So Thursday, November 1st, we're going to schedule a select board meeting to order. To my left is Pete Kelly, Wayne Lamberton is not here tonight. To my right is Angelina Capron, and Jeremy hasn't showed up yet. And then we also with us is Dana Hadley, our town administrator, Diane Isabel, our treasurer, and our police chief, Bill Wolfe. We will start with the public hearing for an ordinance to allow snowmobile ATV travel on town roads. We seem to be lacking some participants. And as I told you, we received a few routes that Jim sent me, and we also received a copy of the letter that Governor Scott wrote to Vast. Okay. I'm wondering if it's the change in days. That makes those two. That makes a lot of sense. There's one for summer access and one for winter. Was the VASA and VAST, were they going to take and join together on this, or are they going to take and go at it one at a time? Well, the original concept was, as it's no surprise to everyone, things are getting more expensive every day. Yeah. I think it's a good idea for the groups to work together since they have similar interests and in a similar area, there needs to be a great build that they can share the cost of that and the maintenance and stuff that has to be done along the trail. So there, and it's a pilot project for us. We share trails in other places, but we've never started from scratch working together trying to do that. So it's trying to see what we can do with that concept. Can we really afford to go and make a new trail? That one blazing new thing with today's economy and everything that's happening. So that they're so far so good, you know, the local clubs of all, it used to be snow machines and ATVs. That was a four letter urge back and forth and they never had a lot of times of change. A lot of people, there's a lot of crosswalking and a lot of people on both machines like myself. So it's a much more collaborative effort out there. And the more folks work together, you find that if there's a trail somewhere, tends to get used in the summer anyway, that people will find a way to get out there. And if you've got actual clubs involved, that they can help keep these things and keep them cleaned up and trees fall along and all that sort of stuff, the sort of stuff that happens normally in the woods that you have to keep the trail. And Brad, I've also invited the chief to speak to it and the highways of contending. Yes, chief. Well, I mean, I've got a few concerns. Primarily with the snow machines. One, being that the snow machines have a much lower profile than the cars or trucks traveling on the road. And I'm afraid that with the topography and the poor lighting that it may be possible that a car would miss an oncoming snow machine and there could be a problem there. Secondly, vehicles have a harder time stopping quickly or swarming on snow and ice covered roads. I mean, if something happens, the snow machine breaks down, something in the car, it comes up on it quickly and has to swerve. I'm concerned about an accident happening there, someone getting hurt. Tim could speak to winter maintenance operations, you know, guys plowing, got a wing down, somebody comes, you know, if they don't see there's a whiteout or something and they have to hit a snow machine, obviously that's not going to be a good scenario for either pedestrians out here in the wintertime with the skating rink, one in the back and forth across the driveway and all over the place. I think that presents an added risk having the snow machines present. And my last concern is something that we can't ignore is the human element. You have impaired drivers of vehicles and snow machines and ATVs, not everyone, obviously, I never would say that, but you have to factor in that you're going to have impaired drivers out there. You combine the impairment with slippery roads. My opinion is that it is a really big risk to the public safety. The, what's the drive to get the trail over here? Is it just to have a destination or is it to- Well, it's a combination of things that from the snowmobile angle that there is access now, do you come up in the very monthly road, which we cross the very monthly road, we cross three access, I mean, the slides around regular traffic, fairly regular, and for the most part they're licensed drivers, so they kind of know how the road works and they, and I don't think I've seen one manufactured 20 years that doesn't have a license all the time for visibility, so you can see that coming. But you're crossing at right angles, as opposed to driving in the travel portion of the roadway. We go up the travel portion of the road in several places, Sheffield. Okay, but not here though. Not here. You asked me where, I'm telling you where I'm not. I'm being an avicerobe, my question is, no, I'm not. You asked me where and I said where. That's how traditionally they cross at right angles. For the road crossing, you know, there are plenty of places throughout the state, we've got over 4,700 miles. Oh, I'm not excusing, absolutely, we do, absolutely. And actually coming through the industrial park out here, my friend, for me as a rider, I'd rather do this than come through the industrial park. That we have, starts with the concept that we're there, the sleds come in from that side, we have first class services here, we've got hotels and two restaurants and gas and parking. And as many times in the trail business, it's a short way as the core flies to get over to Northfield that way, but to follow the trail, it's around Robinsburn and back and around this pushing, I don't know, it's got to be 15 miles or better just to get around and reconnect and you get to over there and give you a connection back across to connect you to Northfield and South and over towards the valley over in the Wazefield. And as far as from the ATV traffic goes, that there's a couple of drivers there. The first off, there are already ATV trails that can be used there, except that the parking area is for just parking a few compact cars is a fine idea, but if people actually started using that trail, you know, if me and Steve and Nick here showed up with our trucks and trailers to unload, to actually use the trails, suddenly that parking lot is pretty full. