Good evening, I'd like to call the Monday, March 20th, 2023, Brown's regularly scheduled select board meeting to order. With us tonight on my far left is Flo Smith. To my right is Tour Nelson. Joe Staub is on video, and the first agenda item is reorganization of the board. I move to appoint Brad Town as chair of the select board for the 2023-2024 year. Second. Any other discussion? Those in favor? Aye. Aye. And now we come to vice chair. I move to appoint Flo Smith as the vice chair. Second. All those in favor? Aye. And now we need a secretary. I make the motion to elect, or I nominate Joe Staub as secretary. Oh, second. Any, all those in favor? Aye. Very good. Additions or changes to the agenda? None. Okay. Public comment? Hearing none. Regional concerns meeting with AOT, I'll let you folks introduce yourselves. Okay, I'll get my screen shared here. So we do have a presentation that's gonna be up behind folks, so we'll turn around the chairs. Sure. So welcome, and can you hear me on the mic? Am I loud enough? Yeah, good, perfect. So this is the alternatives presentation meeting for bridge 67 on Vermont route 12 over the Dove River. I'm Laura Stone. I'm the V-Trans scoping project manager. We also have Adam Goudreau, you can raise your hand. He's gonna be the design project manager. And Todd Sumner, we have a consultant on board for the scoping and design of this project. So this is Todd Sumner from Hoyle Tanner. So really the purpose of the meeting, we wanna provide an understanding of our approach to the project, talk about the project constraints, talk about the constraints around the bridge, discuss the alternatives that we considered in the scoping report, and talk about a recommended alternative. Ultimately, we really wanna gain consensus, build consensus towards an alternative for this project. I have at the bottom there provide an opportunity to ask questions and voice concerns. I'm happy to take questions or concerns anytime you can interrupt me. I also noticed on the Zoom call, we have Judith Erlich. She's the V-Trans Historic Preservation Officer. So this is a historic trust, and so any questions related to the historic nature can be directed towards Judith. So here's the, here's a location map, an aerial view of the project. It's a little small, hard to see for the folks in the room. But it's located really near the Chandler Road and Vermont Route 12 intersection, just north of the train tracks there that cross over Vermont Route 12. It's the trust bridge that crosses over the Dog River. So first, I'm gonna talk about the V-Trans project development process pretty quickly, just so folks can get an idea of where we are in the process. Again, we're gonna talk about the existing conditions of the bridge, the alternatives we considered, and a recommended alternative. We'll talk about the maintenance of traffic options that we considered and our recommended maintenance of traffic option schedule so when you can expect to see this in construction, summary and questions again at the bottom, but you can interrupt us at any time. We're happy to take questions. So here's a timeline of the V-Trans project development process. And this slide's really just to show that we're at a really, really early stage of project development. A project's been funded and this stage called project definition has been identified. This is where we identify the cultural resources, the environmental resources, the other constraints surrounding the bridge, utilities, et cetera. We have evaluate alternatives and at the end of that process we have a scope and report. Here we are at the public participation piece and ultimately we really wanna build consensus towards a project. After this product definition phase, product will be defined, that's when we're gonna move into project design, we're gonna start quantifying the areas of impact, start the environmental permitting process, the right-of-way process, that's when we're really gonna have a detailed plans, estimates, specifications. After project design, the contract will be awarded and the project will move into construction. So really we're at an early, early stage of project development. This is when we wanna hear the public's questions, concerns, because this is a really good point in the project process that we can incorporate some of those concerns. This is just some descriptions of the terms that we use. You'll hear us talk about abutments, really the abutment or the substructure, that's what we call the support to the foundations at either end of the bridge. And then in this picture is just a conventional steel beam bridge, so we do have a truss for bridge 67, but same idea, the beams underneath and the deck, we refer to that as the superstructure. I'll hand it over to Todd. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm Todd Sundar, I'm with Will Tanner and I'm a simple project manager. And so let's start off with, what is the purpose of this project? The purpose is to provide a safe reliable and environmentally sustainable multi-motor transportation system that is affordable to use and to operate. The needs come into two major categories. One is to improve the narrow width. It's sub-centered width for vehicles and it's a serious safety concern for bicyclists to the traffic volumes and those shoulders. So as everyone knows, this bridge is narrow. You have a driven cross. It's 21 feet rail to rail. And based on current traffic volumes, it needs to be 28 feet rail to rail per Vermont State Standards. Also there's safety concerns as bicyclists, bicyclists, there is no shoulders and this area of Vermont 12 has been identified as a high pervading bicycle corner by detraints. Everybody hear me okay? You're so good. All right. So the other big important category here is the condition of the bridge. There's lots of slides coming up where we talk about that. Before I move on to this one, I do want to bring up that there is maintenance concerns as well as the condition. Such as we had an emergency repair that was needed to just ask fall on that bridge. Remember being closed, not closed down to one lane for a while. So that was, that's still an ongoing concern. And basically the bridge is at the end of its service life. So let's talk about some of the existing conditions. This is not 12 through here. It's a major collector. Highs before we're already stated, it's bridge number 67. It was constructed in 1934 in its own by the state of Vermont. It's a 140 foot long path through trust. And it was fabricated by the American Bridge Company. And if you go down to the bridge, plaque is still on it. Same. All right. I've already said before, it's 21 feet between the existing rails. But if you've ever been on it, the usable space between those rails are really closer to 20 feet. Originally this bridge had a 15 foot vertical clearance from the top of the deck to the underside of the portal. That's the case that's going across the top. Horizontally. Kind of see it in the sketch to the left and you can see it in the front of it as well. However, pavement has built up over the years and that vertical clearance has been reduced to 14 feet 10 inches. So looking at the picture on the bottom left there, the upper cord, that's what that is, it's in good condition. It just needs to be cleaned and painted. Picture on the right is illustrated a vertical member and all the vertical members at and below the elevation of the bridge railing are in poor condition. And you can see in that picture on the left, there's a putty knife stuck into the flange of that beam. Well, that was a crack and it went through the whole length of the flange and it's on the other side of the web as well. So that was the angle that had, that's the vertical that had the emergency repair just passed by. So the lower cord is also in poor condition. You can see the picture on the left and the picture on the right. Picture on the left really shows how bad the gusset place that helped tie that bottom cord together have deteriorated. And on the right, there's just another picture of what kind of poor condition it's in. Right, so. So, the fascia and the curb are in poor condition and there's a map cracking efflorescence on the underside of the deck. Well, you can see in that left picture are right along the edge of the pavement where the sidewalk can drag, there's curb missing there. It's rotted off, it's rotted away. And it looks at the picture on the right side, there used to be a six inch curb going on the whole entire length along that fascia out there and it's gone. So, curbs are important for channeling water runoff away from the steel and off the end of the bridge. Which is the reason why the lack of curves is contributing to the speed of how fast the steel is deteriorating. So, in this photo, you can see that the deck has extensive patching and that the expansion joint has failed and is leaking. But, the note, I do believe the deck has been recently paid. So, it looks better, but it's just covering up an underlying concrete deck issues. All right, the stringer floor beams and the cross bracing, lower bottom cross bracing has significant section loss and there's debris collected on the floor system member along the fascia. You can see the picture on the left, you got some serious section loss on that bottom plan of the stringer. And then on the right, you get a lot of section loss with the cross bracing. And you can see a lot of dirt built up there on the flange of the long cord. The west abutment, which is the picture on the right is in fair condition, but it needs concrete repair work. That looks a lot worse than it is. That's more mostly cosmetic. There's nothing structural that way. Too wrong with that on the right. The east abutment is in satisfactory condition. However, and that's the picture on the left, however it sits on old concrete that really is starting to crumble and it should be spaced to shore up. So here we have a picture on the left of the railing which shows that you've got significant section loss and there's holes in the railing. And that four foot 10 vertical restriction that I talked about earlier is being hit by trucks. And you can see in the picture on the right, that's one of the portals. And both ends of the bridge have been hit up there. So those need to be prepared. As you're coming from Montpelier towards the bridge, decent site distance, coming from Northfield, it's a different story. You've got a pretty good curve coming into that bridge, coming in that direction and site lines are limited. Well, that's to condition the bridge. So I'm gonna get on one of the resources that are located in the project area. Well, we're going through about wetlands, there aren't any in the project area. Stormwater, there's no existing permits or regulatory concerns or no non-native or invasive species. There aren't any identified or recorded rare and threatened dangerous species in the project area either. However, the presence of the threatened northern long-year bat is possible even though the project area is not prime bat habitat. The project area isn't in a map zone of riparian wildlife connectivity. There are prime agricultural soils that are outside the project area to the west. And there is a hazardous site, but it's a known site and it's to the east outside the project in this as well. So in the picture on the left, right there, you can see that's a railroad crossing. It's about 350 feet, 375 feet northwest of the bridge. It is likely that it is going to have railroad pavement marking and sign updates. Hydraulics on this bridge is not a concern. If you've seen, that's a deep gully underneath that bridge. We got, oh, we got 12, nearly 12 feet of freebowl at a 100-year storm event. There are no archeological sites or cultural management surveys recorded within one mile of the project area. But if you look to the right, in that photo, you can see some concrete ruins down near the river. That may need additional investigation of the project impacts that. Historic, the bridge is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Picture there is the Berlin Dog River Natural Area. I noticed when I was out there, the sign got knocked down like a clasp of tree. Anybody got out there and fixed it? Yeah, I did. Yeah, okay. It is a 4F, is it a 4F resource? Further historic survey may be required depending on how large the project impacts will be, but right now, it's not interesting. Photo on the left, you can see all the lovely aerial utilities that are in the project area. They're all on the downstream side, which you see there is three-phase power for a green