from there Um and really enjoyed doing that I then I then shifted gears a bit and went to uh goldman sacks Out in in utah and solid city and I I um I worked on a team It's called dev ops, which is sort of um halfway in between an it role in a software development role I guess you could say and and I did that for a while before moving back home to florida. Um, where I ended up Um running the it team for um for a software company a healthcare software company And um, I did that for a number of years and so you know in in that experience I worked with a lot of different cell phone providers. We had we had four different campuses that all had primary and secondary internets And so, you know, I worked with a lot of different companies a wide variety of companies fiber cable And and more Excuse me, and then Then, you know, my family and I we we are floridians, but We're glad to be from florida, but we don't want to live there. So we actually intentionally looked to to move to move somewhere else and so I started pursuing a job in in the burlington vermont area and I ended up becoming the director of technology for vital which is vermont's health information exchange um, and I've done that Excuse me. I've done that for the last Or for about two years. I I um, I worked for for vital um, and um, we we've absolutely fallen in love with vermont and decided that this is where we want to stay Uh, and so we recently purchased our first vermont house Um here in waterberry. Um, we moved in in the beginning of april and at the same time I was actually recruited by uh, another Financial company software financial company. Um, they're based out of new york city, but we have mostly remote workforce and for them on the head of it and so again, I I deal with um, uh, internet and many other technologies for our company and Yeah, and so, you know, a little bit of a personal background You know, my family and I have really fallen in with fallen in love with vermont and um, we're very happy to have found waterberry and a house here in waterberry, uh, waterberry and It's actually my view is my background and very proud of the proud of that. Um, but the the one sticking point for us was um, just terrible terrible internet, um options and you know, I'm I'm lucky enough that um, I know technologies and I have I have a very fancy home network that allows me to take the multiple terrible internet options that I have and sort of combine them into one mediocre option but it's still You know, most people don't have that that luxury And I want to I want to give back to the community that I have recently adopted and And that's that's kind of what I'm what I'm hoping to do it and uh, in fact You know, I was I've been here the whole meeting and and I've enjoyed, you know, learning about the bridge project and and other things Um, and right as we were starting to go into this process My wife decided that she was going to watch tv and I had to go tell her to stop because I can't do this zoom call and watch tv at the same time So it's certainly something that I um, I I feel personally but I'm obviously very fortunate that I I can deal with this problem myself and I'm sure there's a There's a much larger underserved community that that doesn't have the the tools available to to deal with that and I'd like to help in any way I can Great, well, thank you very much. Uh questions from the board What are your current internet providers? So I I have um, I have consolidated dsl at seven megabit by 700 megabit That's my primary And uh, and then I also have a t-mobile hotspot with 100 gigs of data And then my home network allows for uh, two internet connections and and it load balances between them And so if one fails the other one can pick up and I was affected by the power outage last night and thankfully I was able to My my um hotspot is on it does work on a battery for about eight hours. So So Comcast does not serve your home either No, um, but I did I did reach out to them. Um, and they were willing to serve my house for just over $13,000 Where in Waterbury are you located? I'm uh, I'm just off of two. Um pretty far west almost to Bolton So if you go past the fairgrounds, uh, and then go back under the interstate On the right hand side, there's a little road with Three houses and I'm one of the three All right any additional questions for chris Thank you very much. Um, we'll be making a decision and let you know. Um, we need to pick a Main delegate and alternative so Thank you very much Thank you. Thank you chris. Um, do we want to make a decision tonight or do we want? Let's see There is a board being coming up, uh, there would be August 9th, Tuesday August 9th was a board meeting. It would be awesome if you could make a decision tonight If you want one suggestion, you can go through our business and come back to this possibly Um, we have other guests. So we want to do that and come already behind. Okay, great Hey, we will move on then to the act 250 discussion Thank you for your patience The bridge project is very interesting. I find that fascinating. I live in Beto Cresso I am one of the people that occasionally walks across the road mostly drives across it So it's nice to see you doing that project Cool. Well, I'll I'll let you introduce yourself and and we've got john as well They're both from clif and I'll let you explain who clif is So for those who don't know me, I'm Duncan mcdougal. Um, and I live in the library center on the miss hill And uh, almost 25 years ago. I started in non-profit my home called the children's literacy foundation You may have seen my red card bogging around with a smaller face on it And um, we have worked at the last 23 years with Almost 350,000 kids across from off the answer Our target audience is low income at risk and rural kids from birth age 12 For every inch of the two states Going housing developments, homeless shelters Or with refugee kids migrant kids working prisons to connect inmates with their kids through literacy Working schools libraries, etc. So long or less So long story short, um, we have been working above my garage on this hill and um We work wherever the kids are so we don't have any kids coming to us We just have little office where we organize all of these events And over time we've just run out of space So we're looking for after 23 years a new office And we love water very water very center and we absolutely want to stay here Our staff members live around here. They want to stay here And after more than two years of searching, we found a location to build a flat out Um, property which is kind of across from home all the cider where the building burned down It used to be the auction bar And so we had to purchase a sale agreement with the graces with john and ron and grace And our sincere hope is that that will be our new location One challenge for us as a small nonprofit is that it's a 1.4 acre property And yet you would have to go through that 250 under the current timeline And most towns would want to have a 10 acre limit and here is one acre even though whatever it has So so is the question that we wanted to raise it's going to be financially Challenging for us actually to go through active 50. It's kind of time-wise. It's going to slow us play now And so we will be raised that issue and i'm here with john matryoski TCE engineering hired on the disperse to do the engineering force and the permitting And in the second after john speaks we'll hear from john bubble John is a board member of the children's literacy foundation and he is the chair of our Plague of Massif from john. So i'll be really brief. I actually came in with this board Maybe three years ago. I knew you would hear chris And we had a conversation about active 50 and that's all this is tonight. There's no pressure. We're not I think we're asking you to think about it to talk about it And perhaps consider Not being the one acre town and that maybe he's not a decision you make maybe that starts here and Goes to the planning commission and others to get us there but I came and talked to you because we were going through a project a few years ago the ferro gunshot And so we had the benefit of going through that project with act 250 And I have the I've come out on the other side I can give you a little bit of insight as to How that went. I know there was an article in the free press about it and I printed it out today, but Essentially, they spent an extra 10 percent on the project extra 120 thousand dollars To go through act 250 when you think about the application fees Um, all of the engineering prepare plans and to go through that process And then in addition to that it created, you know, months of extra review time and more hearings What I found interesting about that project was That waterbury has An amazing d rv. They review the project in detail and permitted it And later on when we went through act 250 There was essentially no changes The project the d rv approved That went through the scrutiny of this office or the town of waterbury It's pretty much the project we built We still had to get a storm water permit A water supply permit the wastewater permit the local approval But we had to do that anyway And act 250 was really more a cleared house the other really Kind of unfortunate thing that happened with the pro project and You'll be exposed to this potentially as well Is that the train showed up And they said because you're an act 250 project we can ask you to help pay more road improvements on the state highways And so they came up with initially with something that was 45,000 dollars. They wanted a check to help pay for some of the Projects that were fully funded by the federal government Complete but weren't complete for a time frame that allowed it to be You know not an issue and so the trans Asked the 45,000 We negotiated in good faith with them And with bill chef lock that involved he helped us a little bit on that because it was kind of a surprise you know surprise extra bill and Fortunately, they negotiated down to 6500 and and we agreed in those days and The process ended and and Henry pro paid that fee But they started with something that was scary 45,000 on top of what Henry pro had already said So that's kind of the other side of a project that you know, I had that conversation with this board beforehand and then we went through act 250 And that's the experience we had it really didn't change the project, but it adds a lot of burden in cost So in the case of cliff, which is a non-profit, you know, we are paying attention to cost and we wanted to have that discussion a few years later now to see if Maybe we've reached a point of where Act 250 doesn't have to be a one-eater town anymore And steve probably could explain this better than anybody, but If if towns have permanent zoning and subdivision rules Then act 250 says for commercial projects Under 10 acres. There is no jurisdiction For towns that don't have permanent zoning subdivision rules. It's one-eater In the case of three particular towns benson brandon waterbury The town has made the decision to remain a one-eater town, which is the town's right to do that And all I would say about waterbury zoning is it's It's not the best. It's not the worst. It's pretty solid. You know, it's the middle of the middle of the pack I deal with I've been doing this 38 years. So I've dealt with a lot of regulations and Waterbury's regs are thorough and that project didn't change Um, that's one good experience. You know, that's one example Maybe there's some projects that act 250 really mattered You know, uh, when I heard about act 250 and I started my career It was really about regional impacts And protecting towns that didn't have zoning and it was important and I believe in act 250 That's why our state's so beautiful and um, the gentleman was just speaking That's why he wanted to come to vermont is because we are beautiful state And I've been to some states that don't have act 250 and and and allow just anything to happen And it's terrible. Um, so I it's not I'm not against that 250 I work with them all the time And I do many projects, but it's a cost of benefit analysis And is the cost to cliff or the case of Henry Barrow is that cost worth the benefit that The community is gaining and I think it's All I ask that you just think about it and give it some consideration and um, we're probably We're probably several months before we even get to the point of applying for act 250 But it could add 10 to the cost and for nonprofit. That's a big chunk of money So that's I'm being brief because I know this is late. Um, and john is part of cliff. So John, maybe you could just uh, say hello and and offer a brief statement Yeah, thank you john and thank you to the members of the select board who have to stay quite late tonight And I will also be brief and I want to pick up where john left off, which is I've taught at talk for 26 years And one of the things I always spent time with my students on was doing a cost benefit analysis in every decision you make You know, what's the cost? What's the benefits? um As john indicated For cliff the the benefits of going through act 250 are relatively small the costs both in time and in Um money is substantial Um, I would argue that for the state of vermont And that's something we ought to think about the cost benefit analysis is also not very favorable In this case, we're talking about a very small project um That where you know, we have right now a lot of construction going on in vermont It's clogged when I talk to construction managers like nailer and brine They say, you know, you have to go through a series of departments there And each one is going to take the maximum time if they have 60 days Before they have to start the project they take 60 days because the system is so clogged up and to throw yet another project that I think anybody who looked at this objectively could say is not going to um You know run into anything any any issues But to clog up the system with it, you know as a taxpayer in vermont, I'm not happy about that Um, and then I look at it from waterberry standpoint and I say, you know, you have a professional You have steve Um, I can't pronounce his last name, but it begins with an l who's who's more knowledgeable About act 250 than any of us and I think he could do you the cost benefit analysis for The town of waterberry and I think what he would say in this case is You know, there are some things that aren't covered by by The town zoning and planning Like traffic studies But in this case, you know, do you