Shall we get started, folks? Maybe we could go around and introduce our cells. Start with the. Toby Talbot, I'm the Highway Operations Manager. John Brevan, I'm on the select board. Denise Wheeler, select board. Cliff Himmons, select board. Jerome Nikani, Orca Media. Katie Lynn Karnes, recording secretary. Hankie Bowen. Matt Gardner-Morris. Stu Johnson of the Orca Works. Rick Keane, Steven Sparrow. Chris Hulkin. Carolyn Morton. Thanks for coming, everybody, for you to turn out for a Monday night, and it's not a real select one. My husband's coming, but he's smoking his pipe on the way. Oh, OK. Toby, so no Rose and Sharon today? No, Sharon had a prior commitment, and Rose was under the weather. So we'll get started. It's being recorded, and they said they would watch the recording. Or we have a really good minute's take or two, so. So I'm going to ask, just because this is what we have to do every meeting, is there any public comment for items not on the agenda? All right. Addition or changes to the agenda? All right, so let's get started. We did do a brief meeting on February 11, I think it was. Maybe it was March 11. I brought the minutes. February 11. And we took some input from neighbors, and it was a really well-respectful, well-done meeting. So I think everybody who was there for that, and I'd like to try to keep it that way. There were some ideas that emerged from that meeting, which we're keeping a list of. So I thought maybe we'd go around the room and just get some feedback, or get your thoughts, try to keep it somewhat brief. You want to start, Carolyn? Sure. I don't know how many of you were at town meeting, but maybe most of you know that I proposed a motion that failed to raise a pen. Oh, your pen. It raised the general budget, approximately $50,000, with the idea that that money would be earmarked for the road budget, road maintenance budget. And although the motion failed, it did, I think, generate a fair amount of pretty good dialogue, I thought. Yeah, it was good. You know, there were different viewpoints obviously, but everybody spoke respectfully. And nobody went off the rails. And it went on for a good long while, maybe an hour. So I feel that despite the failing of the motion, that it was a good start to kickstart a discussion. And in my view, the discussion, the thing I wanted to see happen was for people to have a chance to talk about the road and find out, ask questions, and get the questions answered from the horse's mouth. So the road pressure is not here? No, but Toby's here. So in my view, this would be an opportunity for people to say what their concerns are and to talk about possible solutions to problems that I think the first step is to sort of identify what are the problems, if any. There are problems in my mind, but either in anybody else's. Right. And that's what we're keeping track of, kind of what people see as the problems and what people might offer to them for helpful suggestions that we can investigate. So maybe it'd be useful to sort of go around and see if people here think there are problems. Yeah, well, I think that's what we're starting out with. So I can tell you what my particular concerns are. And they are divided into two parts. And one is the back roads, and one is the county road. Now, as a long time, I've been in Middle Corner 33 years. My husband and I, Stuart, have lived on Apple Hill Road for 33 years. So I'm intimately acquainted with the county road in winter. I've had my numerous adventures on the county road over the decades, and the back roads. So I feel like I can speak with a certain, what would be the word? Authority. Not authority, just experience. Just that I've been looking at it for a long, long time. And so there are certain things that I have sort of grappled with over the years. They're not really new things. And I know that sometimes this conversation has been framed around climate change and the new conditions. And though I do feel that that's a part of it, for sure. And I think it will continue to be a part of it. Some of my concerns predate climate change. And I'll give you an example. And other people might have a different experience. But my experience with the county road over the decades is Calis had a certain way of managing the county road. And when you crossed the line into East Montpelier, it was clear that East Montpelier had a different strategy for dealing with their part of the road. And I think it's common knowledge. And I remember back in the old days talking to Eva about it. And she would cut me off mid-sentence and say, Calis does not have a clear roads policy. And I got the message, and Eva was very good with that kind of. Well, I think most of the state has that policy. Yes, I've read that subsequently on other roads, on other websites of other. So the idea was sort of like, get over it. This is Calis. This is the way it is. Deal with it. Don't complain. The road commissioner is a saint. And you're kind of obnoxious. And if you don't like the way things are, move back to where you came from. Now, I'm exaggerating a little bit. But that was sort of what kept me from ever saying anything for 33 years.  The county road had been kind of a disaster. So I decided I couldn't deal with it. And I would have to go to town. So I went all that roads. And it was icy. Super icy. It wasn't like during a storm. It was after a storm. County roads. County roads I see are the best. County roads was so bad that I had driven home. With ice or slush. Yeah, it was like that frozen, half frozen, slushy, greasy, horribleness that we all know very well. And so this was what prompted me to sort of put my initial post on Front Forge Forum with last year, which I haven't really been back on there like this since. And I took an alternative route to town, which was back roads down through Atomance. And some people might not believe this, but I made a particular note of it. Like there was virtually no sand on the back roads. And they were icy, too. Now I just went very slowly. But my plan, my sort of backup plan for avoiding the county road was somewhat equivalent in its hazards, in other words, especially that hill coming into Atomance, coming out of Atomance. And at that point, I was like, what do I do? I need to get to town. And is this the way it has to be? I've had enough experiences of that. And so that's what sort of prompted me. And again, I tried to connect. Can I just get some clarification as I'm working with you mentally? So you said the hill coming out of Atomance. You mean the hill crossing the co-op as you're going out of Atomance?  That whole section of that hill. Well, like all of it, actually. I mean, it's that thing of like you look at the road and you go, is there sand on it? I think I see a couple of dark spots. I mean, I have studded snows. And I go slowly. You know, like I'm all about control and safety. And well, so it's backing up. So my concerns have to do with the back roads, but they also have to do with the county road. And I don't know, I sort of feel like maybe people that don't deal with the county road every day, if you don't live on this side of town and it's not a road you're familiar with, highly back me up here. We live in Maple Corner. That's our lifeline to town. I took that road for 33 years and worked for the state every day. Yeah, so you know. You get up and you go, you know. It's a main thoroughfare. It's a main thoroughfare. For people coming from Hardwick, you know, and yeah.  I come home, coming home at 9.30 at night. And it's always like, I wonder how it's going to be.  It's usually reasonable. And then I, it's like almost reflex now. I slow down before I hit that callous line because I know things are going to probably change. So, you know, I guess my concern is, is this the way, what's happening there? And why is it so different? And are there ways to make the county road safer? You know, maybe there aren't. I'm sort of asking the question, is there anything? Is this how it has to be?  There are times when I think, if you had just clouded it and thrown a little sand down, I can handle that. I actually love driving on a sanded snowy road. Like, that's, I consider that one of the best driving opportunities ever. But it seems like a lot of time, salt is applied, it isn't really cleared, and then you're dealing with something that's way worse than the original snow. Do you know what I'm saying? And it's like, are we just creating, are we just making it worse? You know, and this is a question I'm making. Maybe I don't understand, but I know other people have had that question. So to interject, I live on a back road. And in the wintertime, I would never take paved roads if I can avoid them, because the snow-covered roads are so much better. Great traction. Except for this weird winter where it rains every other day. This is a weird one, but. You know, we've all seen a lot of icy roads in our day. Is it just this winter? Icey roads happen. Right, but this is a particularly bad one. I will grant you that. This one has been a winter to remember. But my concerns, and I just want to make a clear point, that my concerns did not start with this winter. They sort of accumulated. They've sort of reached a tipping point, I suppose. And you know, there's other issues. There's the speed issue on the county road. Many times, I'm sure you've all had this happen. You're on the county road, road conditions are bad, and you're going 30. Somebody is behind you on your tail, making it worse. And then it's like that calculation. Is it safe to pull over? Yeah, I don't know that there's a lot we can do about it. No, and I know. I know, and I'm not saying that's a solvable problem, because I understand the complexities of enforcing. But just in casual conversations, I've had conversations with neighbors, but what if we put up one of those solar signs that said, stream weather, slow down. I mean, they actually work. Yeah, they do work, despite yourself. Yeah, we've been trying to get them in East Callas Village for a while now, so. I mean, there's an idea of that worth exploring. So these are the kinds of things that I would like to talk about. The back roads, the sanding issue, and you know, the scarcity of sand that I've witnessed with respect to other towns around us. And I've asked myself that question. Are we really low on sand? We can't afford sand. What's the deal? Like, could we be sanding a little more? Some people say sand doesn't make any difference, you know. I think it all depends on the conditions, whether that's the difference, as we have been learning more this year. Yeah, and I'm sure, I know this is a complicated issue, and I'm interested in learning, too. I don't know everything. I've learned a lot just talking to Al. But my goal, my goal isn't to place blame, or to, you know, be a complaining person in Calis. My goal is to... Identify the problem. Identify the solution. See if there's a problem, and if people think there is one, is there anything we can do about it? So that's on my mind. Very good, thank you so much. Ready? Similar thoughts to Caroline lived here since about 93, and always notice that in East Montpelier, the roads seem significantly better, going to work or coming home. And for years, it was just like, okay, this is just the way it is. And then Caroline posted something a year ago, and there's just been more conversation about it, you know, with people in the store, and you know, there's just now, there's increased chatter about it, and so I'm just hearing more people say, well, I noticed the roads better in Worcester. I know, you know, when you get the Worcester line, I noticed the roads better when you get to the Woodbury line or the Marshfield line. So I'm just curious about why that's so, and if we do have more roads, like what do we do about that? So yes, climate change is a factor. Yes, we've had a lot of ice this year, more than other years, but I agree that it is always, I would love the roads to be more like East Montpelier. I'm speaking on the county road. But in general, just the bus routes, and I was here at the last meeting, and I learned a lot in terms of, you know, Alfie talking about how they start plowing around four or five in the morning. It's earlier, depends.  