mountain power, and in the distance over, out kind of behind the Riverton Memorial's building there, you can see a substation. The right-of-way through the project area varies on the east end. It's about 68 feet and it flares out to 108 feet. I intend to get to the west side, but it reduces down to the traditional three rods, 49 and a half foot, right away, as you move away from the project area. So, a lot of lines on that, and I wish I had a little pointer because I point out to you, but the dark line is kind of like a U-shape. On the upper part of that, that's kind of outlining where the natural area is. I'm just below that, on their side of the street, that dark line is a pod shape. That's kind of, that's the archeologically sensitive area. There's a nice square right in the middle, right where the bridge is, that's historic, and that's capturing where the historic trust is. Now, I don't know if you can see it. There's two, wait, can we do it? No, I can't. Oh, cursor, right here. You guys see my cursor? Yeah. All right, this line right here, I should have done that now. This line right here, then following, that's the right-of-way line, and there's the right-of-way line on the other side, so you can see how much it varies and flares out into most of the project area. And just off the sheet over here is where the railroad is looking. If you right-click, it might give you pointer options, it will give you a red. All right, I'm not going to see this. Okay. All right, here's the existing profile. You can see it's coming down from the, coming from Northfield, it's a pretty good descent right in there. There's this nice little kink in the alignment just before the bridge, right at the bridge. So what is the design criteria that we're considering? Well, design criteria is going to be based on 30, 600 vehicles per day, and 5.2% trucks. Design speed is going to be 35 miles an hour, which is what it's posted for right now. Due to the track, even Vermont 12 and HS-25 low rating is the design criteria. And 11 foot lanes and three foot shoulders is the minimum required for Vermont state standards. However, we recommend the left foot lanes with five foot shoulders, and I'll get into that later. The vertical and horizontal alignments and associated site distance are substandard. As we already discussed, the roadway width is substandard and the bridge width is also. Substandard. So what are the alternatives that we considered? Well, we considered the no-bid, but no-bill, but doing nothing does not meet the purpose of needing it. Certainly does not address the safety or condition concerns of the bridge. So it's not recommended. The rehabilitation option was considered. It would need to be rehabbed. As I already said to HS-25, traffic needs, it would need a new deck, new expansion joints, bridge rail, entire new floor system, all new vertical numbers. Those are the ones that are straight up and down. There's some diagonals in there. Some of those are going to need to be replaced or repaired. The bottom cord is going to need partial replacement and a lot of those gusts placed that you saw were certainly right. There's a lot, those are going to need to be replaced. Both the bottom needs are going to need some concrete repair and the whole structure is going to be cleaned and repainted for a 30-year design life. However, concerns regarding long-term maintenance and fatigue and service life are still going to remain. The significant safety concerns for bicycles and plane vehicles will still remain. The vertical height restriction and permit vehicle restrictions would still remain. So that option is not recommended either and we're recommending to reuse at a new location and a new bridge on alignment. Because that's the only alternative that addresses all the safety concerns, bridge width, bridge railing, bicycle safety, unrestricted loading and vertical clearance. It addresses all the maintenance concerns and service life. It'll have minor improvements to the vertical and horizontal alignments. Not as much as we'd like as if the site constraints over there, the houses nearby there, they just really make it difficult to do any real serious alignment changes there. If the trust is reused, it is anticipated that the trust demands in the new location would require a reduction in the amount of trust members that would need to be replaced. However, it would still need new abutments in its new location. So there is the typical roadway section and bridge section of the proposed new bridge. If you look, you can see that we're recommending five foot shoulders on each side of 11 foot travel lanes. As I mentioned earlier, this is a high priority bicycle corridor. So using the five feet with Benner serve bicyclists and accommodate pedestrians as well. Since there are currently no sidewalks at each end of the bridge, this would be the most efficient use of the bridge width to accommodate bikes and pedestrians. Yeah, we talked about with quite a bit in our internal discussions. There is currently a sidewalk on the bridge. There's no sidewalk paths leading up to the bridge. So we were faced with the decision of putting in the 11 foot, three foot typical sections that's two 11 foot travel lanes with three foot shoulders with a sidewalk or widen that shoulder space to a five foot shoulder which would accommodate shared use of bicycles, pedestrians, all sort of multimodal type. And that's something that we'd like to hear from the town if that 11 foot, five foot typical section is if you're in agreeance with that. If a sidewalk is something that is being used and that you'd like to see on the new bridge, and we could do the reduced typical section, not our recommendation, but something that we would consider. So if anybody from the town wants to comment, it doesn't need to be now, but we can bring it up when we're done here. Well, a lot of us don't have mailboxes in that area. And so the only access to the mailbox is to walk over the bridge and to not have a proper space to do that. I know myself, I probably wouldn't feel comfortable just walking on a shoulder since it is 35 miles per hour and big trucks do drag over there. That having an actual space designated for pedestrian only would be something that I would prefer to see for safety. Unless we could figure out the mail and we wouldn't have to walk over to the bridge, that might be an easier discussion. Prop the post office, that I don't know. Currently the town does use it, we snowblow it ourselves so that we can go to the bridge. I don't know how many people use the mailboxes over there, but I know all of our ventures do. Whoever is on route 12, actually we should be on route 12. Yeah, because it's far away, we're still there. They deliver all along route 12, but they refuse to service airs red. Orange. Yeah, if the area to access the mailboxes is obstructed, that's gonna cause a problem. And also the walking, like we already talked about. Incorrect, I agree with Hannah, that if you're gonna make that new bridge, that wide, when that fast, we need to have a place where we can feel safe. People now go there and buy. We have little kids, right? Yeah, no, they do not, they don't buy. And as you can see, they can't see. What's that mean? My concern is it is a dangerous place and you put a new bridge in there, there are trucks that don't have to slow down to see if somebody's coming. The tracks can look faster down from there than the bridge. That's definitely a concern. They're assuming that intersection, that's Crosstown Road, airs are at every 12. It's a really dangerous intersection as it is. So that should be something that's being considered in this project is. We actually came in the late to the late, you know, it was one of them. And we felt a little safer. This is John's, John's, can you hear me? Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. I don't happen to walk across that bridge for much of anything. But I would say, at least what you currently have is you have some protection from the traveling public for where that sidewalk is. Even though there isn't a sidewalk leading up to it on either side. If you didn't have that, I would think over the course of the winter with the snow banks building, you would then be forcing what you don't have bicycles using, you're asking pedestrians to walk across something that's closer to the white line just to retrieve their mail. You know, I think I would, and I'm not a resident down there. I would rather see a sidewalk there. And maybe it's sidewalks on either side. That's not really the bridge I get at. But it's just, We have these guardrails here to protect the pedestrians from the cats. You see, you have a sidewalk on the bridge that rail wouldn't be there. Yeah, so what he's saying is, the way we designed that there would not be a rail between the sidewalk and the travel way. The rail would be on the outside of the new bridge. And then we would have the sidewalk, shoulder, traveling, traveling, shoulder. And so the bridge rails would be on the outside of the sidewalk, not the inside as it currently is. It would be a race sidewalk. But it would be a race sidewalk. Yeah, exactly. And I think that traffic, you know, realizes that the curb will be there. Yeah, I think just pedestrian cells would feel better about that. It's very similar to the main bridge in East Montpellier, Route 14, Route 2. Yeah, so something that would go along with that is there would need to be some agreement with the town for maintenance of the sidewalk, because it would need to be plowed during the winter. So just something to be aware of. Who would be communicating with the town about that? Would that be something that's called the state? Your responsibility? We would communicate with the town, yet we would need to have a written agreement. So if I was to compare it to the bridge in East Montpellier, which has sidewalk, is there an agreement that the town of East Montpellier maintains that for snow removal? Yes, there is. Yep, there is. And the town garage has a little bobcat or whatever it is, a little sidewalk plow that they do a pretty good job of maintaining it. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. Yep. Is there? Anybody else on the line? She's... All right. So we were all great comments and we hadn't considered the pedestrian generator from the mailbox. So that's really great information to have. Is there? Thank you. As you're using that, do you have any safety concerns because the sun runs down? I'm scared to death that somebody's gonna hit the bridge with a mirror while I'm on it. Because I see a lot of mirrors. I'm scared to death. I'm surprised we don't see mirrors just littered across the bridge. There is glass or a lot. You gotta still cross the road to get to the mailbox. There is a safety concern with that as well. Absolutely. Yeah, the mail is troublesome there to say the least. And just to get my mail is four times across the road. Okay. Next one, this is just a layout of the proposed. Basically just showing, this is actually showing the wider shoulders. There's an awful lot of lines on there. So, if you wanna talk about that afterwards, we can get closer and talk about it. Here's the profile. It looks very much like the existing profile, but if you notice, we're able to get a little bit of a smoother entrance into the bridge there. That little kink right out there, coming from north, it's gone. I mean, that's something, that's the minor improvement that we can do. How does that get achieved? She knows how it gets achieved. A slight great increase, and you can actually, a little bit, and you can change the elevations. It's a new bridge. You can actually change the elevation of how the bridge sits. Try to make that transition better. So that wouldn't change the elevation of the bridge well, but it would change where the bridge itself would be lower. Well, it would change it a little bit. There is a smoothing, but it's gonna be, that change is gonna be right near the bridge. Yeah. Is it, the route 12 would be, especially there'd be more fill on route 12 in order to make that transition. Yeah, we're probably talking a few inches. What you're touching right now is, there's everybody in there, Bradley. Yeah. Raising it. There's a spot where it comes. As you can tell, we're not chasing that all the way back pretty far. All that year, we're eliminating the kink right at the bridge. So that transition's gonna happen between your driveway and the end of the bridge. Yeah, I see. We have the guy at real estate. Yeah, I'm just wondering how that affects like the traffic flow going from Ayers Road and also Crosstown. If it's going back that far too, that just has to be considered. Yep. Yep. All right. One of the questions that needed to be asked is how is maintenance of traffic gonna be maintained during construction? Looked at the three standard options and phase construction was easily ruled out. If you can't maintain traffic on half a trust bridge for phase construction. The offsite detour is possible, but it's not recommended. And the most likely choice here is the temporary bridge, which is recommended. So the offsite detour would rely on, there'd be a lot of use of the local detours. And if you look on the pink, where I got highlighted pink, that's Chandler Road. And then the yellow is, I think that's Raoul and then Crosstown. If anybody's driven those, you know that those roads are not suitable for large volumes of traffic and trucks. So, the reality of the detour would have to be done through the interstate. And that would be a 27 mile detour and a bridge to end the bridge. Also, these offsite detours are worth the best when you have a short road closure period. You want to get in and get out and having to deal with the trust bridge and maybe reassembling it and disassembling it, there, this project isn't necessarily conducive to having a short road closure period. Which is the reason why we're not recommending it. So, on your temporary bridge though, is that going to be durable enough to carry those trucks across? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's mandatory that they be all lead loads. So, temporary bridge, it's a one lane, two way traffic temporary bridge with light signals. Because there is just not enough space to put a two lane bridge on there on either side of the bridge, upstream or downstream. The preferred location is the upstream side, which is shown here. The downstream side has some utility and stability concerns. Right there on the left photo, that's the base three power, that's going to be a significant utility relocation. And on the right, there's that concrete, old concrete abutment, there's some slope stability issues there as well. And because that's right, we're definitely going to need to go. So, the overall recommended scope for use of the existing trust bridge at new location and construction of a new bridge on alignment, traffic maintained on a one lane, two way temporary bridge, 11 foot, five foot shoulders, the no sidewalk, thank you for the feedback on that. 140 foot long single span bridge, steel girder with bare deck concrete, ash chisel for drilling. The abutments will be concrete, camellia or civil abutments on ledge. There'll be minimum improvements. Like I said, on the entrance all will come in from North Hill. And you'll have a 75 year design ice. I'll expect to start the design phase process this spring, with hopes to have the contract plans done by fall of 2025. So we can advertise during winter and then begin construction in 2026. So I have any questions? There is, do you want to talk about the link or? It's down here. Oh, sure. There's a link underneath that picture. The town has that link and it might have been posted on the town's website. But tonight's presentation will be up at that link. It's a public facing website. All future plan submissions, preliminary plans, final plans will all be posted on that link. Any future presentations given to the town on this project will be on this link. It's a public facing link for the project, basically. So questions, comments? What did you expect the total time for the bridge to be down? So the bridge won't be down at all. We're not going to have a detour. So I would say the largest impacts to traffic are going to be really when they're switching. So they're going to maintain traffic on the existing bridge while they're constructing a temporary bridge next to it. And then there's going to be some traffic impacts when they're switching traffic over from the existing to the temporary bridge. And then after traffic's on the temporary bridge, that's when they're going to deconstruct the existing bridge. They're going to construct a new bridge and then they will take traffic from the temporary back to the new bridge. What's the total length of time you expect? It's going to be a long project. I mean, this is a pretty substantial bridge. Deconstructing the truss takes time. It's possible that they would construct the temporary bridge the fall beforehand. And so they could get going right on the bridge in April. So our typical construction schedule is April 15th to December 1st, and I would anticipate this is going to take a full construction season. And correct me if I'm wrong. It might be one and a half construction seasons because you can get the new bridge in there in one construction season, but you got to put in the temporary bridge or take out the temporary bridge, not in the winter. So one of those end is going to fall into the fall or fall into the spring of the next year. So that's probably a year and a half. And so when we have a situation where they put the temporary bridge in the fall ahead of time, we don't switch traffic over until the spring. So we wouldn't have one-way alternating temporary bridge during winter, it's a kind of a maintenance headache for plowing, so. So where's the difference on the full scoping report that was provided? It's at eight months for this option for the full bridge replacement and six months straight for the rehabilitation of the current bridge. Now you're saying a year and a half, where's the discrepancy there? Did the scoping report out include the temporary bridge timeline or? It was not, I can't remember. Yeah, it's contractor means and methods too. I mean, we have an estimation at this point in scoping how long it's going to take in that eight months is just saying full construction season. A contractor is probably gonna say, we wanna get in the fall ahead of time. And so there's, like I said, we're really early on in development right now. So we don't have a detailed construction schedule. When would you expect to have that estimation? And would that be public information? Yeah, it's all public information. All of the state records are public information. And I would anticipate it would be years from now closer to the start of the project that we would have a detailed construction schedule. So to make, to be clear, the scoping report that was provided did not include the estimation for the timeline or the cost of this temporary bridge. It includes the cost. So the cost of the temporary bridges and that cost option in terms of the timeline, like I said, it's contractor means and methods. So it's actually when we get a contractor on board, they're the ones that are going to put together that detailed construction schedule. So it's hard for us to say this is, depending on what type of temporary bridge they have, that might dictate how long it's gonna take for them to construct it. So it really is, it's the contractor is the one that puts together that construction schedule. They're gonna say how long it's gonna take. But you can probably provide some type of estimation or something like that based on past projects that would equate to a similar project. I mean, I just think that for us, if we're providing a public comment, we need all of the proper information so we can do what we can do, like you said, to find a consensus to get to the same page. So I just wanna make sure that the things that I'm reading and taking notes on are accurate in your opinion, but it sounds like we're missing that big piece, which is gonna add double the time to the project, which is gonna really impact us who live right on the bridge. So you can get an update on that, the timeline that you're gonna get, estimations from these construction companies, that would be perfect. Yeah, it's when we would get a contractor on board, we would know more about their means and methods. And so that right now we have that in the schedule for the fall of 2025 or winter of 2026. It's possible, I would say, there's a lot of project risks here based on the utilities that need to be moved to the right-of-way process, the historic mitigation process. So it's possible that's gonna be moved out a year. I would say probably likely here, but maybe not 2026 is when we have it in our budget. But again, this is a large project. So that could move out a year. I thought it was more like 2025, that we were really thinking about getting that fixed, because it is a very big safety concern. All of us that walk it, drive it. Yeah, it is, and it's just process. It's the permitting process, it's the right-of-way process. That's really what takes time here. Not as much the design. Will that be a better or more late-person-friendly version of the design of the bridge that's really hard to look at and really understand what that aesthetic would look like? Because I've seen past projects, they used some of the facade of the current bridge to make it a little more aesthetically pleasing based on the fact that it's part of the state historic historic site could be eligible for the national historic site. It would be nice to see what is on the table with the aesthetic of it and preserving the historic beauty of something like this. Yeah, so what we really want to do here is we want to take this existing trust and rehab it for another location, like on a town road that doesn't need that HL 93 load rating. So we do want to preserve this trust and we have some time to find a new location for it, if possible. We really need to find an inappropriate location for it. In terms of the aesthetics of the new bridge and Judith, and I know you're on the call, that's our state historic preservation officer. I know if you want to chime in. Sure, mitigation is required whenever we adversely affect a historic resource and because this bridge, the trust bridge from 1934 is considered historic, removal of it is considered adverse and an adverse impact would require mitigation. Mitigation is pretty broad term for a lot of different ideas and we've done different things for different projects. It all depends on the site. It depends on what's going on in the area. It depends on the bridge, perhaps its significance. For a trust, we would usually do something we call, I don't really like the term, it's called dock and destroy. We document it prior to the bridge coming out. That's sort of a baseline, that's baseline mitigation and what that is is it's just documenting the bridge and putting together a small history of it so that we have that information once it's gone. Mitigation to reuse the bridge in another location would help offset the loss of this bridge and its original location by allowing people to see the bridge in a new context. It's always important for historic resources to keep them in their original context but when we can't in a situation like with the bridge, we still have the bridge which is significant for its engineering. And so that's really what we'd be preserving is this opportunity for people to see the engineering. So if we can find a new location for it, it would be ideal. But we can also talk about the aesthetics of the new bridge as part of that mitigation. We're mostly concerned about the aesthetics of replacing a historic bridge when it's in a historic district, trying to make sure that whatever we're planning doesn't negatively impact that surrounding historic. We don't have a historic district here. We do have the historic bridge though. And what I'm hearing is interest in making sure that there's a perhaps a railing that could be considered aesthetic. We wouldn't put just like, you know, simple WB across the bridge. We would probably put something a little bit more decorative. Our hands are a little tied when it comes to decorations just because or decorative features just because we have to meet crash ratings. And we have a limited number, really kind of a limited number of railing designs that we can go with. And, you know, but that is something that we can keep in mind. And as the project moves forward through the design phases, we can look at perhaps a couple of different railing designs and talk to the town about, about those opportunities. Thank you. Is it similar to the original? Sign. So we haven't gotten into the design yet. So it's hard to say, but the East Montpelier bridge, that was a historic bridge. And so that railing that is there now is a historic railing that I believe would be. I believe it would meet the crash test levels here. I think that's the. Concrete. I don't think it has, I don't think it has the seal on top. I think it's just