really need a traffic study? In fact, we've already talked to the vermont department of transportation and they're saying No, we don't we don't really Want you to do a traffic study. We can just see there are five cars a day coming there It's not going to change the traffic on that And he could say here are the other things that aren't covered by the local zoning And that's that's you know, that's that's what we'll get that's the benefit we'll get about pushing you through act 250 And here are the costs Big costs to anybody who wants to do a project here in town What I would recommend is that you know to conform to the rest of the states in vermont We say okay if the project is 10 acres no question has to go through act 250 if it's less than one acre Should should never go through act 250 and if it's somewhere between one and 10 acres then let's let our professionals Like steve do this kind of cost benefit analysis and say in this case it makes a lot of sense in other cases It doesn't make sense. You know, I'm a volunteer like all of you And one of the great advantages of being a volunteer Is you can use your common sense and you can look at a project like this and say, you know common sense says We're not going to get any benefits out of pushing them through act 250 And we're going to impose significant costs. I mean They're kids who won't get books because we want to you know Get some paperwork done at at the state level again. I would you know urge you to use steve To determine when does it make sense to push a little project like this through act 250 Is there anything controversial? Is there anything to be gained? And what's the cost? And make a decision on that basis. Thanks very much Thanks down mark Yeah I think this steve is probably still there. I think john You know makes good sense, but I'm not sure we get to pick and choose. I think we either are or not You know, I don't think that we can say well steve's going to do cost benefit analysis And this project has to go through act 250 But another one doesn't um, we have an ordinance uh that requires our Development of this nature of this size parcel to go through act 250 I think it's either on or off uh, so i'm not here to tell you that you shouldn't change this ordinance, but I don't think we can do what john bogel just said and Pick one that's going to go to act 250 and another one that isn't going to go And i'll defer to steve if he's still there Yeah, yeah, he's getting kind of the table. I'm here bill so since I was um Addressed I think I better speak to you So, um, I don't do cost benefit analysis john. It's not my job And also i'm a facilitator I don't make the decisions about development review. It's the decisions Of the development review board. So I think I just want to be clear about my role in in this, um There are situations where the central my regional planning commission makes decisions about Which projects have regional significance and in some cases they have decided that Projects between one and acres have regional significance. So I think I think we have to be careful there, but um Can you explain that? Oh, what the central my regional planning commission does with that with that comment. What does that mean regional significance? Well, so so This is a little bit of a sideline, but I'll try to be brief. So, um All projects get referred to the central my regional planning commission They have to decide if under the central my regional plan Does this project rise to a level of significance either because of natural resource impacts or because of some other impact impact on Assert resources something of that nature often has to do with natural resources Any project or one that's between the one and well, don't be any project Typically, there would be a larger project, but but it might be one. So, um, so I think it's important since the cost benefit was raised, um And act 250 came into being in 1970 It was largely due to pressure in southern romans of development coming up from south and I think I don't think we should look at this strictly through a lens of cost benefit. I don't think that is the way From a planning perspective and elissa johnson is here. She's the chair of our planning commission and I certainly would like to come up elissa Speak on behalf of the planning commission if you wish, but um, I think it's important to understand that uh, act 250 came into being um in order to Help preserve the quality of the environment in romans. I think it's still primarily there. So, um So I think we have to be very careful Uh, as I say, I don't do cost benefit analysis. So I can't speak to the economics. This I certainly empathize with The cost of development. There are many many cost of development. This is only one Factor that I realize it can be it can be significant, but um So, uh, the other thing I want to mention is that, um The the trigger for moving from a one acre To a 10 acre town for commercial activity is the addition of subdivision regulation. So Um, there are many municipalities in romans that have zoning regulations that are still one acre town Especially smaller municipalities that don't have subdivision bylaws. So when we enacted subdivision bylaws or a chapter in our zoning for subdivision in 2012 that Is where the determination was made that those were equivalent to subdivision regulations and That's when the stress issue came up and The select board at the time in 2013 decided there were concerns about the level of our site plan review criteria of conditional use criteria in some of the areas that were mentioned traffic Historic sites and historic districts. We have Actually six historic districts plus individually listed historic sites in Waterbury Are we're very limited in how hard Regulations address that and there may be other areas. There are 10 criteria and many some criteria in active 50 So, uh, I'm not expert, but I've taken useful projects through activity and I understand The cost is can be uh severe. So that that's really all I had to say for clarification and Of course bill. Yes, go ahead. So I don't think you answered my questions. Do I understand? Okay Don't do cost benefit analysis. I understand that But if the select board resins this ordinance Then we become a 10 acre town and we We then will review for act 250 on all these projects between one and and 10 acres The regional planning commission may be able to say hey, we we recommend to the district commission that you take Authority for something but it's not on a case-by-case basis. It's either we have the ordinance or we don't correct Okay, that's that's correct and I would agree with that too. Yeah, you're correct bill. So That's correct, but there would be no um, no local active 50 review either on the Projects between one and 10 acres. We cannot apply active 50 criteria to development. We would apply the criteria in our site and review and It would be it would be the development review board would do the review Act 250 wouldn't be involved unless it was 10 And The audience that we have now We're a one acre town because of that ordinance because we have uh subdivision regulations If the select board wanted to change this and and they may You'd have to rescind out ordinance You can't do that Well, you could do it tonight I guess, but