That explains so much to me why, when the buses are out in the morning and most people are going to work, the roads aren't great at a very, very crucial time, you know, eight and nine in the morning. So that seems like, okay, let's really target this. And I know Rose talked about, you know, had an idea about having people come out at different times, staggering the route. And I was also just fascinating to hear that they don't, they moved away from using sand on the county road because of windshields getting injured. Right. I didn't know that we ever used sand on the county road. I'm familiar with that. Oh, okay. Yeah, I didn't know that. And also we learned that the bus. Maybe 50 years ago. Okay, okay. And we also learned at that same meeting, I think it came up about the bus companies not having tires that are good tires to have on the school buses for these roads. They don't have, remember, we talked about that. So that's something that we're going to follow up with the school board. So just so you know, we are going to follow up on that piece of it. Right. So I just think that it's great that we're all brainstorming. I'm also not in a position of pointing blame at all. I think people work really hard. I just think it's time to figure out how to have better roads, mainly in the wintertime. And I've heard some people say, well, people who complain about the roads want the roads just to be like they are in Connecticut. And I just don't think that's true. Yeah, I feel that's a real cheap shot. Like I'm from Connecticut. I live in Connecticut. I'm so happy to be here. Okay, cheers. I'm also from Connecticut and I would never want to live in Connecticut. I love being in Vermont. So I don't expect, you know, it's totally different weather over there. Yeah. They're in the banana belt, right? Yeah. Yeah. So thanks for having these meetings. Yep. And we're going to do two more just so folks know how to pass the time. Is that it? Yeah. Okay. Chris? My main concern, because I work second shift, I drive the roads at night coming home. I drive the middle of the night. At multiple times, I've encountered ice. And when I read the road plan and it tells me they're not even going out at night, regardless of what the roads are like. That concerns me. To me, that's irresponsible. And what, can you tell me approximately what time you're talking about? Is it? Roughly midnight. That's when you return? That's when I'm coming home. And there've been multiple times when I barely make it home, come in so ways. And I've even considered parking at the school and walking home, thinking that I'm going to go off the road. And I've always drive. So that's basically my main concern. Your main concern is that there's not anything done between I think our operations. Yeah, because the plan predetermines that we're not going out at night. Well, I have to say, if there's some extreme event, weather event, they will go out. But if they don't necessarily know, like your schedule, for instance, so that is something we're making a note of. About looking at the hours of operation. Steve? Yeah, well, we've got a couple of concerns. One is lack of sand, period. Need more sand. And you're former East Montpelier. I am. I know that for a fact that you people have the...  The select board.  Thank you. I don't like it when people say you do. I'm sorry. The select board has the authority to move money around, to buy sand, so I don't think that's an issue. The other thing is, you expect bad roads when it's storming. And yeah, they come along, they pile the roads, and they put a little sand down. But it should be followed up within a day or two, because that sand gets beaten down into the ice. And there's been more and more occasion that there's been glare ice. I'm talking lightning rain. You talking lightning ice? Two or three, three, or maybe four different spots. There was glare ice. I bet you couldn't have stood up on it. And that went on for four or five days. So I think a follow-up, somebody should be going around, keeping track of it. And when it needs sand, I mean, if the sand's not gonna stay on the roads, maybe you'll have to go a little salt with it. Yeah, I don't know what the idea is about putting salt on dirt roads. I'm not sure how that works. And then you've got also, when you do that, you put sand salt on the dirt roads, and then you get to run off into the ditches, and then it goes into the stream. So there's all that piece of it, too, that people don't necessarily always think about, but we're made aware of that all the time for they and to do it every time. But I'm saying that it's icy like that. Did they do that in East Montpelier? I believe they do. You might have to put a little salt in with the sand. Okay. So that's just to make it rough. Call it a hot load. Say what? Call it a hot load. Hot load? Yeah, hot load, yeah. Well, sometimes they add salt to sand to keep it from freezing to dry. And that's called a hot load? Crude, yeah, vernacular, whatever you want to call it. At the last meeting, I think the issue was brought up about the sand, that it wasn't so much purchasing it, it was storing it. Right, and we talked about making it a lot better than we had to put the sand. Well, we also talked about it the last meeting about one of the ideas came up about having another sandpile available in another part of town or maybe asking Worcester so that the guys don't have to, when they're out plowing and they have to drive all the way back to the town garage, that takes a lot of time because it's so, the distance is so great. But we're getting off track, I wanted to give everybody an opportunity to speak. Steve? Oh, you're done? Okay, Stuart? I think it's all been said. Okay, I'm gonna skip over Stuart right now. Matt? So I live on County Road and I think it's generally true that it's better than Eastmont Pier, but it also depends on when you hit it. I've been on Calis Roads when it was better and you hit the Eastmont Pier line. It's been a while since they plowed. So it just depends on when you hit it and that kind of thing. And also I don't like to see a lot of salt because like you just mentioned, the runoff. We also up on Meadow Road and our brook in the springtime it runs off and there's just sand pouring down into the brook and filling the brook up. We have to dig out our culverts all the time. Yeah. There's just a lot of dirt. Adding more dirt is gonna have consequences. I think it's been the extreme cold weather that we've had. We've had weeks of where it's been below zero and stuff and nothing's gonna work on that. Salt doesn't work on that. I think salt doesn't work if it's below 20 below. I think it's like 22. 22. Yeah, so I mean we've had, you know, the temperatures have been below that. And of course the roads are colder probably than the air, so. And I know at town meeting you mentioned people speeding. I'm always amazed. These pickup trucks, which I don't have much weight in the back and they go fluffy by me and it's just like I can't believe it. But I don't know, I don't know. People go fast in these small periods. Some of it though is also the amount of traffic. You know, the roads are better where they get a lot of cars going over it and tends to blow the snow off and stuff. These small periods and more people are more people are commuting on those roads. Those cars come through these small periods.     So some of us, not even the plowmen, it's just the amount of traffic and when the car is going over it. I never thought of that. You know, it's a complicated issue and I don't want to belittle people's concerns.  You know, I think a lot of salt and sand to our roads is not always that beneficial. Is that it, Matt? Yep, that's it. Okay. I said a couple of emails because the school bus goes on our road, has to come down the deep hill and then has to go in the little gully, back up the hill. Where do you live? Five straight. I live at the bottom of... That's great. Well, no, I'm on Bliss Road, but I'm below the Unidilla Theater, right at the bottom. And the thing is when I leave, Julie leaves at six, I leave at six. Remember who's Julie? My daughter. Just at the end of the driveway.  There's been a couple of times when we've seen the sand truck go by and it's not put in sand out. Probably the dirt is stuck inside or something's not working right or the guy, and I don't know those three new guys. And the little one I think that's on our road is newer than anybody else. And I don't think he knows how to turn the sand wrong correctly. Now, I've lived on Bliss Road for 54 years. I learned how to put chains on at the bottom of the beast hill, in the village, to get home every night. Then I went to four wheel drives with studs and I used those for years. Then I went, we've gone to have a plow with a sander in the back of the truck. And this last storm that we had when it was drifting and blowing and that road was totally plugged going up the hill.  Literally dig it out.  And they just don't know that when you're on a hill like that, you gotta go to the bottom first and get a run on it. Nope, they pull out into the road and they get stuck. And so I haven't had, I've been a little bit pissed off because of course, we're in the construction business. I know how to look at a truck and say, you're not doing your job. The second thing, if we're on the road that is supposed to be where a bus is coming, 15 minutes after I leave the door yard, it should be ready to go for that bus. The buses don't stop three times, three different years on the hill going up to three hours. About what time is that? What? Do you know about what time that is? The bus goes by a quarter or seven. I leave at 6.30. If I'm five minutes late, I meet the bus on the word's corner and hit through the village. So I was trying to figure out the best way to go and I have my little four wheel drive car. The big truck's coming back out this next year and I've been going towards Woodbury because once I get to the callous line, the Woodbury line, Woodbury's already plowed and they're already seeing it because I can hear them on the scanner that they're already out there at four o'clock in the morning plow. Our guys are not seeing them and then when our guy comes, he comes from Strenahan's direction or Woodbury's direction down past our house, gets to the three corners and he goes up actually's hill and does that first. Then he comes back down. So now the bus is coming down over the other hill. It's not plowed, it's not ready to roll. And this last time, it's down for the thing that day that we had the drifting. It wasn't drifted all the way to the village. It was drifting on that top of the hill coming down over towards our house and it was blocked right across the whole road. And if that bus had come over the hill, it would have been like Donnie was stuck. And Donnie has a four wheel drive and everything.  He stands up. And who's Donnie? My grandson, Donnie Woodringham. So he's sanded the town road three times and they've plowed the road twice and they've dug it out with this backhoe. So Gene came to the conclusion as long as we're gonna live there until we die, he's going to keep the backhoe. It's not going anywhere because he's going to use it to dig us out. But you know, this is the type of thing. And the reason I get pissed as well as I do is because I know that the school bus is coming over the hill and it's got a lot of kids in it because it's coming all the way up the backway on East Hill, come around Loosers Road and then come up to our place. For some reason, it doesn't go down to East Hill anymore. So, and I don't know that we have any kids beyond this, but I'm gonna find out. But I mean, as far as the other roads, yes, they're sandy, they're salted sometimes, but there are a lot of times this year where they're icy on the edges.  