concrete. It is. It's just concrete. And the reason that one was chosen was because that is a historic district. And that's more in keeping with. What is surrounding in that area. The concrete bridges are from a specific era, early 1900s. And when we install a bridge with a new concrete railing, it's often to sort of stick with that. Aesthetic, you know, we don't have that, that very decorative feature here on this bridge. It is more utilitarian, but I don't know that I would recommend a concrete railing here. But I think there are plenty of other, but we can certainly look at some ideas, but there are also metal railings that can be decorative and track too. I think there, I think there'll be some, some different options out there. Yeah. I would be really concerned about putting in a concrete railing such as the one at East Montpelier, just because it is so tall and we want to make sure that we have a tall railing for bicycle traffic. And I think site distance issues, especially turning from, from irs and just the existing site distance issues that are there would be made worse with a concrete railing. But combo rail is possible. Yeah. And you can, you can put a, you can use concrete formliners from the bottom part of it and stay in the bottom too. I mean, that's still, that's a relatively affordable, almost for an aesthetic thing. I mean, there are limitations. I mean, you can't put a nice big copper bridge on top of it. That's just way too expensive, way too much maintenance and all, but there are little things that can be done to make it, to make the standard vanilla kind of bridge a little bit bigger. Yeah. And I think that would be appreciated. You know, we're looking at this, you know, beautiful historic trust bridge and, you know, it seems like the decision really has been made to, to fully replace it. And, you know, speaking as a resident that's in Riverton, and, you know, it has a really nice feel to it. And, you know, we're looking at not just like brass tax and costs, looking at posterity and, you know, people who are living here currently in the state, but also people who are coming to, to move to our areas and, you know, pay taxes and kids that are going to our schools and, you know, all the things that are, that are happening in the area that are being great, you know, to take away something that's, that's makes Riverton so special. It would be nice to see that, that some aesthetic qualities were taken to, and taken into consideration with the replacement. Those are things that would be kind of ironed out during the time that it's going to be exact price. And, and I agree with you, you know, losing, losing a historic trust is, it can be, you know, a lot of people really like them. And this is a, this is a lovely one. It's a lighter one. It's, you know, it had a, it's significant here. It's significance in this location is, is, is obvious. And losing it, I can understand how that might be, you know, difficult for some people. We, we do try to keep them whenever we can. And actually the, the regulations, one of the regulations that we have to review this project under section four F requires us to keep it. If it's at all feasible, you know, based on the engineering, the condition, it's just not feasible. And, you know, that's, that's my job is to make sure we're, you know, if we're going to remove something like this, that's historic that we really have to, and then to figure out the mitigation, and which would include making sure that the town has a nice replacement for it. Are you folks going to be, when's it, when you think you'll be coming back to the board. So our next step is to start on conceptual plans. And then once conceptual plans are complete, a copy of that, a copy of the plans would be sent to the town if the town would like another meeting at that point. Then that would be, that would be a good, a good time to meet again. So I don't know exactly when conceptual plan submission is on the schedule, but I would say within six months. Any other questions with folks from AOT? I have a question. I don't know if you guys could actually answer this. So a while back we had an emergency closure and then down to one lane for a period of time. I think it's currently rated as a six, which is satisfactory. I can see with your report between now and replacement. Is there a chance that we might go through such a phase again? Yeah, so that, that six rating that was from the VTrans bridge inspection at the bridge inspectors the last time they came through and inspected it. We had a. They were inspected this when the project was programmed and they were able to access different areas of the bridge and that six rating, I would say was no longer applicable after that. It's possible that the bridge inspectors would go out and find something. And if that's the case, if there, there will be another kind of short term maintenance fix for it. So I guess your question is, yes, we could run into that again, which is why we want to keep things rolling. And you might have that chance. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for your folks coming in for your opinion. Yeah. Great. If you want. Of all the different types of railing. And people. You can leave your chair. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. For example, that was what needs. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Can you get these folks. Email addresses. Oh yeah. These. No, no. The residents. Yeah. Yeah. I can follow. They're all. They're all over in Riverton. So, yeah. Okay. Okay. Senior center request for funding. Hi, good evening. Good evening. There is a letter in your package that we received just recently from them as well. Sorry. Sorry, Sarah. I just wanted to make sure that. There's a letter. But they have a letter in their package. Yes, thank you. Okay. So I'm Sarah Lipton. I'm the director at the Montpelier senior activity center. I'm still somewhat new. I'm very happy to be there and working with Kelly Murphy, who's our new assistant city manager for the city of Montpelier. We, as you are probably aware, we have had many years of support from the town of Berlin specifically because we serve meals on wheels to your community. We've been able to serve more meals. We've been able to serve more meals. We've been able to serve more meals to your community. So in the past year, our meals have increased, not only have people needed more meals, but we've been able to serve more meals. The, it's, I think around the country, there's been a huge intake of more need for meals on meals. The pandemic really helped bring that on. And also just everything else going on in our, our state of the world at this point. So we've increased over the last year to about 24 meals. And we've last year served about 6,700 meals to your residents. We also, of course, have tons of classes and programs and other events that your residents come to at the senior center. And due to an unfortunate confluence of events, in part me being new to the process, getting sick in the middle of the process, and not having quite all of the helpers that I needed. We wound up missing our deadline to get our petition into you. And we could, however, have probably, if we had figured out the right timing of things, been able to at least ask for level funding, which we received this past year at $20,000. Not being on the books with you for FY 24 is going to cause us some real challenges. And we're not sure we'll be able to continue to serve those needed meals to your residents. And so that's why I'm here is to really say, you know, first of all, apologies for missing the process. And also, is there any way to consider some sort of either level funding or some funding in lieu of level funding for FY 24? Because we really, we really value being able to serve your residents. And we know that we missed the process in the timeline that it was needed. But at the same time, have a lot we can offer to your residents. Did you hear back from middle sex at all? Yes. I'm actually speaking to their select for tomorrow. So, yeah. They haven't, they haven't figured some way to do this. Well, yeah, we're meeting tomorrow. So I'm not sure what it says on their agenda is action possible. So I'm the second agenda item for their agenda. And they understand also that we serve some of their residents meals on wheels as well as their residents in members of their town being members of MSAC and all of the different options and opportunities available to them. So I'm just trying to go over in my head what's involved. Basically, we'd have to take and warn a special town meeting to vote this through. The other thing is because I want to say our policy on people coming in for appropriations, I almost think you have to go for your 100 signatures for the petition. Because if you didn't get funded last time, is that right to learn? I think that's right. They'd have to go and get a petition. For next year? If we were to have a special town meeting, so that'd be for this year. Well, I think to meet as long as it's level of funding, they missed the filing for last year for this year. For this year. So a special town meeting would take the place of that with my understanding. If I might just offer a little bit of clarity. Hi, Kelly Murphy, assistant city manager. I think what we're seeking is not a special meeting town meeting. I think we were hoping that you might consider the request and see if there was any way that you might be able to fund the senior center through discretionary funds. And I realized that funds are super tight. We get it. And we also realized that, you know, we definitely missed the mark on getting the petition in, but we also just wanted to approach you and see if maybe there was something that, you know, we might be able to work out because not having funding in 24 would be a hardship. And then it also would be really hard to make up in the next fiscal cycle. And so that's what we're kind of seeking is to see if there's any way that you might have funding within your 24 budget that you could shift around. If not, you know, we understand, but we also just wanted to kind of come to you today and let you know where we were at. And then also just kind of sort of provide the narrative of, you know, what could potentially be if we don't have funding because we can't support the residents of Berlin, which is not something that we really would like to do. We'd like to try to work something out if it's possible. Well, fortunately, our treasurer is here. Thanks for talking to us. We don't have any discretionary budget. I'm not an expert on this year's budget, or, you know, next year's budget, but I wouldn't think we'd really have them discretionary. We didn't build any budget. Yeah, especially that amount. Yeah. Now, if I may also ask Vince, it's my understanding that diversion also wasn't included in the civic center and Green Mountain trams. Any word from those agencies? I thought Green Mountain came in. There were a couple that did not come in this year requesting the funds. You are correct there. Yeah, there were by hand fault. As my understanding of diversion, it's a lot smaller amount, but it was, you're going to just kind of miss the deadline. So, I mean, if we were, I guess throwing all the wrench in the works, if we were to have a special time meeting for the senior center, would we open it up to these other entities as well? Well, and if so, would they, you know, here again, would they want to participate in, I guess, the cost share? Well, my view would be the senior center has come to us, seeking funding for a worthy cause. I would take and put it out there, but I would not go and solicit their funding. The other thing is that we may have some other things we could put on the agenda if we do have a special time meeting. But I think one of the things we have to do, we can't do it tonight of course, but we need to take and get a hold of Rachel and give an idea of what would cost to have a special time meeting and get a little bit firmer number. But to me, it makes more sense if we have more than one item. Hey, Brad. Can I offer just one other sort of perspective too? In terms of the Meals on Wheels recipients, the 24 folks that we currently serve, I think the real pickle that we face is that we, we can't subsidize that entirely. We receive $3.80 per meal from the council and aging through our contract for those meals. The meals actually cost us about $14 to produce. And we, if we do not get funding from you, then we will have to see if we can make a, some kind of an arrangement with the city of Barry. And if