I wouldn't recommend that you do it and it takes uh 60 days for Uh, a new ordinance to take effect. So it will take several months to get this ordinance Discontinued if that's what the board wants to do, but I just wanted to be clear that We are or not an act Of a 10 acre town you can't it's not on a case by case basis Yeah, you're absolutely correct bill Could be could the town of waterbury decide to be a five acre town? That's what I was gonna have Well, correct that my understanding is that the The um state statute that allows us to have an ordinance Um States that we can remain a one acre town But we don't we don't have a choice of some other option. It's whether either we move a 10 or a day Just just a little side towns like bosom based in middle six, berlin They made the decision they're 10 acre towns so There's some towns that are a lot less sophisticated than waterbury that are that have already made this decision um There's like I said, there's only three towns in the state of Vermont that have made this decision Once they passed the subdivision rules to stay a one acre town. That's benson brandon and waterbury as of The list I just reviewed that's current is of april 2021 um From the act 250 standpoint i'm crazy tight with susan bair And you know her take on it is they're happy to help, you know, they're they're public servants But with the pandemic and the project load they have It's a burden. It's it's extra work for them in the case of the perot gunshot It was a it was a duplication and a lot of effort and um You know, it's not something we're asking you to decide tonight. We just wanted to open the discussion I started this discussion three years ago And you know, maybe the time is is right now to to consider it From a practical standpoint, even though he can't do the cost of benefit analysis I know that this board thinks that way. That's the way you're thinking with the bridge project. I heard it And it's it's it's a balancing act. Do you get something out of that 250? You sure do.  I get it. It's not It's not terrible, but there's a lot of added costs And in the case of cliff it would it would be an extra burden And so we thought we'd open this discussion again Our hope is to start constructing next spring involved as well, but Um, you know, as anyone knows who's gone through act 250 that timing is really hard to predict Based on that piece of property, there's no existing type Um, regulatory system, in other words, the fact that it was already occupied with the building had certain guidelines or criteria that that property, I mean, it was a it was a car dealership Years and years ago. It was an auction burned, you know years ago the traffic flow was for the for the days that In history that it was it probably was As much of a traffic flow then as you consider Now today, you know what I mean? So So those uses predated act 250 So they're they're going to consider based on a proposal today And uh, it's interesting The drb approved that site for I think seven or eight units a pretty eight units a pretty concise building There come a very proposing a building that's essentially going to be the size of the house Yeah, that's what I'm pulling out of getting at. I mean the fact that you're going in with what you're going in with You would think that there'd be some huge consideration It may be that the actual 50 cross the process goes quickly and smoothly. It may be Um, but it will be a cost it will be factor And I'm I'm not objecting to what cliff and john are are asking I would just point out though that You can't use cliff as the measuring stick that cliff is slightly more than an acre Uh, it's going to be low impact. We've got places up the road that are going to be, you know, that are for sale now and uh, it's in the wildlife corridor And you know, maybe so I understand cliff's issue And I don't want to put all the cliffs in the world necessarily through that But it's you can't use cliffs Really low impact situation as the barometer to measure this request because there's a lot of properties That can be developed that are between one and 10 acres that this would apply to so Just keep that in mind And do we worry about those? the um The steps that we haven't faced already between um the drb and the regional Um commission came in was called do we worry else is for bilba that we don't have enough in place to make those decisions without act 250 As we talk about it being a wildlife corridor, but do we have enough steps along the way without act 250 To feel confident that we're not disrupting or causing, you know, huge impact or are we worried that we don't you know The question there That's supposed to be for bilba in the case of in the case of nary peros project events You know Everything that we did we had to we had to do the wetlands the storm water Um, the river corridor and the flood plain we had to address all that Anyway, I think a lot of that we had to address as part of the drb review You really didn't do anything extra That act 250 brought to the table other than the traffic that came up and actually They didn't impose any requirements They just wanted they just wanted their blood they wanted that money So what is the potential in a traffic study scenario? It's a potential to say you need to turn line you up No, no, no they My humble understanding of it is and I only went through it once Uh surprisingly with the pro project, but When it's an act 250 project They can look at other v10s projects in the neighborhood and they can impose a fee To help you participate in the that those expenses. I was going to ask about the $45,000. So they they judge that um We should pay based on our trips of fee for I think that was for the roundabout project because not positive impact tree. It was an impact fee But that impact only because Only because the project if we were a 10 acre town wouldn't have ever been considered for an impact fee. That's absolutely correct If we were in town Yes, yeah, I mean it was for the roundabout I argued very Reciprocously against the imposition of that fee It was frankly an impact fee that was being applied retroactively towns can't do that if the towns If towns have impact fees you have to collect you have to collect fee now for something that you're going to do in the future You can't collect the fee to pay for something you've already done And that's what the state is doing And I pointed out I said look if the guy across the street develops his property and it doesn't need an activity permit and he might have 200 cars a day, but he's Under an acre and doesn't need activity. We don't get anybody out of them and uh I think maybe the letter that I wrote and the testimony that I gave helped knock the fee down from 45 to 6500 but uh, it You know, it's clearly not something that I would want and where clip is I mean, they're they're far away from the roundabout But I don't know how far v-trans would go back. They just you know We So bill you just made our argument perfectly for us, which is you know, you were there arguing When you get into state regulation and all the people will do is follow the rules And not use common sense You end up, you know penalizing projects and now you're throwing us into act 250 Where we're going to be subject to whatever regulations