And that's how. Okay, thanks, Peg, Rick. I mean, it's interesting in this whole debate. I mean, I, you know, what I've been observing over the past 30 years or so, and I'm curious to see what Stu says. He was road foreman in Cornwall for a long time. Really good. You know, I've seen kind of the extreme cold temperatures where you actually get good traction and snow, you know, getting less and less and we're having more and more of this transition weather, which makes it really hard for driving and it makes it really hard for the road crews, as I'm sure it's gonna be. Because then you've got to be out there more frequently and we're kind of relentlessly because at winter like this, we've been getting a lot of small storms. So, you know, in places like the County Road, in my experience, I'd be really curious to see what Stu says because you remember we did, we were experimenting with that Madison where some of the catalyzed treated liquid brines because you don't use, when you use a solid like salt and sand, you get a lot of bounce and you plow it off and those liquids, you boom down. Right, we use magic salt on the County Road now. Do you leave the liquid for them? Yeah. Because you do. So that- No, it's not liquid. I thought I said it was- No, the liquid is added to the salt and it's a coating. Yeah, I'm sorry, yeah, I'm sorry. No, I understand. You're talking about a liquid brine, not a salt. Right, to do, well those, you can pre-treat a few days in advance and they hold longer than some of your without, so that gives you more working time, but- So the magic salt actually makes the salt a little stickier because it is kind of a glue. A gluey thing that you add to the salt, so it does keep some of that scatter in control. Controls it, yeah. Yeah, a little bit. That helps with the volume you're putting down with the liquids is significantly less than with the solids, so it helps with your water quality issues. What is the number they used to get?  But it's, the question is here, I mean one of the things we were seeing is that roads are staying wet and unstable a lot longer than they used to some years ago.  I mean, this is a question, Toby, you know how many hours. I heard there's 900 hours of overtime already this winter.  So are we staffing properly or are we being creative? I mean, I liked what they were doing with the part hiring, the three part time people to assist to break ships. And this is that bigger picture, like you were saying, you're really, your idea was a good one raising money. The question was, I think it was a little premature, figure out what the problem is first and then raise the money to address it. But I'd be really interested in hearing what you have to say about that plowing load, because I know, you know, when you go winters like this, instead of relentless, it exhausts people. So, you know, you can only drive your crew so hard. Right, so Rick, to get back to your question, the road crew through the end of February, the regular road crew has worked 904 hours and we've had more since then. Over, over time. Right, and the three part time folks have worked 237 hours. So, all together this year, so far through the end of February, there's been an additional 11,415 hours. More than 100. I know this is scary numbers, yeah. Yeah. And you spread over the 900 over the four people. Right. I mean, that's so. 1141. That just begs the question. We just kind of to re-examine, you know, do we have the right resources available, the manpower? And then, the flip of that, are we flexible enough? All these issues with the school buses really concerns me, I'm on the school board. But I also know, you know, some roads, you can treat them every half hour and they're gonna be bad within five minutes of treating them. And so, maybe we have to train, you know, be creative with our movement patterns on these roads if they're during events, where we've got continuing deteriorated conditions. Maybe we should, you know, that's something school boards can work on. You know, redesigning school routes so that they get pulled back during events. I don't know that, but there probably gonna be a lot of little solutions for this problem. But I know that icing is particularly bad in the transitional times. This isn't so much the extreme cold times. It's the transitional temperatures where you get freeze thoughts. And it's, you know, I used to, I commuted to Middlebury for seven years from countless with a two wheel drive over the up gap. And I would leave here at five in the morning. And then I would be driving back after town meetings from, you know, with select boards and planning commissions. I had 21 towns I was working with and I would be driving back at 10.30 at night. And the roads were everywhere.  And it gets, I don't think we can ever, you know, drive roads practice. Policies aren't practical at all. You can't do them. Like I was with, just to do roadway design with the state and you can't do it in this state. It's not a possibility that maybe it's real in North Carolina. But I did a place like this. It's hard even. You know, when you're in an event, the conditions change by the minute. So it's. It's one of the main power thing.  We have four trucks. There's four routes, you know, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest. Essentially sort of quadrants in town.  And probably are on the road by 3.30 to four o'clock in the morning, depending on the condition of the snow star. If they're plowing and sanding both ways. So sometimes on a light snow, they'll only plow one direction on a road because they don't need to move all the snow. But when they go out and have to plow both sides in sand, it's five to six hours per, per route. How many miles will be? The town has 73 miles, I believe, all together. I've got a chart here that I'll share with 7307 miles. We have the most of any of the surrounding. So we can sort of pass that around so people can take a look at what. So that's what we deal with. We just say it takes six hours? Five to six hours. Five to six. So essentially they work for six hours. They take a break and immediately, probably an hour or two later, they're going back out because they've gotta get the roads open again for the school buses if the snowstorm is continuing. So essentially they're doing 12 hours of plowing plus an hour or two in the shop to fix things together. So essentially at the end from four o'clock in the morning till four or five in the afternoon or six, depending on when they get their second pass around, depending on what they do, they're done. There's nothing left in those guys. They can't go back out in a truck. They need a six hour break. I mean that's the rule of thumb is a six hour break from that kind of time on the road. That's pretty much a standard, over the road trucker standard. Instead you gotta have a six hour break. So the manpower is not available from my road crew in the middle of the night. The only way we could have anybody doing night work would be have a second overnight crew that we would pay for to be on call to come in when there's a storm during the winter. So we literally have to have four more people. Do any other towns have that? No, I thought I would wear a, most towns have a policy that says we don't plow after nine o'clock and we don't start before three. And I've distributed that to the select board there's probably seminary policies like that around us in all these rural communities that essentially have the same recognition is that there's just not manpower enough to do that. And they have a town policy that says after nine o'clock the roads are not maintained. Yeah, I just want to make sure I give Jim, when Rick's done I want to give Jim over here no chance to. Very good, I have this, everything I, it's just my observation. So let's come out, Jim. Hi, I'm Jim, I'm local plumber. I probably travel about a thousand miles a month, I mean a lot on all these roads. I have a weighted truck, I have no problem, I'm no fence, I'm sorry, you guys might yell at me. I have no problem with the roads. I go really slow, that's what I do. I pull a lot of people out, I read it, I mean a lot. You say you travel a thousand miles a day. No, a month, a month. I mean, I travel a lot. I have noticed this year that they, I really think they need to put more sand on.  I mean, I think that is the bummer I thought this year was the first year I've seen it in 20 years, that's like. The one thing I thought was I get kind of bummed everybody, but it's the only way people can do it is front porch form. That's the main reason I was here. So I think what you should set up is everything seems hunky dory. If you were a homeowner and you have a problem, there needs to be something, my idea was, I don't know if you can, I know you call the town garage. They're probably out on the road. Yes, so is there any way to call, like when these people get in, like at least nine, and then they have a radio, they can tell, hey, on blah, blah, blah road is a tree down, or this or that. They do do that. They do do that. So I don't think people should be doing front porch form or that doesn't make any sense to me. It's like, you need to call the town garage with someone, so at least they know. I mean, that's the only reason I'm here. I think there needs to be a better communication or somehow you can. Well, people often say things on front porch form if they wouldn't do somebody's. Yeah, but I mean, I think this road is really icy.  I think we need a lot more input. I know I get calls at home on. Yeah, but I think there needs to be a way to do it. Weekends, holidays. But there needs to be like a phone bank type. I don't know how to do it, I'm not a. Yeah, well, and I've called Alfred. I can usually, I always get a hold of him. I called him on a Sunday evening and somebody called me. He went right out and took care of it. Oh yeah, exactly. So if he doesn't have a phone, doing that. I mean, is there any, I mean, because everybody has his QA radios right in their truck, right? Right. Now, who else has those? There's a radio here at the town office. Town office, yeah. I don't have one and I don't think I want one. So it's just the town office and the town office. And then you have one, totally right? I have one as well, too. Okay. So you can always usually get a hold of one of us. Yeah. And we can get a hold of. You know, this is who you called. Yeah. Well, I think we've said, you know, you should call Alfred. But I understand, you know, if it's during the day and they're out and plowing, he's not gonna get the message for three or four hours later. So I've had people call me, I'll call the town office and they'll radio Alfred. You know, I mean, it's kind of a long way around, but it works. We just, there are way, you know, we've got to be pretty creative about this because we can't double our crew sizes or, you know, we won't be able to afford that.  Right, I can't even find qualified guys to hire to do the job 40 hours a week or 100 hours a week when they do it.  I'm lucky that I have three.  Yeah, at certain times. I'll have five trucks on the road because we do have a spare truck. And so, you know, when it's needed or when I need a greater than three trucks, I have people that are available right now. That's the luxury that's very few and far between. The 200, there's 200 hours this winter of that spare person with the ability to go out on the road without supervision. And there's a liability issue with insurance.  Right, so there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of ideas we can throw around, but I wanted to give Stu after hearing everything. This is Stu Johnson. He works for V-Trans Vermont Local Roads. And I think you were a road commissioner in. Carl Mock. Carl Mock, you said, right? Yeah, I was just talking about the qualification. Well, I don't know enough background on a lot of this stuff to come up with any solutions. I would say that several things that you're talking about, five or six hour trips, and I'd rather extreme, I would say. You mean a road? Yeah. I would say typically closer to four as an average. In other towns, you mean? Yeah, and of course, obviously, but it's a division of how many men do you have and how many miles do you have? Right. And how many trucks do you have and how many... And what kind of routes do you have to... And what kind of roads or where are they?  