they're able to offer those meals to your residents, but it really puts us in a bind of being kind of forced to say, sorry, residents who we've been serving. We can't serve you these meals anymore. So I think that that's really, obviously it's on us for missing the deadline, but that's why we're reaching out. It's not just for some sort of good idea of serving the senior center. It's really that we really do serve vital meals and wellness checks for your residents. And of course there's all the other perks of being a member with all of our classes and everything else, but it's really the meals that, that hurt the most for us. What's your timeline? Well, our fiscal year ends at the end of June. And so we, I believe we, I don't know if we've received it yet, but I know we, we are on the docket to receive FY23 funding from you for 23,000, for 20,000. So really would be July 1st would have to be the cutoff date. So we'd have to look at what would cost. I mean, the timeline. We covered. Yeah. I mean, actually the timeline for, to warn a meeting. Brad. Yeah. Okay. I'm just waiting for a good time to kick in here. Hey, Sarah and Kelly, I don't think the select board is, is going to really, they're going to hold anything up. I think this is going to really work, but we just trying to figure out how to bring the town in. And so now I'm going to say tour. I kind of agree with you. I don't necessarily think I think that. I guess special town meeting, if you want to call it, would take the place of anyone having to go out and get signatures. So for the same amount for the same, for the same amount. I can't. For the life of me, I cannot remember the wording of that, that policy. So I have to take a look that up. Yeah. We've got, we've got time before June. So. But our next town, our actual election of anything is going to be next town meeting in March. Is this correct? Yeah. There's nothing coming up in the fall. Okay. So I think. Brad, you're right. We need a few things extra to bring people out. Yeah. Because you're not going to, you're not going to have a special election without it costing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And the more people that are there. It's. It spreads it out. You know, and it sounds, you know, just by the numbers, it's 24 people, but 24 people rely on this. Yes. 24 people rely on this. And it's, it is about 67, about 6,700, 6,700 meals a year. Because most of those recipients receive seven meals a week. Yeah. The other important thing is the wellness checks. Yeah. That's actually a really huge part of it. Our drivers. So our drivers go out four days a week. And they are on it every time. And I've, I've delivered a lot of meals myself. And I've actually done those wellness checks. I've called the police when I couldn't get a resident at home before that happened over the holidays. And that's a really key piece of this. So many of the residents that we serve in your community are very rural and they don't necessarily have someone. That's checking on them other than their delivery driver. That's a really, really key component of meals on meals. So if we took that money, I'm now going to ask the question to Sarah. If we took that money that you would have received. And we broke it down by month. I'm just saying if we didn't have a special election until, let's just say November, September, November, after July 1st. What would that be? And then between now and some, our next select board meeting or whenever the select board could decide or Diane allow, what could we put forward until that actual election happens? To subsidize it for those couple of months. Or would the select board even consider it? I'm just throwing it out there. There's some legalities here. I guess one question with that is then we'd have to reprint new tax bills. If we do it after the summertime, when the tax bills go out. I think that's kind of our biggest time crunch, but time frame that we're looking at right now, is it really like to have this done by middle of June, I guess, to set the tax right, everything to have the tax bills go out. Any time after that, then we're talking about reprinting new tax bills and the whole automatic payments and stuff would really, yeah. And we promise never to do this to you again. Well, if I may ask just to change the subject a little bit. What are you going to do to make sure this doesn't happen again? Yep. I actually just today I got a can look up her name if you want, a volunteer from your community who is going to get the signatures needed on time. So I think your name is Marta. I don't have it written down in front of me, but she actually called the center today and said, please, can I get your signatures for you? The materials that we write for you, that's easy. We already, that's, that's not the problem. We already had that all done. It was really just a matter of getting signatures in time. And the other thing that, that sort of complicated the works for my process was again, being new to the process and not realizing when I was drafting all the materials that we would be required by the city of Montpelier to ask for an increase, which was what then put us in the position of needing signatures. And so that all happened a little bit too late for me to be able then to find a volunteer. So that's all going to be avoided in the future. Okay. I know it doesn't really help with things tonight, but and not necessarily help you, but in the past, I would always look at the town meeting warning and compare it to the previous year's warning. Because we had this issue about 10 years ago. I don't know if you remember, Brad. I think it was an all basic education or something. Somebody did submit. They changed the women's shoulder to circle, I think. Well, that was another one. Yeah. And, but, you know, one didn't come through and we didn't catch it. We never did catch it. We didn't find out about it until much later in the process. The tax bills had already gone out. And the fact the organization was looking for their check and it never came. So that kind of made me, I guess, hyper-aware at that time. I said this was 10 years ago. You know, so I would always look at the proposed warning versus the previous and make sure we knew positively that each organization was in fact on the new warning or we knew definitively that they were not asking for money next year. So I put that out and I will do that again next year. It doesn't really help us tonight. But another thought I had, and it's just a thought, and would a, and I don't want to make a whole lot of work for the town administrator or the town clerk. Actually, yes, I do, but, is would an email reminder be helpful or would that just get lost in all the noise? Would an email like in maybe December saying, hey, just reminder, town meetings are coming up. If you're looking for a petition, they must be turned in by this date or if you're looking for federal, for level funding, you must make your request by this date. Would that be helpful or would that just get lost? I mean, it's helpful for sure. And I've also now planned everything out by your timeline. So as I mentioned, we'll be on it next year and every year after. I'm a big process and procedures guy. That's what makes me comfortable. And not just fixing your issue tonight, but how can we try to prevent this from occurring in the future? Well, you know, just speaking from a person who's been through this for the first time and messed up for anyone else that's new next year, it would be lovely for them to get a reminder. So that is a nice idea for from a process perspective. Okay, we'll take a look at that. I mean, I do. I composed will take a look at some point in the future. We got some time, but we don't have to figure that one out tonight, but if you could, after your meeting tomorrow with middle sex, get a hold of events and see if they have any insight in this little problem. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. I can certainly circle back to you all. What's the best way to do that? Just the email communication that I had going earlier today or. Yeah, sorry, just the just you can email me specifically. Okay, great. Perfect. Yeah, I'll be happy to share that. Great. Thank you. So we'll see what we can do. Thank you. Any questions for us? Any other questions? Any questions for them? I think my, you know, listening to this, the challenging process. I'm wondering, is there anything we can do to help? You know, we could probably, we just did a big fundraiser over the weekend for our feast program. And we're accustomed to doing events we could put on, you know, some kind of low, low bar meal for the town of Berlin. If that was helpful or, you know, just sort of something to showcase what we offer and why it's so important. We could do a presentation. We could bring some of our meals and wheels drivers in to talk about what they do and why it's important. We could bring in some of our recipients if they'd be willing to talk. I mean, you know, if something like that was helpful, I think our community would be really, really all for sharing. So, you know, just let me know about that. And, and any other thing that we could do to help, I really apologize and appreciate how complicated this is and makes more work for you all, which I really don't feel good about. So sorry about that. And, and let me know if there's, you know, what we can do to support the process and really just thank you so much for considering and allowing us to even be here and considering this challenge that we're facing. Well, okay. Once we take and figure out what the legalities of it is from our side, we'll let you know. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much. Thank you. I just want to reiterate that, you know, everybody here is, you know, 100% support of the senior center and the meals on wheels. It's just a matter of finding out the process of getting this accomplished. I understand. Thank you so much. My advisory council will be happy to hear that tomorrow when I report to them. And I'll circle back after my meeting with middle sex. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you very much. Okay. We will move on to the board. Okay. You have the floor. I'll sit over here that way. Pull my things out. I've given documents to this tour. There's one. I also just send the draft report to you. Yeah. There's more than two documents. There's a draft in there. There's that top document that you have is the one that should be probably reviewing first. Yeah. There's just additional information to support that. Okay. And plus I sent you the whole draft as well through an email. Next weekend. Okay. So what I wanted to do on schedule D, which is a copy that I gave to you. That one right there is a statement of revenues and expenditures. And it just does everything as a whole. It's just a one page exhibit D. Okay. So on that, so I think that's easier to explain that way. I mean, I could certainly go through everything one by one, but I don't think you could have wanted to do that at this, at this point in time. So what I wanted to do was bring out the things that were relative. Now, obviously we had a lot of expenditures in FY 22 and 450,000. We were expecting because we paid down a lot of our debt. Okay. We paid off all of our vehicles basically. And we had a lot of projects going on. So a couple of highlights as far as we made a little bit more money. There was an increase in the town clerk revenue of about 26,000. And that's because so many houses were selling. So things were really, you know, really hopping and of course the documentation for that to charges for the other increase was in the pilot. We got $54,000 more than we were anticipating. So those things were good, adding up to about 80,000 for that. Now where our expenditures were that were more than anticipated. The first one was in the town admin wages. And some of that had to do with the town clerk. Now in FY 21, we said the town clerk in FY 22 was going to get a raise, but that was not in the budget. So we had to make up that difference, which was like about 8,000. Then the assistant town clerk, we said, well, she could go full time. And so that was the difference. That was like probably 13 or 14,000. So that added up. And also because we increased the wages, there was more as far as pension and taxes. And then the part-time person got onto a health insurance, which that alone is like 10,000. Okay. So those were some things happening there. Also myself and I know the assistant town administrator had a lot of overtime for the projects he was working on, but I didn't have a lot of special projects last time. And FY 22, one of them being the biggest one problems, the culvert. There was a lot of paperwork to do for that. And then we were finishing up Painter and Bike South. There was a lot of paperwork with that. And then all the new grants that we had. So I did put in more overtime that I'm putting in now, obviously, but that was because of those projects. So all in all, we were looking for an increase of 50,840 with all of that going on. I mean, excuse me, 43,900. No, I'm wrong. 