they want to throw at us I think you just made our argument better than I could Steve Vermont artisan was another one that had this scenario correct. There are seven acres site, correct? What in that project would have been different if we didn't have act 250 in place in your opinion like Yeah, I don't know are I mean, I I can't really tell you they still had to go through art So when it goes back to 50, it doesn't go through our drb and all it has to go through us and then act 250, right? Yes, absolutely. So maybe I could qualify I was on the drb from both the Vermont artisan as well as the um Paros project I think we have a very good drb with a lot of skills that can vet things out very effectively A long-term implication you have cliff who yes, I hear what bill saying very loud and clear is that We don't want to pick and choose projects, you know cliff It's probably a great project You know, it's probably something that the select board the drb is probably going to support But there's probably going to be some other ones between one to 10 acres that might be a lot more controversial So what is it there for controversy? No, no Yes, you can. No, but my point is is that I just feel like this We have what we have in place To try to entice a certain amount of development using care 10 acre projects There's plenty of examples of towns that are able to take this on with less and what we have with the drb And planning and everything else that I just I've had a problem with this for a while This is a great example of a concern I have for a project that just is over that one acre and potentially it's going to difficult Who knows what you might run into along the way It just seems like we're doing a disservice For some of these projects to you know, thank god bills in place to write a letter to try to get out of 45,000 And get it down to 6,500 But they still spend 6,500 dollars and in the end of the day He probably ended up with a similar building with similar everything with the same grand list impact But made them go through hoops that we have but we have the power to say 10 acres and above, you know, so like it's important that they don't give us an option between I I think we're all sitting here going It was five, you know, whatever, you know But it maybe that's a way to see go to five and see how it goes And then maybe in the 20 years, someone goes to 10 where we can make a decision and say That's why statewide there's a whole movement for act 250 reform, you know Act 250 is good for what it does, but sometimes it's There's an overreach and there's if it gets a project so expensive Where it It impacts as you said, Marlin, you know, that's where my concern is too I'm concerned for the economic viability of small projects in our community and I think it does affect but I'm not I don't think we're waiting tonight But if you want the examples of some towns that You know, there isn't a choice You can't buy but you could look at some of your neighbors that are doing 10 And the burdens they face I I really, you know, and by 38 years of doing this line of work act 250 makes a difference sometimes But usually it's on the big projects, you know, a Shaw supermarket Costco, you know the smaller projects under 10 acres It has a My impact sometimes maybe there's more landscaping a prettier building less lights Who knows but In this particular time your dvd addresses that and and and quite strong and that's where it was also Regional planning commission if it does have, you know, regional impact you could have a two-acre project that could have Some significant regional impact So the regional planning commission can step well, let me clarify that so their Determination of regional impact only applies to projects that would go through active safety So if the threshold goes to 10 acres, there's a Project on two or five-acre site, right? Active safety unless it's a larger housing project But they they won't have any role to play it'll strictly be local So I just want to you could have you could have a four five acre housing project that it could be, you know that I mean I I did try to Say, you know, this is this is the board the board needs to make that this decision It were a couple of select board members, frankly We're the driving force between the last time when we adopted this ordinance to keep it I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't tell you that, you know Since 1986 I've been on one or another board at vlct And the vlct policy clearly states that you know, we should advocate for local control We know our community better than the district commission does. We know we can handle and I agree With everyone who said that we have a good planning commission and a good drb. They get in difficulties sometime If if there was never controversy it would be a sign that they're not doing their job I think that we can handle this generally and I think that the league of cities and towns As as basically told the state look let us do our job and let us do it The way that we think is best So I think you that Is the best advocacy that I could make to changing this ordinance And the fact that there's only three towns that have subdivision regulations And and have the ordinance like ours three towns including us You know, maybe that's maybe that's the what we should be looking at. Why are we with these only two other towns? and not taking on responsibility that we frankly have been advocating for and legislative policy King of league of cities and towns for a long time So I know I It might appear I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth. I don't need to Do that, but I think that you know, that's something that ought to be considered and you know John and and Duncan have already told us and and the other John have already told us you don't have to decide tonight So this is something that we can put on another agenda and take around a little bit more And we're happy to come back if you want us to Yeah, I think the other thing I would suggest is to have a conversation involving the planning commission The planning commission is working on our unified development plan lots and Part of the previous discussion was that it's like board members felt that we really needed to Be tough if you will our review criteria to deal with our historic districts our historic sites Your your project is in the historic district that's across from The church that's individually listed on the national register. So I think um, you know looking at Some of these criterias are important. The plan commission is is going to be doing that So I would encourage you to have a conversation, you know, maybe join meeting with the planning commission to talk about this Make sure everybody's on the same page because I know the plan commission members have some concerns about Our our bylaws dealing with site plan review and Conditional use are predate my starting here. So they're they're over 30 years old. They have not been changed typically So I guess I'll acknowledge like everyone in the community I'm wearing two hats So I'm coming today as chair of the planning commission and just want to say upfront that my individual feelings might not be that but as Steve alluded to what the planning commission asked me to share is just In