But it sounds like for the land or something that there's, you don't have enough more miles of road, more miles of, yeah. Right, then they have to go all the way back to the town garage to load up again. The other idea, we did that for a few years down our way because it was a lot easier for Charm to come to our garage and get sand, and then on a sunny day or a nice day, they would return it or they'd bring it and just fall whatever they were putting sand out or whatever, but we had that kind of behavior so the towns wouldn't have to travel, you know, eight miles empty to get back to where they ran out. So we're kept them from running out. So it was a huge boom to Charm when we stuck that arrangement.  As far as the school bus routes, obviously that is really a primary function of what drives the road crews and, you know, I don't, without knowing the bus routes and the times and, you know, but if you've got guys that are out there five, six hours away from their turn around, you know, where they were first, you know, so you start on the school bus roads or you start, you know. So the routes change yearly when the bus routes change. So we get the bus from strong school. We understand what roads they're traveling and we adjust whatever, you know, for that window of when the bus is gonna be there. Now, if it's not dead on, as Peg has noticed, that's something we can change. We just need to have some, you know, some information about it.  Nobody goes out with our chains. Nobody runs their chains. The chains are all under lock. No problem with that. The buses aren't changed. Right. And that's what we've discovered was a problem. The buses weren't changed. They didn't have, you know, or front. So, but then we, but then the road crew and us take the heat for that. So we are, we are gonna work on that issue. Just so you know. So, you know, not to go down the path of that 46 force consolidation, but there has been pressure for, this is not a recent issue. There's been pressure on schools from the state to force schools to save money and buy tax payers too. And to farm out and consolidate transportation between towns within a multiple districts within a supervisory union. So a lot of towns and supervisory unions gave up their, their own school buses and have contracted that out. That's what we did. So if you're a bus company that's trying, and I haven't confirmed or confirmed it with them about this, but it seems pretty obvious to me, if you can have one set of tires that gets you around the year, you can save a lot of money. Winter tires go on the internet by definition or softer and stickier and wear out quicker. But you need soft and sticky for ice.  If you have no traction in your front wheels, whether or not your foot's on a brake pedal is a problem. We had a little bus incident. I'm calling it an incident because it was like less than a five mile an hour collision. But the bus, he took his, the bus was coming down Lightning Ridge Road on a van and he couldn't even steer. It was zero traction and Alfred had just gone through with the file with the sander. The ice was so hard that the sand just rolled off and I actually was there. So I can confirm that. But I then looked at the bus tires and like I said at town meeting, those are tires you would put on a tractor trailer. If you're going coast to coast and you run 80,000 miles on a set of tires, wrong tires for the winter in Vermont and wrong tires for a bus in particular. So we need, the select board is planning to meet with their school board, our local school board, but I think we need to meet with the supervisor union school board as well and have a conversation about the next contract with the bus company. And if you don't set standards and set requirements in terms of what they need to equip their buses we're gonna line up with the situation next year. I expect that if we require snows and studded snows, they're gonna up the charge to the supervisor union substantially, but that's the trade, right? This is how you make money, maybe your private company. I have another question for this gentleman. You mean, Stu? All right, I don't know that he was done.  Main roads, not county roads. Route 14, route 12, any of the main roads. Okay, East County's village has got holes big enough to break your tires and your rims. Don has ended up with five cars in his door yard at the end because they lost two sets of rims and tires on one side and the holes are getting bigger in the village. Is that something that the select one should be pushing you guys to do something about fixing? I'll push maybe because I'm not fixing models. I think it's pretty widespread statewide this year. It is, but it's a huge problem in the first year. But I know that 14 is, because my sidekick comes down from hard work every day. Yeah. So, now what you should feel, when you've got a problem like that, even though part of it's housing college district, I'll say guns for district seven. Oh, I know who they are. Yeah. I'll write them a letter. Yeah, well, I thought they were on a lot too. Well, I drive from here, from my house, tomorrow it's called Hyde Park every day. Yeah. And they've got holes they're starting to fill in with something. But East Hallow's village, I mean, all the way there's about a mile and a half up above the village and into the village. Now you're getting these deep holes and people don't realize they're there. Right. Hole catching is a, it's one of those things that it's temporary. The best. It's a frustration for the guys to be out there throwing the stuff in the holes. That's not cheap.  Two days it'll be gone. You know, but there are options there that I certainly recommend for the communities that they're doing with pothole patching that they spend extra money and try a better product. There's no way the state can do that. So what are you hearing across the state from other towns? Are we unique? Is our other towns faced with the same kind of issues with the time that people go out plowing? I mean, I know we have more back roads than our surrounding areas. I mean, it's always going to be a bad situation. I mean, one of the points that I was going to make, I don't know if this is the case or whatever, but all it takes is a windshield wiper blade to fall off a truck. And that checks out the commission. If you don't have the right arm or whatever the motor gives out in a wiper shot, then you're done. That's the case. Can you use it? It's a backup truck, if we have any. Well, once I've seen the whole towns lose all their trucks, we hear it on the radio. Who's got a spare truck? An equipment was down. We've lent trucks to other towns, Worcester and East Montpelier this winter. But it's all pleasant. Or it could slow somebody down. It's a big advantage to run in chains 24-7 because the guy doesn't think he's going to get away with it and finds a bad spot, and then he's got to stop the chains on out in the loading lots. We have a couple of locations where, even with chains, it's touch and go up the hill. So some of it is the territory that we have to found, the condition of the road. See, those are things I don't understand. Long Meadow Hill, I mean, my guys have had to back down that hill constantly by not being able to get up to hill. So that's just the conditions of the territory of the town of Cowles. The other thing that I will mention is, so when I first started working with the road crew, I rode with everybody on the route to see what they had to deal with, what was going on. I went out in a wizard with Sid Griggs, and we started here at the town office and did the northeast corner. By the time we came back, there was a foot of snow on the side of the road that we had plowed. So the problem is that there's always a timing issue. If you go to work five minutes after the plow goes by, the road looks great. If you go to work three hours after the plow goes by, you say, where are they? Where have they been? And that has nothing to do with the road crew or what we plan or how we do it. It has to do with the timing of storms. And there's really nothing we have to control that. And if I've gone around once and I come back and the other side of the road has a foot of snow, I'm going to the shop, I'm going to turn around and come back out immediately. But there's still that four to five hour period of time in the transition of a storm that we have no control over. And there's a lot of times this past winter where that's been the case. If you have wind, you've got 20 minutes. And again, when you have wind and then plug up a road, you need the loader to get it done. So essentially, once we realize the road is plugged, the loader comes up and takes care of it. But again, it's all a timing issue. It's not immediately, as soon as that road is plugged, it's not like we're right there to clean it up. We have to determine, somebody has to say, hey, it's plugged. Or we have to drive around later and say, well, I know up on the top of Max Grey Road, it's going to be plugged. I gotta go take a look. And it's a timing issue. So I can't coordinate all of my work with your time. Because when you need to go to work and it doesn't match my plow route, or it doesn't match my manpower, it's going to be an issue that's just not solvable at that point. Just is the reality of how we deal with it. I don't control Mother Nature.  And don't start at nine because I don't have anybody to take care of the roads. We're at that limit. And so we all have to realize that there are conditions that we can't deal with, that we just can't solve. Do you have any suggestions on, is there any way to do some things differently on the County Road? So again, so the County Road is done by Alfie in a one ton truck. He carries salt and essentially his route starts in East Calis and he does the Marshfield Road because that's a steep winding road and that's pavement that needs to be cleared off. So that's his first pass. Then he does some other roads, again, school bus routes on his way over to this side of town. He probably gets to the County Road at four thirty to five in the morning to do his first pass and put salt down. That gives it time to work. It doesn't work immediately. So if you plow it off and you put salt down, the road's not open right away. So he's sort of trying to balance all of the roads that need salt and clearing.  So again, it's a question of, okay, well, if you go to work at six, the road might be great.  How many miles of pavement are there? The County Road is three, and then there's Marshfield Road, which is probably a mile and a half, and then there's another spur. Not a lot, five miles maybe of pavement. Most of ours is back roads, it's seventy-one point, seventy-three. It says class two is eighteen point four five. Well, that's not paper, that's class two. Yeah. So again, it's like, okay, so if 90% of people in Maple Corner want to go to work at eight o'clock, we can change the route so that we take care of that, but we don't know when you go. And what is really the high point of what we do in our planning for timing is the bus routes. That's what they pay attention to. That's what changes the pattern is the bus route.  