50,840. Like an admin expense now I'm going to, and that's the 43,900. So we ended up spending $10,000 more for computer support. We had the money for the new server because we had that in the reserve. That was like 17,300. But we had the server from before that was not working. We're constantly getting patches on it. And then building all of what we needed to put the new server in. Okay. So that was an additional cost of 10,000. We got a new webpage that we had anticipated. It would be 1,500. That was an additional 3,500. But our webpage is pretty strong now and it's, and we're still with the same company and we are just growing in that respect. And more people have access and the information is better on the website. And then there was $6,300 for wiring because we changed a lot of the wiring here. Took some of the old wiring out. And also we had a door that we had replaced the police department. And so that was about $6,300. Then legal fees. We did not, I did not anticipate enough for the union contract for the police department. So there's $17,000 more there. Okay. And then in abatements, we had $7,100 more. Part of that was a grange. And then another issue was with facto and we had to take care of that. Okay. So that was the increase on that off the police department. That was an increase of 86,300. And that had everything to do with overtime. We were short staffed. We had people at the academy. We just had the worst times for that because people were still getting COVID. So it really was the perfect storm unfortunately. And part of that also was a new union contract because I did not anticipate what the new union contract would be for an increase. So like I said, that's 86,300 for that. The highway department, however, had a surplus of 79,200, which was good. Now the increase in the capital budget, that was significant. And part of it was paying off the equipment debt. However, another piece of that was the culvert. The culvert cost us more than we anticipated. When we were planning this, I remember there was a time when the engineers discovered that there was shale or something that was not anticipated. And that was a $30,000 increase. We were not anticipating. And then on top of that, they had not planned for the paving afterwards. And that was like another, at least 10, 15,000. So all in all, our losses, we had a loss of 727,873, which was significant. We were not anticipating it to be that much. We were anticipating more to be the 450,000 era. But a lot of it is the culvert. And a lot of it is just the expense that we have for the police department that was not anticipated. So what that did to our un-designated funds, I just want to, I do have that marked off in here. And now I'll tell you what it brought us down to. I had it marked off in here. I know our un-designated funds is like down to a little over 900,000. Okay. And we have pledged 450,000 to that. So I think we're still in good standing. And I think right now, when I was looking at where we stand on our budget for FY23, I think we're right about where we should be. But I am going to discuss that in the next meeting that we have in April. So we'll understand where we are right now. I just wanted to, you know, go over the audits that you would understand where we're coming from, why we had the loss. And Diane, of the un-designated funds being down to 900,000, how much did you say you have pledged to it? 450,000 for FY23. Thank you. So that is the pluses and the minuses and just, you know, really broad. If you've got any other questions on it, please let me know. I can certainly dive into it for you. The breakdown is extremely helpful. Yeah. And I can certainly go even further. I just thought it would just take all night for, line by line, it would not help. It's unfortunate, like with the culvert costs, everything's so expensive, especially for things like that. Yeah, that was another piece too, that they didn't anticipate the full cost, but then when they ran into problems, that made things even worse. It exacerbated it. Yeah. But we had to have it, obviously. It was not like a want. It was a need. Right. You were anticipating to have, to have about 400,000 in the rainy day fund. Everything is seven. Yes, a little more than that. Yeah. I think we're still in good shape. And I've so far, you know, across from fingers, FY23 is looking pretty good. But, you know, obviously that could change as well, but we will, I will discuss that the next meeting. Great. An update showing that. Great. You have any questions for Diane? I just want to say the updates are very helpful. Any questions? Just email me. Okay. Well, thank you, Diane. Thank you. I'm not next again. Well, let's see here. I trizzled to the board and. The economic develop committee update and approval for funds. Yes. Okay. So I did send you the minutes and I think they're included in here as well. Yeah. They're in their package. Okay. So a couple of things I wanted to just to point out is. We've had really good discussions about two meetings so far. We're going to have another meeting on Wednesday. And of course we were talking about replacement of the building or what we're going to do with this building and we're looking, you know, ahead into the future. So what Wayne Lamerton suggested, and we all did agree is he was saying, we need to get like a planner that could help us because obviously we can say, okay, well, we have to meet. We needed a police tomorrow and we need this. We need that. We have no idea how much it's going to cost and we don't really know is how much space do we need. So the plan is to, if we get a planner who could sit down with the town people, you know, I'm talking to the employees here and tell us how much square feet each department needs and what they feel they need for face. Then after that, somebody could plan it for us and help us with it. And where Wayne says, he says, I know a lot about this stuff. I always hire somebody to help me through this. So we're looking at this planner and we're saying, he's saying, well, it's going to cost probably about $3,000 a pump of the plan. They're not going to have sketches or drawings or anything like that. They're going to have something written up saying, okay, we think that the police department is going to need this or another department is going to need something else and give us options. And that way, because then we can present that to you. However, we've got $1,500 in reserve and we're looking at $3,000. And I don't know where else I could get money from the reserves for that other $1,500. So that's the issue. And unfortunately, we can't really move forward with anything else on this unless we can get somebody to help us plan. So we're just looking to the board to what are you, what we advise us. And also with this planner, there would be the understanding that there's no obligation for the town to do anything with them. In other words, if they say, you know, you have to build this and this and, you know, can we bid this? No, we're right now. This is just strictly talking what we need. I guess oaky sails up. I do see where Pat asked if we needed an RFP and that this project should be under $5,000. So it should not be required to send out RFPs. Right. And Wayne said we are looking for a space plan, not blueprint, prints or pictures. Right. And about six hours of work for the planner at $200 per hour. That's where we came up with that calculation. So we got $1,500 available. And reserve. And this year's? Yeah, and reserve. And reserve. And we've been carrying that for a long time, like 15, 15 actually. And is there anything in the current year budget? No. And nothing in the next year budget? No. Could RFP funds be used for this purpose? What is in the building maintenance fund? We cleaned that out last year because with a wall replacement, I took all that money. When we had that wall replaced in this town clerk's office, the insurance was not enough. So we had to use that money. What will be the monies put back into that fund in July? I have to look. The top of my head. $7,000? I can't even make an educated guess on that one. It almost seems like the building fund was. It's kind of a repeating amount similar to what we do with. Question to her in next year's budget. We'll come up with a number. Like we do conservation commission and so on to propose to go into the economic development committee budget as well. I don't know what that number will be yet, but there will be a number of some, some amount that we will include in the budget. We just restarted them that 1500 is what was there from previous committee. So there was nothing at the time during budgeting. Even thought about to put in there. I was in that 15 that was already there. What's the committee's timeline of this 3000 for the planner? Well, we would, we would love to be able to get this going right now because if we don't, then we'll have to go into a different topic because we can't go any further because we, you know, we can't come up with money. We can't come up with how much it's going to cost. We're just, that's not, we're not qualified to do that. Not one of us. We do have in the reserve that we put in there at FY 22, we do have 12,000 planning reserve. Now I know that the planning committee had, you know, they wanted to use it for the town center.  It's a good point. Yeah. And there is 12,000 available. And it's a small amount of the 12,000. Correct. Available. Like the 1,200 basically. Yeah. Yeah. I'm hoping it doesn't go over 3,000. Right. If it does, I'll come back. Are they, do they have that 12,000 committed to? No. Or is it just setting aside for? We set it aside. Yeah. For anything just do a town center stuff. Yeah. But we also have money in the budget for town center. But we do have a few projects going on right now that are going to be completed in FY 23. That will probably, I don't think it'll touch this, the 12,000. But it will, it will probably eat up most of what they have for FY 23 in the budget. Which is like, I think 40,000. So basically, other than using our funds, the only money in the, in the budget that you tap into is that 12,000. Yeah. That's it. It is for planning. Yeah. This is like where that makes a choice on where that's going to be spent. But I just don't see any other categories that, you know, that match that at all. Any thoughts? I'm inclined and I'll put it on the table. I make the motion to approve the use of $3,000 from the planning reserves up to $3,000 from the planning reserves for the purpose of a planner for up to six hours of work at approximately $200 an hour as a nation. They already have $1,500. We do have $1,500 in the economic. Okay. So you're saying just up to $3,000 from there. I was thinking up to $3,000 from the planning reserves without using the $1,500. That's my motion. I'll second it. Any further discussion? And then you're not looking at using the ARPA funds or any savings? Or the board funds. Not the board funds. Any other discussion on this? Those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Anything else, Diane? No. I'll bring it to the board on Wednesday. And I think I'll talk about it again at the next meeting that we have here. Thank you, Diane. Let's hear. Well, we'll proceed with the COT systems. Yes. Contact for record. So for the third go around to this one, third approval in your document, in your folder, there's a document starts with this. I included it that shows it's just a summary of the two, two costs, right? For this project, which again, we've already approved the ARPA funds for, but just to give you the details one more time, right? The record room schedule is the first one on your list in section three. It's $7,150 and total plus $210 a month for the service fee. This gives you the details again about that. And then the second one, which is the bigger one, this is the whole scanning of the vault, the records from 1980 to present, so the 40 year requirement, right? That needs to be done on site and so on that we talked about. That cost, the total is $61,305. And that's based on estimated unit fees as described in this document as well. And then $20 a month support and such going forward. So what that will do will give us the ability to be online for the 40 year record research. And that will be set up in such a way through this that we also still collect the funds as if they had come in and used the vault and made copies and so on. We'll still capture that income from this as well, but people will be able to do it from online now as well as come into the vault. And those records will all be done. Everything prior to the 40 years and everything current going forward after the 40 years, the staff is going to start doing, they'll be trained to be able to do that, to do everything prior to that and get it recorded and electronically and online and everything going forward. So there won't be any additional costs beyond that as well. How are you going to be able to rectify the charges or our fees for access to the records digitally and people using credit cards? That will have to be set up at the time when we set up the software. That will be set up. There'll be a link within this software setup to manage that. So save a record. An attorney must go online. He'll go on to the site. He'll log in. When he goes to print, he'll have to put in the credentials to pay for it to receive that back through. One saying is that if there's a fee for the credit card, are we going to take and have two fee schedules, one for cash and one for card? The credit card fee will have to be included again, there'll be a note online that when they start the process, similar to what we have now, that says you're going to be charged whatever 3%. It was a $20 fee, you'd get a 60 cent credit card fee. We get the $20. I'm not exactly certain how that one works, but that's how it works for the taxes. We like to think we can make it work the same way if we don't serve those fees. Correct. That's correct. We won't be absorbing those fees. Those will be included in that. And there will also be a workstation because we save the latest workstation. The most updated one that we had when we did the computer setup, there'll be a workstation setup here in the building as well. So if somebody doesn't have access, but doesn't want to go into the vault, if they got concerns about whatever, they can come in here and they'll be able to do it from here online as well. That'll be set up for people to come in and use. In terms of the staff to be trained prior to going forward, if there were staff turnover, would our staff then train others or would it be built in for additional training for new staff? We'll have the ability here to train on it. Excellent. Thank you. So are you looking for another motion on this? In my opinion, I think it's been approved twice. This is just to make sure because there was some confusion around it, obviously. I think it would be great. That'll make it clean and no more question about it at that point. So what's the total dollar number here? Oh, you're going to make me do math now. I believe it's the 61,305. Is that correct? No, that's just for one portion. It's the 61,305 and the 74,50, the 210 and 210, $210 a month and $20 a month. $230 a month? Yeah. Okay. So 68,755 is for the digitization in the program itself. Yeah, 68,255. And then it's a 230 a month. 230 a month thereafter. That's everything for the COTS system. So that'd be like 27,68 a year. And it's 27,68 a year for how many years? Is it anticipated? I think that would be. It's recurring. It's recurring every year. But our contract was for, let's call it, strategic management and service installations included, assumptions and requirements. 60 months. 60 month term. Five years. Okay. I make the motion to approve $68,755 toward the digitization and programming fees for the COTS systems along with $230 per month and $2,760 a year, which is recurring for a total of a 60 month term. Second. Any further discussion on this? Hearing none. Those in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Okay. Look at her license approval. Don't have any new ones to report from Rachel at this time. But she's, she's been signing off on them. I don't think she's had any sense of the last meeting to sign off. So thank you. We're good for now. Approval licenses permits about vouchers and applications. I make the motion to approve payroll warrant 23-19 for payroll from February 26 to March 11, 2023 paid on March 15, 2023 in the amount of $65,991.68. Also payable warrant 23G17 with checks 22777 to 22831 for payables in the amount of $87,295.13 and the February general journal entries. Second. Any discussion? Those in favor? Aye. Aye. Second. In favor? Aye. All in favor? Aye. Second. I think we have a quorum. Do we have a quorum? No, we do. I don't see those in my packet. I have the March sets. Yeah, that's the one we have to re-approve. Well, the other one. I have a quorum anyway. Yeah. Okay. So we'll table that to next meeting. I think we have a quorum. I don't know if we do and I don't see those in my packet. March 6, 2023 minutes. I make the motion to approve the Monday, March 6, 2023 minutes with slight changes to a couple of spelling issues. One word, changing president to precedent and just the moving of some headings and nothing horrible or elaborate. I'll share those with Vince. Eight. Now on the round table, toward? I don't have anything. Did we have a second on the minutes, the second of the approval on the minutes? I can't, I don't recall if we had a second. Oh, no. George can't, second. Oh, true, true. So I guess we'll table both of them. Table both of them. I can still share the changes. Thank you. Round table flow. Nothing tonight. Thank you so much. I just want to take and welcome toward the select board again. Most definitely. Welcome. And any executive session tonight? No. Mr. Chair, anything for round table vets? No. And Joe might too. Mr. Chair. Yeah, Joe. I'm still here. But anyway, if you're ready for round table, I just wanted to let everybody know that the Borough Land Fire Department did have a pie breakfast event this last Saturday. And I think it was well attended with over 100 people. It was, I think it was a great opportunity for neighbors, friends to get out. And we had Ray Burke, Sam Burke. I think Donna Thunder and partner playing music up there. And yeah, it was just a great time. I also want to say that we still have the Borough Land Fire Department does have a position on their board of directors for a resident. So if tour or flow, you know, I will throw it out there to anyone, spread the word, see if there's anyone that would be interested in joining that board. That's it. I want to add that I was there as well for the pie breakfast. And I concur with everything Joe said, and they all did a tremendous amount of effort. And everyone seemed to really enjoy it. And there was a lot of planning and it just was wonderful all the way around. Thank you all. I didn't thank you, Flo, for coming to help, but thank you. That's quite all right. It was my pleasure, but you all did a fabulous job. Anything else, Joe? No, I'm good. Thank you. Maintain a motion to adjourn. I make the motion to adjourn tonight's regularly scheduled select board meeting. Second. All in favor. Aye. Aye. We are adjourned.


Snestrunk! Hey everyone, welcome back to Robotrack, or more specifically Snestrunk plays Robotrack. I've backtracked over to Rococo after plowing through the forest there. There's something here that I want to show you. I actually did some grinding and made it to level 2. So what I'm going to do here is read the level 2 book that's back here. And I actually already did that off camera, but it'll make that sound and you've picked up the skill to create a sword wand. And what you can do after you obtain that skill is if you go to an R&D room, you can make these swords. There are 200 gold pieces apiece, and this is going to be kind of time consuming here, but I'm going to make three of them and then I can show you what you can do with them after that. I was pretty drunk the last episode. I'm not going to lie. Sorry about that. I'm totally unprofessional, but no, I was pretty hungover today, so let's get this show on the road. I was kind of flying through stuff. Now let's see where do I combine these. My sword is still at level 1, so I've got essentially four level 1 swords. So let's see here. Yeah, here we go. Combine two items and then you hit the R button to get from your items to your robot's items. Here rolls them in. The machine does its work, and now you have a level 2 sword, which obviously means you can do more damage. You can do this up to level 3, I think, but after that, I'm not an expert when it comes to this game. Believe me, there's a lot I don't know, but I think you need a level 2 sword to go beyond that. You need to combine two level 2 swords to get up to level 4 sword, I believe, I'm not sure. Because it'd be pretty cheap if you could just keep making swords, or maybe you can. You can go all the way up to level 9. I think that's where you max out at level 9. Anyway, let's keep going here to the river. It's a pretty shallow river, actually. Let's get this guy, and I'm going to show off this battle real quick.  When you go to attack and you want to hit RUN like that to get to your attacks. I don't know why I didn't do that last time, but that's how you obtain your attacks, and that's what Crash does.  You can just press X for a bomb right away. Or you can select it manually, but you can just press X, and I missed somehow.  I gotta sit here and take these attacks.  Alright, now I can attack in close range, and let's do murder. Or no, let's do Crash, because I want to make sure this thing dies. Okay, got that guy out of the way, and I got an extra cure. Let's go up here and see what's in here. Clear it out that area, so let's... 200 gold pieces. Okay, I'll take it. Let's go across the... or let's read the sign here first. Here's a new enemy here. These gel things. Oh, and we've got a nice line of pokeballs up there. Let's get those first. Hey, I got my energy replenish. That's nice, a nice bonus there. And what's in this next one? Hey, equipment level up. That's cool.  Oh boy. Yeah, these... now I have to sit here. That's the problem. Yeah, that's really this guy's only attack. Unless you're up close, I think the gel forms into like a fist. It punches you. Just pretty amusing. But yeah, let's just go up here, hit the R button. Take advantage of my leveled up sword. Yeah, that's those gel things there. Okay, thanks. Those gel things there are as close as you get to random battles, because they tend to pop up out of nowhere. Most other enemies will be on screen. Like, I'm sure I'll run into a gel down here somewhere. Or maybe not. Let's cross the water here and find out what's in this thing. Smoke, I think, is no different than any other smoke and any other RPG. You use it to get away from battles. Like, if you can't run... Alright, cleared those two out. Let's open this up. 200 gold pieces, cool. But yeah, smoke is when you can't run from a battle. Obviously, whoops. I did not mean to do that. You want to use that when you can't run from a battle. Okay, let's go to the cave mouth and first let's clear out the enemies in this brief little area. Okay, that's everybody.  Jeez, that's the most I've ever come across. Anyway, wow, I am loaded with gold now. You'll see there I have only three hit points.  Also, I forgot to mention you can equip an item on your character, in my case, drunk, and have him interrupt a battle to use an item to roll it out to your robot. So that's a nice feature. But yeah, I need to use a cure to replenish this dude's health. And yeah, that's all that stuff. What's this sign say here? Yeah, I'm sure it is. It's a cave. It's not Disney World. Uh-oh, what's going on here? Good for him. Okay, that's good. Lots of bombs. Hmm, uh-oh, got kind of a cutscene here. Somehow that doesn't seem like a good idea. Alright, let's take this stuff back here. I'm sure it will. Looks like it worked. Uh-oh. Or not. Whoopsie doodle. Inventions are always failed. What? Wow, what a brat. He takes the time to glare at everyone individually before leaving. Then he shoves me aside. What a baby. Well, that didn't work, so now what are we going to do? How are we going to get these kids out of here? Well, if you noticed earlier, there is a stairway up here. Let's see what's up here. Oh, it's a big hole in the ground. That's what collapsed to fill the wall up after it got blown up. But anyway, I'm going to call that an episode. A little short today, my apologies. But thanks for watching, and have a great rest of your day.