the spirit of open conversation like john and dunking came tonight If you all as a slack board are Concerning act 250 given now where the local board and commission that spends two meetings a month thinking about land use planning in the community The group would like to be involved or at least be able to provide comment Steve also talked about the zoning rewrite and that was just something shared by Committee members as well just that we are actively as you know going through a zoning rewrite personally, it's why I wanted to join the planning commission and so To the extent, you know, I want to be pragmatic and realistic with the planning commission and with john and dunking So like we don't know what the the timeline is for that, but I think As Steve expressed it's been something that's been raised in terms of what an overlap might look like in that regard And I guess I would just say personally, I think as most of this group knows I was the academic development director for three and a half years chris peros memo about act 250 was the first thing I got when I got into town You know, I would say just more of an FYI on the planning commission, but um Bill Shufflek and Steve and I had a meeting after dean or retired about some administrative updates At our last planning commission last monday We asked Steve L to do some updates because right now there's like a litany of technical and administrative updates That haven't been done in like 20 years So we don't meet state statute and some things in our current rags So just kind of furthering the theme tonight I would just say again, I'm not taking a stance personally And certainly not on behalf of the planning commission about if you should or shouldn't make this change And I think the big message is we'd like to be involved But I would just raise that one flag as a piece to say There might be some minor cleanups Before water-raising rags are ready for prime time with or without Act 251 acre, but maybe especially without so again, you know, the big the big mission Is you know, similar to what Mike said, it's just the plan because you will be interested in being involved Editorially, I mean we have myself. We have Martha Stackas who's a renewable energy developer We have some who works in campus planning I don't want to speak for other members again or the commission as a whole But I think this group would like to support sustainable development in the community and and do it as quickly But also being thoughtful about the whole community impacts And this kind of again tough duality when we one project it really makes sense Or you know, again personally, I think it will be great to get to a place where we've done it We write we feel really good and and can come back with a really strong recommendation, but that's just me Yeah, I mean, I think I I think it's obvious that we're not going to make a decision tonight I do think that just with the changes to the planning commission and You taking overhead we should do that joint meeting anyways I think after what we went through in the last couple months, it makes sense to just check in with each other There should absolutely be discussed on top of you know, the planning commission's work And how we can help so Thank you for coming like I appreciate everyone's time. I think we all need to think about it And we need to have those conversations and understand exactly what that decision means But I do personally hate hearing that it might create problems for these projects that are between one and 10 and I personally would love a day that we get to a point where we can handle them in water gray without sending them back Have a couple things before we move on Can we make that whether it's In the parking lot or even on the next agenda So to reach out and create a joint meeting so it's not one of those things we want to do and don't do so just actively put that on that Totally Yeah, we've got a schedule And then the next is are there other other voices are there other people that we could benefit from bringing into this conversation And and let's think about that as well other I don't know if she'd be willing but Susan there could be a great resource Mr. District Court, you know, I just want to make a point though John if Projects between one and acres do not go through activity if the changes who won't have any involvement. I mean she won't Right On the record. She's it's been a burden to their office to have to manage extra projects from water very clear especially you know, they're they're just behind It's and that's why we're worried about a delay is Going through after 50 post pandemic or during the pandemic everything slows way way down Steve do you have any kind of numbers how many per year that we have these one to ten acres? It's very I don't I don't think we have made a pair of those was the last one right In that one ten acres. So it's a couple years. Yeah. Yeah, then one every five years Maybe and I wouldn't come back except it's so applicable Yeah, well sure and and you know after seeing what happened to Perot and thinking about how well the drd works on projects that I I just really think you guys have got you've got a good a good town that's managed well and Better than many times that I deal with I don't think you need to double opinion. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks guys Thank you for coming. So what's that? Yeah, okay. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck. All right, continued discussion regarding racial equity training okay, um Carla is passing out a and the contents of an email that I got today Very late this afternoon. It was after five o'clock or just before five o'clock that I got this from Mary Gannon and um She and I talked last week and uh, you know, I think that The two sessions that we have had have been quite good but we've ended up kind of talking about issues that are kind of front and center for the for the select board right now, which is a fine thing, but we haven't really allowed Mary to get through her presentation yet um I guess what I would recommend tonight since it's already 9 30 is just take this Take this home with you and read it and then we'll put this issue on the next agenda Really, we're trying to decide whether the select board wants to have one more session or not and You know, I think reading this from Mary will give you some insight into what she sees She thinks that it would be helpful Obviously, she gets paid to do it. So Some could say well, she's got a vested interest in In recommending that but I think that She makes some Good arguments there and I would Leave it to the board, you know If you want to put this on on your next agenda, that might be the best place for it Any questions we're going to take this one when we can discuss it All right, we'll move on then to managers items Okay. Thank you. So speaking of next agenda, you've just talked about, you know, this activity thing We're talking about this potential training Your next meeting is scheduled for august 16th I will be on vacation that week. I won't be here on the 16th. You're certainly My wife would be thrilled if you met without me and you know, I I would get a select board meeting off but There are five Mondays in august so There's a potential to move