So somebody got really used to having the road clear at seven. And this year they called me and said, Jesus, how come you guys never come by early anymore? And it's because I'm back to one guy on that route and when he gets to the end, it's an hour and a half later. So, you know, it's about manpower and timing. And as much as we can, again, the priority is bus routes and, you know, people going to work traffic. There's new routes that we try to highlight. The buses seem like they come through around seven, you know, U32 buses, seven, 730, something like that, quarter to seven, 730. And then the elementary school comes an hour later. So that period, you know, and then 839, it seems like that is a crucial time to have the roads clear for the buses. And most people, it seems like a majority of people have to be at work around eight or nine. That's pretty standard. So if it has snowed overnight and we leave at three or four in the morning, and the snowstorm isn't continuing, those roads will be open, well, clear. But if the snowstorm is still going on at six, seven, eight, and nine o'clock, there's going to be snow in the roads just because. Can I just make one comment? For myself, my main concern isn't how the roads are during an event. I understand when it's snowing, like during a snow event, roads are going to be bad. Like that's normal. I can't expect Al to be right in front of me whenever I want to go out during a storm. That's not my concern. My concern is often 24 hours later, 48 hours later, when you would think that by now they would have cleared the road or thrown down enough salt or magic salt to take care of the road. But this happens, I mean, I almost feel a little bit like, I need a videotape of what I'm describing because often my experience is after the storm is over, there's this long period, sometimes days, when you'd expect the county road will be better. And it's still horrible and you cross, and this is the other point, the argument that, well, there's more traffic in, there's more traffic in East Montpelier and not as much in Cal. I mean, or there's a change in the elevation or there's a change in the weather. If that were the case, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, I would expect a sort of gradual change. Yeah, I don't think that that's an argument.  You know, and I think, truly I think the road crew knows this too, you cross that line and yes, maybe once or twice out of 100, the reverse is true, but I think I'm stretching it there. It's a thing, you know, you cross that, you don't have to look for the green sign, you know where that line is. I feel like that's just common knowledge. Yes, everybody knows that, the road crew knows that. Toby, I think Toby knows that and the line has always been, well, it's Calis, Calis just. My first reaction to that when we were talking, the first time around on it, that I guess is they may get there twice as often because they've got three hours. They have a four hour route, I looked it up. East Montpelier. East Montpelier, that's okay. Yeah, five to six. And there, so they're getting there more often and the snow doesn't get a chance to pack down whatever they do. Well, I think they were also using product that we weren't using. They were re-icing, I think, on it that we did. I don't know if that's the case. No, we got the tip about using magic salt from East Montpelier, so that's how. It was after my posting last year, I think so. And I thought, oh, and then I thought, do the road people talk to each other? Like, you know, does that happen? I'm sure I have. So, like, it surprised me that it wasn't until that point that all of a sudden I was like, oh, well, East Montpelier uses magic salt. Maybe we'll try some of that. And I'm like, well, they must have known they were using magic salt. Well, Caroline, they had just barely started to use magic salt. Oh, really? Magic salt hit the scene hard last year. And there was incentives to try it.  Three magic salt. Magic salt only makes salt work less like he says. Right, so something was used before magic salt. I guess they were getting there more often. I don't know. I don't know. And do you think we're understaffed as a question? Well, for, well. I mean, do you think we need more staff?  Do you think we're... Money's not a staff. Well, no, I mean, the second question is, can we afford to staff properly? Well, a standing equipment is another trouble. Do you think we are underserved by staffing and equipment in Calis? Well, if the goal is to spend more time plowing the county road, if it needs more passes, then we are understaffed, because I only have one guy who's doing the county road, and he does it probably twice. And sometimes three times, depending on what the storm is and what the accumulation is, I mean, he pays attention to what is happening on that. So, can I just throw out a thought? So, if Eastbound Polier is able to get out to the county road more often, can we ask... I don't know that they do. Well, it probably is true, because they have less roads. Can we ask, can we pay them to do Calis at the same time they're doing their part of the county road? Sure. That's fine. I don't know what you're saying. It's just money. I don't understand. I think that's what they have. That's if they... You should really look a little at their taxpayer. If there's liquid. Does that go down to concrete? So, the thing is that we really need to talk to the road foreman in East Montpelier and find out, I know for a fact that he's using really heavy doses of salt. Yeah. He has a very hot, he puts a lot of salt down. That's part of the reason the road is opened up. We've, on both ends, on the Montpelier end and the Calisand, everybody has noticed that he's using a lot of salt. So, the environment is taking a hit. Even though the road is good, the environment is taking a hit. So, you just have to balance that. They really gotta look at the liquids because they do, I mean, if you haven't used them and they're more expensive by weight to buy, but they use a lot less of it and you can pre-treat and they've got a longer working time. So, you don't have to be back and forth. But pre-treating means more forecasting and more going down. You've got three days. You've, people do that in three days. A lot of it's, it's important to God that they know what they're talking about. They're machines that are calibrated appropriately. Properly and all that kind of stuff. He may think he's putting down 300 pounds on my own and I'll likely be thinking the same thing and yet one of them's putting down 150 but I was putting down 600, you know. I mean, that's a change. Well, that's one thing that is probably a pretty quick thing to check out is how much product is, is Calis putting on our end of the road and do we need to increase the amount? That's a pretty quick efficiency. If you look at the volumes they consumed this winter and we consumed and, you know, gave it against miles each week. I looked at a sand budget per mile for East Montpelier to Calis and they were pretty equivalent. Right. I was thinking salt. Well, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm talking County Road because that seems to be what you're talking about. Well, my concern, as I said at the beginning, isn't just the County Road. I know, but we were just talking about the County Road. Yeah, County Road. So that's why. That would be salt, for sure. Right. Pave it, we need to solve for, sometimes there's stories in salt sand, which is one of the questions that I was, is he carrying straight salt when he does this? Pave it, some of these. Stu, I got a question and Toby and being a late person at all this. Can a paved road be maintained like a gravel road is in the winter? Can snow be left on it and just be sanded like a gravel road or is that problems that melt through because of the pavement? Which will add, I mean, I've been going back four years when I was in college up in New York and they did choose sand and they'd get the papples and the snow. Breakup was horrendous. I don't remember a few years ago there was a spot where they didn't do it and the ice built up and there's like a couple inches of ice and it was really rough. So you can't do that on a paved road? Yeah. So I don't know whether we want to do it and a whole lot of science here but the proven method, mathematically and scientifically and environmentally and all of that is to put down a light dose of salt on your road every time you plow it but you have to get back there and keep it. How often? So what the, what the temperature, anything else. Wow. And the whole deal is to keep, the salt is not supposed to be melting the snow per se, like you might do it because you don't want to shovel. The idea is not to allow it to stick to the surface of the road. Right. So it doesn't bond, it doesn't bond to the road. You don't get the ice pack. Right. We have seen that happen. Right. There have been years where that has happened on the county road where you're stuck with ice on the county road and it'll last for a month. So the other thing to understand and one of those instances where the snow throws to the road, so when there is a rainstorm coming and it snows and then turns to rain, the technique is to not plow the snow off and let the snow absorb a rain. Right. And that's a safer condition than plowing the snow off and then having the glare ice on some of the road. Right. So what happened last year was that the temperature dropped immediately right after that and we didn't get to the road in time and actually we probably should have gotten the grader out to try and deal with that. But again, the next couple of days it went away. So there were a couple of days when there was frozen ice on the county road that was a terrible thing and we probably should have gotten the grader out to deal with it. But the theory is that if you don't push the snow off until the rainstorm is over and then you come back and do it, but then it froze hard and that was not something that they could plow off.  So you've got to actually be salty for the following time when you're going down. And the same holds true on the gravel roads that if you plow it off then all of a sudden you're gonna have just a glare ice on it.  And also don't the vehicles also when you put sand or salt on it, doesn't the whoosh from the vehicle traveling? Well, that's how fast they're going. Well, sometimes they're going like, well, just saying the sand on the back roads. Well, the roads are cleared off and the weather's nice and people get pretty nerdy about what they'll do and how they'll drive, but. But does the wind from the cargo just blow off or whatever? A lot of it. The other thing we have to do is, the quality of your sand is huge. It's huge and what happens right now is things start breaking up. If you have a coarser sand without much fines, the fines blow away. Sometimes it's dustier in the winter than it is in the summer. That's the fines in the sand blow away. So if you get a cleaner sand and more stone, it's apt to last long, very good to be a little more white. Yeah, so we use washed sand and we put half inch stone in it. You do? Yeah. So our mix is the appropriate ideal mix. People are just thinking that we need more of it and one of those issues is how big is, how much space do we have? The problem is I can't go buy sand right now. If my pile were gone right now and I needed some, there's no place to get it. So essentially we fill up to what the average normal year pile of sand is and hardly ever do we back off but sometimes Alfie gets a little nervous about, well that sand was put there by Don Singleton and I'm getting down to the bottom and I've got to make decisions about how aggressive I get with sand. Do we have room at the town garage to store more sand? I don't know. It's a pretty big pile to be honest. It looks 73 miles of road and a lot of sand on it. It takes a big pile. The question about the sand budget. I noticed in the town report that a few years ago it was $65,000 for sand and then it went down by $10,000 to $55,000 and it's been stayed at $55,000. Because that's what was spent. So we bought- When we shot too high we had extra money left over so we realized we were budgeting too high a number. It wasn't like we're buying less. Right, we're still buying the same amount but we realized that the budget that we were showing wasn't a reflection of what was actually spent and what was, as John said, that's how much sand we have needed in the past. Now maybe we need to rethink, do we need to buy more? And that's what I'm asking, do we have enough space at the town garage to store more odor we need to like ask Worcester, can we stockpile some there? So that having that second site would be a huge boost.  