A few simple ingredients added to some ground beef will make an ordinary hamburger into a great hamburger. Let's check out how we do it. Hey, NJRu22.com here. Today we're going to show you an easy way to make just regular hamburgers into a delicious hamburger. So as you see here, I have a block of, one pound block of meat and some cheese. That happens to be cheddar cheese, a shredder, and then I have some Worcestershire sauce as well. And that's all you really need. So what you do is you shred your cheese, I use maybe, I don't know, a couple ounces of cheese. You throw like a couple of splashes. Not too much Worcestershire sauce because it overwhelms it. And I like to use a spoonful of avocado mayo. I'm not a soy boy. I don't like regular mayo. It has soybean oil and I like the avocado oil mayo the best. Then you form your patties in that state. Of course you add some salt and pepper to taste. I sometimes throw a very small hint of onion powder in it. Just a little goes a long way with onion powder. And sometimes some garlic too. And if you want to spice it up, you can throw some cayenne pepper in there. But season to taste basically and grill it or fry it any which way you want. And those couple extra ingredients just make it taste a whole lot better. So if you like what you see here, please hit the like button, the bell and all that and subscribe. And we'll see you next time with some better videos.


I know what all the professors would like me to say. The wise ways you must be focused on your academics, that's all… there's a concern is. But we must look at this, all life on this planet, anything that you take, a worm, an insect, a bird, an animal, a tree or a human being. The only thing that every life is aspiring for is it is trying to become a full-fledged life. An earthworm is trying to be a full-fledged earthworm. A grasshopper is trying to be a full-fledged grasshopper. A mango tree is trying to be a full-fledged mango tree. So is a human being. Only thing is, we know what is a full-fledged earthworm. We know what is a full-fledged grasshopper. We know what is a full-fledged everything. But we do not know what is a full-fledged human being. doesn't matter what you do, somehow seems inadequate. No matter where you get in your life, you will see there is one more thing to do. Never does a human being come to a place where he thinks this is it. That only other people say when you're dead, this is it. So, the essential nature of life, not just human life, every life is.  So wherever you may be in your life right now, you want to be something more. If that something more happens, you want to be something more. If that happens, something more. You will see whatever your aspirations right now as students, suppose all of them get fulfilled within the next one year, you will immediately see you will have another aspiration. If everything that you want gets all fulfilled by tomorrow morning, you will see you will have much more things to do. Because the very nature of being human is such, you always want to be something more. But if you really look at it, what you want is not something more, what you want is a limitless expansion. Even if I make you the king of this planet, don't look at me hopefully. I will not make such a blunder. But suppose we make you the king of this planet, do you believe you will be fulfilled? You will look at the stars. If you have this planet in your hands, you look at the stars. If I give you one galaxy, you will look at the next galaxy. This is the nature of the human being. There is something within us which is always longing to become boundless. But in most human beings, because of their fear of suffering, they think that if they desire for something and it doesn't happen, they will suffer. Because of the fear of suffering, this longing to become boundless is finding a very constipated expression. This constipated expression of longing for the boundless gets labeled as ambition. What you think is ambition is just a constipated expression for a boundless expansion that every life is longing for. But you will see in your life, no matter what happens, you will see you will want something more. This somebody may label it as greed, it is not about greed because the very nature of the human being is such, no matter how many pacifist philosophies you teach him, you cannot contain him. People have told you, you must be happy with what you have, whatever God has given you, that should be the right thing for you. But it's not worked for one human being on the planet. It only works either when you're very sick or very old.  So it's not more. A human being, there is something within you which doesn't like boundaries. If I imprison you in a five by five cubico, you will feel terribly imprisoned. Then we will liberate you tomorrow into ten by ten cubico. You will feel wonderful for a day, but again you will feel imprisoned. The next day we will release you into a hundred by hundred cubico. You will feel really great, but in three days again you'll want to break that boundary. It doesn't matter where I set the boundary. The moment you become conscious of the boundary, you want to break that boundary. This is the nature of the human being. So there is something within you which does not like boundaries. So if you do not like boundaries, what should you seek? That's a question. As long as you live in the physical nature of the existence, the very nature of physicality is a defined boundary. Only because there is a defined boundary, physical is possible. We can call this a physical body because it has boundaries. If I pull out all the boundaries, this will not be physical anymore. So somewhere unconsciously every human being is wanting to touch a dimension beyond physical nature. If you touch a dimension beyond the physical nature, then we use the much maligned and corrupted word called spirituality. Spiritual means not looking up or looking down. Spiritual means your experience of life has transcended the limitations of being physical. Something more than physical is happening to you. This means you are on the spiritual process. So this longing is there in every human being. So essentially what you do in your life, our activity is not about us. Activity is about the world that we live in. Today you are here in twenty-first century. So you guys are in IIT. Suppose you were here five thousand years ago, where would you be? Huh? No, no. You know, five thousand years ago they were talking Mahabharat Ramayan. So you would be in one of those armies trying to shoot an arrow.  You would try to learn to fight with somebody in a sword or something else of the day. I'm saying your mind, your application, your fulfillment in activity would be all that type of activity relevant to the times. Our activity is always about the times in which we exist. It's not about us really. What times do we exist, what is most needed right now, that's what we do. But how to be is the question. If it comes to how to be, there's only one way to be that somewhere in every human being there is a longing to expand beyond physical limitations. This is happening in four different ways. If it finds a very basic physical expression, we call this sexuality. You're trying to expand the boundaries of who you are. What you are not, you're trying to include as yourself. This is what sexuality is. If it finds an emotional expression, we call this love. Once again, something that is not you, you're trying to make it a part of you. If it finds a mental expression, it gets labeled as ambition, greed, conquest or simply shopping. If it finds a conscious expression, then we call it yoga. Yoga means not twisting your body or turning your body, yoga means union. In some way, consciously you learned how to obliterate the boundaries of your individual nature. Now your ability to experience yourself beyond your physical existence has become a living reality for you. This is everybody's longing, but it finds constipated expression. Instead of that, if you find a conscious expression, life will be very, very different.


Are you kidding me? I forgot to get food. Welcome to the supermarket, sir. Can I help you find anything? I'm all set, thank you. Excuse me, um, why does it say that the soup's out of stock? I'm so sorry, we're actually waiting on another shipment. Okay, thank you. Of course.  What am I supposed to do? I've never really felt this way before. It's... strange. Waking up every morning and having a bowl of soup. That gave my life meaning. Now what am I supposed to do? The one thing I enjoyed no longer can satisfy the void inside my heart. I... I can't go on.


My name is Soraya Bilbao. I'm a graduate from Fairfield University. Right now I'm currently an ESL teacher at Danbury High School. Prior to joining the P-Score, I had never considered becoming a teacher. They placed me in an outer island in South Pacific. Once I was in the classroom, I fell in love with it. I just really wanted to work with students who are coming from other cultures and being able to provide them both the knowledge as much as I can and the support to integrate and get to know the new culture in which they're in. Just seeing all the potential that they have in them, they want to succeed, they want to go to college. It's just the language barrier, so that's the challenge. You're learning the language, you're having to adapt in your culture, and you have to learn the academic English that you need in order to succeed at school. It's not just talking about how you teach but actually applying that knowledge in the classroom. And I feel that Fairfield University really prepared me for that. My own personal experience, they provide the theoretical foundation for you to understand the why you're doing something, and then they also give you the opportunity to apply that knowledge in a classroom. All my professors have been individuals who I consider to be experts in their field. They want you to succeed. They also want to challenge you and you should be the best. Good, you've been practicing very nice. The need is high. We're constantly looking for quality ESL teachers.  Sometimes they're going through culture shock. It's helping them integrate into the community and they want to do that. They get excited about that. Every day I wake up and I'm excited to be an ESL teacher. I look forward to seeing my students. I felt very confident coming out of the program. I very much enjoyed being in the classroom with them.