the meeting either to the 23rd or the 30th and still have Being involved if you wanted that again You don't have to decide that now Mark is the chair. He can communicate with Carla to Decide when the meeting will be but I won't be here on the 16th Does anyone have an issue with us moving the select board meeting to the 23rd? I can't be there, but I'm I'll be driving back from I mean, obviously Yeah, I think we just move into the 23rd. I think that's fine Okay I'm maybe out of town, but Still can cover my I will be missed but we can picture Or Karen for the minutes stuff like that um, okay, so Does everybody have to budget report do you want me to put it up on the screen? I have it We all have or I can share either way Are there people watching that wanted on the screen? I wouldn't only be Christopher or I don't use that or Bill, um, thanks a quick question. How long do you think this will be? I know that Linda and Christopher are here. I'm wondering if maybe we can shift that up real quick So they don't have to sit through this part of the meeting is is the are you and is the board okay? If we maybe just move that quickly Is that okay? Okay, um Thank you for your patience Chris. Thank you. Thank you for your patience Um Yeah, I mean, um Obviously we need to pick someone. I think all three candidates are incredibly well like burst and being able to handle this so, um You know, we need to pick someone who is the main delegate in the altar. Um, I don't know anyone It's the locker that we like do it publicly in front of everybody We apologize. Um, I don't know if everyone wants. I don't know what the way to do this that Is fair and whatever. I don't know if everyone Just I don't know. I don't know how to do that. But I do think we should just make a decision. Um If everyone wants to just quickly speak on there number one and number two choice and I'll try to keep track and see where I'm landed Or we can do can we do like, uh Well, I'll be a little Yeah, I'll be honest to me Dennis just because of his lack of its experience direct experience Is is my third candidate, you know between the other two candidates They have pretty equally matched You know, sometimes I almost want to give a little more experience to someone who's been here a little more time Then maybe knows a little more nothing against chris. I know that's it's I think he would be a very good candidate, but I think you know based upon that it's Linda Linda so my choice would be linda and then chris would be the alternate 100% we That would be my choice now Is there an opportunity if for some reason between the two of them if they wanted to switch places because yeah, I think so I mean basically One it would be all alternate meaning. I'm assuming It's not very hard, but I would think that it would be if one person can't make the meeting the other one represents and Hopefully if one person decided they didn't want to participate anymore The other person would step up and we would go find an additional There's too much The one thing I don't know on this for both candidates is if you both can Attend the meetings or plan to attend the meetings and help each other with scheduling So that's an answer that we would need to yes We used to do that all the time on the drb our alternates We almost looked at them as regular members even though they were alternates So, you know, we didn't have enough of a quorum. They were ready to step in so If they could both attend meetings, I think that just gives us more of a brain power going into Yeah, and Linda would have the first say in terms of voting bill Maybe you know the answer this but this potentially could mean an alternative for Comcast usage as well right as they go along does this mean that they're only identifying and working with cb fiber? I mean, obviously the properties that are Quote-unquote underserved our priorities, but as they passed Houses that already have maybe Comcast and those potentially become fiber candidates as well Yeah, I don't know a lot about what cb fiber has been discussing I My guess is mark that would be the case um, you know the unfortunate part is that because we as Steve suggested earlier because we have In comparison to many communicate many Communities, we have very good high speed Access here. We have only pockets of our town that don't have it and because we haven't been part of cb fiber until now You know, we're kind of behind the curve a little bit and whether they can adjust What their recommendations are in the short term to include water or not? That's that's kind of you the first question I think I have to be asked But I think everything is on the table mark that if they decided you know that there's a way to um Go up ring road with Something other than Comcast that other people along the way could choose that alternative as well I would hope that we could do that and have a more competitive marketplace instead of everyone feeling to have one option So I would hope that this include any property and water very in the future. This just gets us on that path. Um Okay Well, I think it sounds like the board is voting Linda in as the main delegate and The alternative delegate. Um, if that works for everyone, I'm not sure who is the liaison moving forward for the Delegates and the town and this group. Is it just How does that work bill? Do you know? Who would they be working with or communicate? Is it with parla and? Who hands them off to cb fiber? Okay, so see it would be the What we'll do once you appoint folks Uh, Steve will communicate with cb fiber. Let them know who the Who the uh, representative in the alternate, uh And then the then cb fiber will contact these people. So steve will be the the one who Actually sends their name off to cb five And I will take a motion I know about the board appoint Uh, Linda govall Main delegate and chrissa prayer shane as alternate delegate cb fiber. Thank you. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor, we say I Thank you very much for Volunteering to do this. We look forward to hearing The progress and yeah, if there's anything we can do as a town Um Sure I'll shoot you on an email tomorrow and coffee steve great. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you all very much Yeah, thank you for being patient. We know you have a lot going on. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks. Good night Thanks for going on. Um, all right back to budget Okay, um, I'll do my best to finish by 10 o'clock If we don't finish by 10 o'clock, it's because you folks have a lot of questions Um, I apologize for not being able to send out some notes along with this It's been quite busy and we haven't had a budget report really since I think the first meeting that danie was on the board. So you really need to do it There have been some Things that we have found out in the past couple of weeks that are important I have highlighted in yellow or green Or blue some things that I want to talk about Most of it is we can be pretty succinct with The 20 dollars there on the tax sale don't worry about that at the time being that was a question that I need to look into Traffic control income you can see we're quite low Compared to our budget 326 dollars have been received near to date For traffic tickets that the state police right we budgeted $6,000. We made a little more than $6,000 last year COVID has been a big impact on this For many months. They were not doing a lot of ticket writing that we're not doing a lot of traffic stops due to social distancing requirements and the big factor that I didn't think about when we budgeted is that There's a big lag oftentimes between when a ticket is written and when the fine actually gets sent to us If you get a speeding ticket you have to send the money to the state of Vermont judicial bureau sometimes people challenge the tickets The judicial bureau collects the tickets and then kind of on their own time schedule. They send it out to the communities So, um, it doesn't look like we're going to come close and I'd be surprised if we even make the $2,000 that I budget that I Projected there, but it's a minor revenue, but I wanted to let you know why there's a big discrepancy Pilot there's good news on the pilot front We budgeted 160 thousand dollars to go into the general fund And we budgeted 20 thousand dollars to go into the paving fund. So that's 180 thousand dollars We were thinking that we were going to get from The state we were very conservative in our budgeting I got notice last month that We're going to end up with about 350 thousand dollars Of pilot money about a little bit more actually I think that we got all together last year so we'll be able to Deposit our full 160 into the general fund and then the paving fund will get the remainder. So that's that's good news The message from the state comes with a caveat saying these figures may change So until we get the check which usually comes in october and november We won't know for sure, but right now it looks pretty good They'll just just to be clear on that too. They they say that all of that money is Only comes from local option tax collector on the state or is there another mechanism that allows them to fund that? I believe it's all from local option tax I'm surprised given what happened last year All i'm reporting to you is what they reported to me right now. It doesn't give any any more details If there's like a year delay and somehow it didn't drop because this is going on There is there is a year delay, but we should be in that year already I can check on that if we get it all this year. I'll I'll check again for next year, but It's looking pretty good right now Same thing for forest and parks and current use We budgeted about a third of what we received last year Looks like we're going to get the full amount this year 91,000 and 105,000 So that that's uh, that's good news and I'll I'll talk about some implications of that a little bit So that explains why the subtotal there under other governments is 600,000 as opposed to the 472 that we budgeted Under service fees The things that are highlighted in yellow are all recreation related So the pool income the 38 292 that's what we have taken in for our eight-week summer pool season And The 46,000 projects What we will take in in the fall for fall swim lessons fall life-dive training in the light and that would nick this afternoon and He's pretty confident that we'll end that 46,000 You can see the the recreation program revenues That's for the summer program We've exceeded budget already there We probably won't take in much more than that 100,780 The uh mini camp it's really this name now mini camp is where we're spending money for what we do All year other than the summer recreation program So there are some mini camp revenues in there like the hunting and fishing mini camp that they're going to have in a couple weeks but the bulk of that revenue comes from the Academy that they had during the school year when the school was closed on wednesdays After school programs that they had last spring and And the projection of the 45,000 is really what will happen between now And the end of the year there is an after school program that is Has already been advertised and there's people that have already signed up So we will be taking in revenue there the recreation donations 60,000 of that 63,700 that was taken in Is from albertson's the parent company of shaw's that money can be spent for The summer feeding program that we're using for the for the children at all three sites The senior center is not doing anything with meals this year at all so Nick has a number of local restaurants that are helping make breakfasts and lunch And that program is going very well, but Obviously that was a big a big donation. We weren't expecting Skip past the tax stabilization fund thing there And go to the bottom We're also expecting this year a transfer in from the alpha program, which is the federal Federal program in in in response to COVID this is a direct payment from the federal government to the to the Cities and towns of the country They will send it to the state and then the state will forward it to us with no no state strings attached our Our total that we will receive from that Is about five hundred and forty thousand dollars Half of it will come in this calendar year probably within the next couple of weeks And then the other half another two sixty nine eight thirty three will come in calendar year 2022 so If you look back at that Um The one in green there from tax stabilization fund we have budgeted to transfer $50,000 from the tax stabilization fund to the general fund Right now the tax stabilization fund is doing okay but On these revenues right now if we if we do take in That $50,000 from the tax stabilization fund Our revenues are projecting at three million five hundred and two thousand About a half a million dollars more than we projected So we don't have to decide tonight, but my recommendation probably will be Let's not transfer anybody out of the tax stabilization fund this year. Let's let it grow And use it some year down the road when we need it. I don't think we're going to need it in 2021 Uh very quickly unless does anybody have any questions on the revenues right now Bill on that half a million dollars in access revenue. Do we just leave that? What do we do with that and is there an opportunity to potentially Do we need to make a decision at some point to move that to see our key or maybe even Fund more into the tax stabilization fund? yeah, so so I think both of those things are Things that we should talk about at some point mark, but really for the purposes of How Municipal budgeting and finance go We probably should just end up with a bigger fund balance at the end of this year And then in our budget discussions for next year decide where we want to put that I don't think we should do it necessarily this year on the opera funds that 269,833 We can we can consider that as We had lost revenues enough in 2020 a year ago that we can Bring this opera money in and we can say that it's going to replace revenues that we lost last year And that just falls to the bottom line When we do our budgeting We will have to have some hearings on how we're going to use the opera money But if we consider it lost revenue, then we can just appropriate it and Basically use it anywhere where you would like next year and we'll have to be appropriated by the voters If we didn't have that lost revenue And we do but if we did not have that lost revenue There are some restrictions on how w