Well, not on your travel time but you've got your sand storage is just double, baby. You're close to it. We can look into talking to Worcester about using their sandpile. I mean, again, that's just a, that's only one truck in this Northern Northwest quarter. Does that also do the West County road too? No, that's done by Paul. Paul, okay. What about Rose's idea about staggering the roots? Toby? I don't know what you mean by staggering the roots. I wish you were here to describe it. Well, Eastmont Pillar apparently has somebody that goes out. I don't think they do it all the time. Maybe Steve can explain it because he was on the Eastmont Pillar select board. But apparently they had somebody that went out during some of the off hours when it was a really bad storm. And I don't know how they did it for sure if they're even still doing it. Do you remember Steve? I don't know if he has something new to say. I don't recall that. I know they've been doing it for quite some time. Roy Bowles used to do it in our town. Excuse me? Roy Bowles. He used to stand up. If you came in any time between 12 o'clock and four o'clock in the morning, Roy was on the road with the pickup, checking everything. Yeah. The pickup that Alfie uses, you know, the extra pickup that is. Now you say Alfie is actually working at County Road with just that little truck? Not the one time. Yeah, not the dump truck, the small dump truck. They've done that since Don. That's not the truck we have a 550 dump truck. Don used to use that on the County Road. Yeah. And the other thing, you know, Eastmont Pillar on the County Road, their town garage is 500 feet from the County Road. So when they need to reload or whatever, they go down and come back. They can load up. They can, you know, it's immediately there. And if, oh, it looks a little snowy, I guess I'll go out and do the other seven miles of the County Road. I mean, that's the whole difference with what we're dealing with and what you see on the Eastmont Pillar side of the County Road. So it's proximity to the pile. So if we could work. Well, proximity to the truck or the garage and the manpower is right there. If it needs it, they can run out. Now if Alfie's all the way back in East Calis, he doesn't have eyes on the County Road. No one's telling him that it's got three inches and it looks sloppy. And he's got to take a chance either to come back over or not. So I mean, again, the operations of the two towns are entirely different from those roads. Well, it sounds like I'm getting the impression from you, Toby, and you couldn't correct me if I'm wrong. I'm getting the impression from you that with the money that we spend, we're usually not much we can do. Is that, we don't, we're making. Again, so the issue is the timing issue is about adjusting timing so that when we're doing whatever we're doing on the County Road or some other road that people are important, what we're doing right now is paying attention to the bus routes and that's driving how our routes go. Now, if we have to add in another dimension of, well, I need another pass on the County Road two or three times a day, then I've got to find manpower and or something else to make that work, if that's what we're going to do. And so, did I need to hire somebody else? And that may make Marshall side of town, Marshall Road side of town or the road to the school. That may take a suffer there if we're converting that person to a second pass or a third pass on the County Road. And then touched on hiring East Mount Pager to do the whole part of the Asphalt County Road. And I wonder if it might be worth getting a ballpark idea at least, that might be a lot cheaper than hiring somebody else. As soon as they got the capacity to do it too, they've got, I don't know how much, how their road crews are spread, and they want to take that on. You mean the idea of having East Mount Pager do that extra pass or something? I think that's something we could check on. It might be cheaper, it might have right there. Right, that's what I'm thinking. It's three miles. It's a couple of miles. Sorry, you're asking about East Mount Pager. We've got three miles. It's three miles. Folks, can we not have people talking in the background when other people are talking? You can't hear when people are having sidebars, so I'm sorry. What did you say, Stu? I didn't hear what you said. I can't imagine what they're willing to take on three more miles. Well, it doesn't hurt to ask. I was like, you can say it now. No, I can ask, but I don't give you a whole talk. Yeah, but it doesn't work, right? We know the road form in there. We talk about everything in there. That's right. You're right. The whole system of failure in three miles. Somebody else is here and I was not getting up. Yeah, well, that could be, but I don't think it hurts to ask. No, I'm not, I'm just. I mean, alternative is to find someone else with a plow truck and assaulting unit to just pay them to be the county road, you know. Or a loan ranger. 19-20 again. I like that. But then there's liability and contracts and all those other issues. What else is up with the long talk and assaulting? Is he doing any dirt roads? Does he switch back and forth? Yes. Yeah, he does. There's a dirt on the way and he's not assaulting them. So then eventually, when he gets back from the other side of the town, he comes back and sands. So again, it's a tough mix because of where. Right, right. You know how much. Is there any pavement over there? Pavement over here, pavement over there. So tell me, do we need to re-look at the routes and make some adjustments? I mean, is that? Well, the adjustments are made based on the bus route every year when we get the bus route scheduled. Right, yeah, I heard that. I'm talking about after the bus route schedules. Is there? You know, there's one more thing you should look at with East Montpelier, because Stu's way for them to pick up that mileage is unlikely, but the way they might do is swap. If we had, if we were able to do an East Montpelier mileage that was closer to our town garage farther from theirs, they might do something like that where we pick up a couple miles of one of their routes. Where it's a closer line. Well, they're already picking up for us. Yeah, there's already some of them out of there. Well, that's a, well, if we can get closer to that. Out of there. But if we get closer to that East Montpelier, or, there are some roads in East Montpelier that are closer to our garage, it might save them. I don't know, that's just a question you could ask them. No, our garage is closer to our Wiccan Woodbury. Yeah. It's not really, it doesn't. Well, we can have those conversations. So Stu, can I suggest something then for Vermont Local Roads? When you have these road foreman's meetings, when it's not current season and everybody's all tired out, is there a way to have a topic like this discussed at some of your road foreman meetings? I've been to some of them. Right. It might be. Is there a way to be discussed? In fact, one had to go with Windsor Wednesday, I don't. Yeah. To have a similar discussion. I mean, would there select board and residents? No, just amongst foreman's meetings. But, the foreman's meetings are run by the regional planning people. So, you guys have one schedule to think for. Yeah. I saw the notice. But I'm thinking maybe in June, when everybody's not sick of snow, and they're in a better mood, they're all coming right back. In June, they'll still be sick of it. They're going to be about mosquitoes and ditching, but a moment and whatnot. So I can ask CVRPC, right? Actually, she's a contact. Is it Ashley? Ashley's the one contact, I'm Dan. There's one schedule in April. Yeah. But I'm thinking, let's not do it. Talk about it in April, I'm sick of it. It's not. I mean, there's a lot of towns that do exactly what we're starting on. Maybe not two miles, but usually it's dictated by where the safe turnaround is. Yeah. Maybe on that place of the road. But too is, somebody's having a turnaround out of a lilywaps in their stock. It can be there in two months. Nobody would know it. Yeah. Sorry, especially if there were wrong radios. But that kind of thing is. Yeah, I'm just making a note to ask Ashley should maybe she can put it on an agenda. You know, sometimes road people are very territorial. Oh yeah. But I think a lot of these meetings have written that down. Yeah. And the other thing is there's a generational switch going on from classic right here next door. You spoke earlier where you went from white to Guthrie. I mean, it's. Yeah, it's quite the change. Yeah. It's a generational thing, which, you know. So it's. And we gotta think outside of the box if we're gonna have all these changing weather conditions and stuff. So that's why we're having these meetings. We're trying to get input. We're trying to get ideas and then no idea is a bad idea until you try it. Right? My first reaction is you've just, you've got a problem with the five and six hour truck route. Mm-hmm. Which just seems to be too much. And if they're, Yeah. Sorting them out. Sorting them out. Can I ask how many it takes? Five? Well, according to the plan. Can you let's, Can you let's. It takes six to 10 hours, according to the plan to do a route. Yeah. Well, that's not correct, apparently. It's five to six. It's five to six. Well still, if we have 80 miles of road to plow and there's four routes, I'm assuming they're all approximately the same distance. That's 20 miles of route. Why does it take five hours to plow five?  What is the amount? What is the amount? One way and then the other way. Well still, that seems excessive amount of time to do four to five. We got a town garage in an extreme end of town. So you got to, you know, you're not plowing it. Yeah. You're running empty. You're not, You're not plowing. And they're also not going, they're not going very fast. They're not going 35 miles an hour. Well, it is. You know, they're probably going 10, maybe 10 miles an hour. And every intersection they do is stop and push them back and around and push back the corner and, Yeah, it's, Maybe you'd like to, And then they got to wing. Go out with one of the drivers. They got to wing stuff too. When it gets to you. And see, I did that. Cause I wanted to say. It's voluntary in the morning of lizard. So given that you, you see that there's a problem with these long routes. So do you have any suggestions? Pardon? I don't know if I want to call it a problem. It's a trouble place to start. Oh, okay. And how you go about that is, whether you need to put a full time person in that, your spare truck. Right. I don't know the routes, how much overlap, you know, they're getting, you know, running from one into town. Or, you know, some roads, like we get in the cloud three times just to get the guy to where he's headed. You know what I'm saying? There may be options in the, in the route that would help all around, but I can't say that. Cause I don't know the way it would end up. And these guys have been doing it long enough that it would seem they've worked out those efficiencies pretty well. Yeah, I'm sure they've probably done the best they can. So I'm just wondering if we could stockpile in a couple of different places in town or in another town, that might help eliminate some of the time that it takes instead of going back and forth. So stockpiling in town is really not an option unless you buy another loader. Right. Or you rent a loader for the winter. So there's a cost, there's a huge cost in that. As well as trying to locate where you can put the sandpile. So the other thing too is, remembering that once the situation is turned to ice or it is a rainy situation, you know, they're not calling, they're just putting down sand.  There's no way they're going a four hour route trip with a little more sand. Where you are right now, coming up short on sand. Yeah, so they, you know, essentially they'll come back and refill and, That takes time.  I think one of the biggest things is to check out some other locations to put material. But, you know, if there are problem spots where the sand is staying, I'm gonna assume that the route they are sanding the road is just not staying. You're trying to know. On the back road? Yeah. After, I gotta make that assumption that the sand is not staying. They're not not sanding, are they tell me? No, they're sanding. I mean, I have to believe them. But, I've been seeing more sand lately, like I went to work Sunday morning and it hits nodes and the road was sanded. And I noticed it. And I was like, wow, sand is free. Yes, thank you. You know, lots of times, and this is the question for you, Toby, lots of times I notice sand on the back roads and there's a line in the middle of the road. It's not like a very wide line. It looks like a malfunction in the thing. I noticed that too. And I think they just do the middle of the road. No, it's like. Colleagues cut to a single file. So the way the trucks are laid out, sand drops out of the bottom of the bed of the truck and there's a wheel that spins it. So depending on the consistency of the sand, whether it's cold and hard, is how far that goes. I mean, how far it spreads? How far it spreads? Is there a way to adjust that? Not a lot. I mean, it was nicely spread Sunday morning. It was like a proper, what I call proper sand. So again, so warmer temperatures, the sand's probably gonna be looser and finer and we'll spread more. And they do have an adjustment of how much sand comes out of the truck. So essentially when they go down, they're putting the sand in the center of the road and throwing it to the side. When they turn around and come back the other way, they're doing the same thing. So there will be excessive sand in the middle road. So essentially the middle of the road, you get one tire of traction for sure in the middle. It's not gonna be across the whole road. Unless you have a rear dump where it spreads the whole rear across the truck, you're not gonna get consistent sand across the road. So I'm filled with all those adjustments depending, but I mean, the other thing is the adjustments change. So if you're on a 12 foot wide road or you're on a 24 foot wide road, you've got the same setup. So depending on the fine middle ground, most of the bad roads are proctor. Well, I don't know what your back roads are, by the way. And typically we're trying to keep, you try to keep the sand as salt in the center of the road, but it drifts with traffic and gravity. So you're not spreading it from shoulder to shoulder when you go down through there on the tip of the road. Sometimes do that. But I do encourage folks to, I'm serious, that's what it is, to go to the town garage. The town crew loves to show you the trucks and see how things are set up and ask questions and go for a ride in one of the trucks or something. I'm serious, go and see. And Al has encouraged calling and stuff, but some of my concerns are not the kind of thing I'm gonna bother Al with like staffing issues. Right, no, no, I'm not suggesting for that. I'm just going to see the equipment. Yeah, now see how I try to set up a meeting with Al. I wanted to have a meeting in Maple Corner, in fact. But he knows that he really needs, it really needs to go through the select one, so that's why that didn't. I had hope to help him. Well, he might come to another meeting, but I'm sure that a night off is probably... No, I'm not saying, he probably has a good reason he's not here, but my hope was to talk about not just like get acquainted with the truck or something, but like to understand more, stepping back one step and more structural problems. Like are there problems with staffing? Do we need to look at the schedules? Like deeper issues than just like, hey Al, my road doesn't have any sand on it, and it's slippery. I've heard great things about Al. Like if you call him with a specific issue, he'll come right out and fix it. He's really responsive to that, but that's not really quite what I'm talking about. Right, but just so you know and everybody else, the staffing issues, the budget and stuff, that doesn't necessarily all get decided by Alford. That goes through the select board and the operations manager, so we're hearing. We're hearing what you're saying. And I'm very happy that this meeting's happening. So we're hearing what you're saying, and we will definitely have further conversations about the issues. But for you to just go directly to Alford about staffing and stuff, he knows that's not the right process. Right, I wouldn't do that. And I'll ask you a couple more clarifications. Sure. Just as I have this opportunity. Getting back to what Chris was saying, he has a job where he's traveling past hours. And the hours where the people aren't normally out are between nine and three, is that correct? Roughly. So just for clarification, like if there's a freezing rain event or rain on top of cold roads, and it's nine o'clock, this is sort of useful information to townspeople. Like when I leave my chorus on Monday night at 9.30 and it's sprinkling rain and it's been really cold. Do I, should I have any confidence that the town will have, will change their schedule a little if there's an event that's happening off hours or no? And it's just a question. Yes, it's only a question. Probably.  It might be 11 o'clock at night. But they would be out at 11 during a freezing rain event? No, not necessarily.  And that's pretty, it's not like it's super extreme. I've driven home in the middle of a blizzard with a foot of snow on the road and that's just what I've learned is the expectation. There's also kind of a, you know, years ago I read a study about why state police officers had such a high incident of suicide and when you vary people's schedules and they don't get any consistency. If you're on a night shift, consistent, that's good. If you're on a day shift, that's good. But they've changed this over the years because of these statistics. When you were two weeks on the day shift and they're trying to be fair or the union contract that they put you on the early evening shift and then two weeks later on the night shift, disrupting people's sleep schedules has huge health ramifications. Heart, mental health, suicide, literally. So, let's just put that out there. We can't be subjective, we've got to be wise too. I'm certainly not suggesting that we over time. No, no, I'm not. Just for clarification, like a guy like Chris who's got a job that puts him on the road at midnight, pretty much he's on his own regardless of conditions. Like freezing rain. That's what I've been hearing. That's why it's what I'm thinking. That's like tough luck, change your job, move out of Calis. I mean, just asking, is that sort of the general? Well, so when you say move out of Calis, try to find a town that actually does that. Because, I mean, I gave the select board probably 10 towns that have the exact same level as what we do. It says at nine o'clock, the guys are not going out and they're not going back in till three. So it is a Vermont standard of precious. But like I mentioned in the last meeting, I work in Burlington. So I have 100 mile commute back and forth. And the only part I dread is like turning red road. So why do you take a lightening red road? Just because it's convenient, it's the closest road. I live on the Adam Ann Road. Right, so I live off Adam Ann Road. I live on Singleton Road. I never take a lightening red road. I always come up county because of the hills, particularly in the winter. The last thing road I would be on in the winter is lightening red road. There's a spot southeast of the Willys Farm.  You will not get up. And there's a curve. That's the worst road probably you could pick in town. And it's actually longer. I don't understand. I mean, the best way to go is to go top of Main Street, catch a county road. And quite frankly, in the winter, you take center road. And you go up because that's salted and paved. And you could usually, but in the middle of the night, may not be as good. But you take that road. But if the roads are snow covered or icy, you don't take that road. You stay on County Road because it's more gradual. And then you take other roads like Bliss Pond roads. When the roads are really bad, you go all the way to Bliss Pond Road because then you can avoid the hill come out of Adam Ann. And it's flat. I don't mind driving in the snow. It's the ice that I considered. The worst road is like an ice. I've lived it along my whole life. I've been driving in the snow my whole life. I don't have an issue with the snow. It's the ice that I considered. And because of climate change, we think we're getting a lot more. In this particular winter, if you look at a history of the temperature shifts, it's not a long, steady, slowly warming. It's cold, hot, cold, hot, hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold. Those narrow cycles of freezing and thawing, freezing and thawing, are something that there's just nothing that we literally can do about.   You know, if I took a grater out there and tried to break up the ice or whatever, I mean, what you have to understand is gravel roads in Vermont are like driving on an ice, on a length of ice. It's really, it's packed snow that goes through freezing thaw cycles. And we do the best to make you travel slowly and safely over it. But, you know, we're not wizards. We can't do it all. But I don't think people are asking for it all. That's the point. I mean, again, I get back to the same realm.  And I don't, I think that's unfair. I like, I don't ask for it all. I'm happy to drive through a foot of snow during a storm. And I've studied good snow tires. That's not the point. You know, like we're all Vermonters. We, our expectations aren't that the roads are always perfect. I mean, we understand that. We live in Vermont, been here for decades. But it's situations where it's extreme and, you know, the road is a sheet of ice. And it's been a sheet of ice for days. The storm was three days ago. And you're, you're looking down. And this is, this has happened many, many times. Stuart, you, anybody could back me up here. I don't, it's not just me. And I go, where is the sand? Like, come on. So, if I can, I'm just, I'm learning from all of you. And I'm also, I also learned my, I had a class, an inadvertent class at that incident where the school bus met the log truck. I mean, some things I took away from that was, one, the log truck was going uphill on an ice-crusted, horrible road, and he went up no problem uphill and had plenty of traction because he had the right tires. You have the right tires. But the school bus had the absolute wrong tires. Yeah, the way too. But what I also learned, what I also learned, how did it just come through there with sand? I got out of my car and I almost, and it was the thinnest layer of snow. And that wasn't the most causing the slick conditions. It was that that ice was so, so rock hard because it had rain and melted. And then this has happened all through the winter and it became, it was like rock hard. It was like granite, man, like polished granite. And I said, how can this be? I just saw it sand. So I literally did like a science project and like rubbed my boot. I could not rub and dig that sand into that ice. It just, and there was sand in there. It just wouldn't dig in. I couldn't, I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't done that. So that might be, you know, Scott talked about hot loading and stewing, putting some salt. Maybe that's something we could do. Yeah, I think it's something I could make a list. I don't think we've ever done that. It's not routine. You do it just. Well, especially if it's a road like lightning range where you know that it's routinely. And it gets a lot of traffic. So if ice is from that, it's a really. Because the more you drive on a road, does it make it more icey? Yeah, I see. So that, students say, you know, that road is, it's got a lot of bends. It's steep and really steep in sections. Blind corners, it's just, it's like the worst road in town. And it gets huge traffic. It's a lot of traffic. The elementary school's at the far end of it. So all town on this side of town follows into that. It's just awesome. Well, I mean, I lived in the middle of Lightning Road, Lightning Ridge for 10 years. I drove to a wheel drive. And I ran the slides. I almost never had, it got bad, but you just had to drive carefully. It's bad. I drove it every day. I drove a tractor up there. Guys, I got a compass at the school. And I'll tell you, I was sideways. Tractors are a great option. Well, this thing had no problem anywhere about that road. Well, I mean, I drove always icy. I mean, I get it, because of the way the road is. The little hill there was a bad one, and it was the big comic. But, I mean, I've seen worst roads in Lightning Ridge. I mean, I've driven a lot worse roads, actually. And I've driven that every day, twice today, and very early in the morning, and very late at night, long after the plows. So this hot load stuff, does that need a separate piece of equipment on the trail? No. Sand with salt. All you do is you dump it. You mix it with 200 pounds of salt into a load of sand. And roll it up, so it's just mixed. It'll burn in a little better. And then the sand will grip better, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's something that seems like it's be a fairly reasonable fix. Yeah, but you don't want to do it every time, so that's the right way to break up your eyes and get the gobbles. So that's an idea. Can we just review again? It seems like maybe we'll wind you down here. Right. Well, I've been making a list of ideas. Yeah. Do you want me to read them? Yeah. But I have some for our stockpile material in other parts of town. Thank you, everyone. Thanks for coming in. Review the plow routes, investigate whether or not we have enough manpower to do a staggered, maybe a staggered person, and this hot load on the back roads. Right. Or the lices. Right, where it lices. What about a way that could be some sort of online thing or something where people could post, like if there's a trouble spot that they want the road without necessarily calling them and then calling them off on the route or something? There's a specific way to communicate. Yeah, like I agree. I agree that the Front Forge Forum is not easy to avoid, but that is a bulletin board that. Well, the trouble is, is that post, like, once a day, so there's a trouble spot you want it to get to. But if we had a blog on the town website or out there, check. People could put concerns, and that might be a good way to share information. Well, don't forget, when he's out plowing, hopefully he's not keeping his gut as high as on the road. You can check it and say, these things can be trouble spots that we need to hit first. Yeah. There was, and I know we don't get good cell phone coverage now, but there's an app called Usha Hidi. Who? Usha Hidi. It was actually developed in Africa for a disaster. They used it over in Japan. Can you sign me though? You have to find the link. We used it in Addison County, actually, during Irene. And it's basically set up so that anyone with a cell phone or phone can call it. They can post to a site. You can either fill them or you can have a direct post. So you can basically cloud source people to live update conditions. Right. So our technology guru on the select board, Cliff, is going to check into who should be. We can find out. Boston did this with popples as a way to identify where the worst popple was years ago. But it's not a brand up. I mean, I really appreciate this discussion. I think it's very nice. People aren't yelling and getting really nasty about stuff because that doesn't get anybody anywhere. So I think this has been really good. I appreciate everybody's input. Did you have any other action? That's what I had for now without reviewing my notes. OK. And I think we also talked about seeing, asking. Eastmont Piliar wants to cover some of the county road if we pay them some. Right. Eastmont Piliar. Or trading miles, doesn't hurt to ask. And also, just maybe if we want to have just somebody covering the county road all day, you know. So country. That's an expensive. Right. What is suggested in a lot of situations, and I'm not sure if it would work here, based on what I know now, but some places would dedicate a truck to the pavement, OK? So that's all they do. They do pavement. Yeah, looking into that. And then it's a main thoroughfare. Scatter, it doesn't wait too much time traveling, not doing anything else. You know, so they are not the appropriate option there. So subcontractor to do the county road, OK? Got it. Public or private? Rick's suggestion about using them, proactively using liquid brine? Catalyzed liquid brine. Is that liquid brine? No, but the state stopped using that for some reason. Yeah, but that's because they were using brine. They were using a liquid brine without the catalyst. They did the cheap version, remember? There are several ways to look at it in this thing. For five miles, you've got to be hard pressed to justify buying the equipment to apply brine. And you're using the magic. Yeah, we're using the magic. I know the other thing was to see how much magic salt we're putting down as opposed to easement failure, right? The brine company would spit the trucks up for a dollar with a tank if you had to buy a certain amount. Now, we're only doing five miles, but you could also use it for dust control in the summer. So you could always make your amount. We have the chloride. That's what I mean. And you're using these. But I mean for the booms, because you actually have a boom on the back of the truck. And they put a tank.  That's why. Just wear a sign, man. Get us that deal. It's worth a look at. Part of the problem is now you're committing a truck to that tank. You're right about that. And there's nothing else that truck can do except that. We don't have it on those trucks. I get it. I get it. So that's not a viable. That goes back to the commitment of a truck to the salt. You could put a subtle tank on it and choose your salt. Yeah. The question is, can you use it in a limited way? And I don't know if there's catalyzed on your really bad icy stone sections to break up. And I don't know the answer because you might turn them off. That'd be messy. Yeah. I wouldn't recommend that. Because what'll happen is it'll melt the ice and then it'll melt the road. It does. It does. It does. You're right. That's why you have to be careful using these hot loads. I'm sorry.  Right. I don't know why you're going to turn your road to fuel. Right. That's such a good point. What you're going to do, Kevin, sooner or not, honey? Well, if you look at the grind, another possibility is working a deal with like an MOU with eSmart Peelier. Right. Well, that's what we're looking for. Well, what I meant is to, there might be a truck that was dedicated. Because then you do all your payment. And that. But their system's working for them. Maybe. Well, we don't know. We'll save and we'll find out. I think everybody in every town has road issues.  We're hearing that they're able to keep up. Well, I think that's something that our road foreman and Toby and maybe Guthrie and Alfred can all strategize and talk about. Maybe it's an opportunity for both towns, you know? Yeah. So Mack wanted to say something. I was just saying we're talking about eSmart Peelier. They have a third town garage pretty close to the county road. Maybe we could start to file a sand there. They have a loader there. Maybe they'd be willing to explore. Right. Well, we talked about Worcester for that same reason, because they have a loader and they have sand and all that stuff there. So that's another option. John and I were just chatting, even though we're not supposed to, because I told everybody else not to, about maybe another location on the county road that we're going to think about. Right? I like that you guys are really willing to brainstorm. Yeah. Maybe, because you guys are going to be talking about it and select for me and just keep us updated on the forum. Well, I'll be posting when we're going to make that forum. Before it gets nasty. It does, but it doesn't always. No, it doesn't always. Most times it's not, but when it does, it's, and it makes me sick. I don't want to open it, because I'm afraid of what I'm going to find. Well, that's the same at town meeting, right? People get up and speak. You can't control it. It's free speech. Yeah, but it's free people treat people differently when they're in their presence. But you can't. So I don't like Facebook for that reason. I call it hateful. So what we're going to do is we're going to schedule two meetings, one in Adam and one in East Dallas. And then I think what we'll then do is take all that information that we get, investigate some of these options, and try to come up with some things that we can try. I mean, this season now it's almost over, for God's sake. Except for month season. Do you know when the next meeting is? I'm thinking it's going to be like April. I don't know if I want to do one on April Fool's Day or not, but maybe April 1st, 15th, or 29th, because those are off Mondays from select board meetings. So I'll post it. Yeah, just like I did this one. And then Stu or his sidekick agreed to come to the meetings, too, because I think it's helpful. So thank you very much for taking time out of your night. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thanks for having this meeting. That's a brain power here. The other thing I was going to suggest is that there's the civil engineering program at the UVM. And the seniors up there have to do projects. They can plot. They can plot? No, but they might be able to look at routes. If you're looking at different samples, how you've buried the routes and how that might, they can model that mathematically. And they might be able to help you look at the different options that we've been discussing and see if there are some advantages or not. Who might we contact? I'll look into that. You want to get back to me? Yeah. Norwich does some of that, too. Yeah. They're engineering. Civil engineers, they might. They have senior projects. Thank you, Chris. I've got four engineers that are driving the trucks and they know where the sand ends up and where it doesn't, where they need to reload. They're trying to be as efficient as possible on how to do it. Yeah, but we're looking at different options here. And they can model what you're doing now, model different options, and see if there could be any improvements or not. Sure. There'd be a lot of extra work, and it wouldn't be very fast, as you were talking about. Thank you. And we may go through all this. And come up with a couple of things that would be helpful. But the reality in the end might be, you know. The road's going to be back. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. I'll go. First of all, I just want to be honest about it. You know, we're looking more open to options and ideas. So take it from there. Do you have a card, Stu? I'm not with the proper help from the truck. All right. Is there anything else anybody would like to say? No, thanks for getting me. Welcome. What'd you do? Call us SBDenise at gmail.com. City has it. I heard there's a lot of things. That's what we've been doing so long. Every day is different. One day they're all great, the next day they're all different. Yes. And better on roads. Well, we've fixed the drainage issues. Yeah, the water is our end. H2O is my end. It's my semesters. All right. It's select board. If there were no water, I'd want to come here. Wait a minute. I missed one person's name, I think. Jim, where are you? Jim, where are you? I'm here in a second. Stu, where are you? I came in. Super Martin. Okay. That's Carol. Do you think it's EWART? I don't know. Okay. So select board, we need to have a motion to adjourn. I'd move that. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay.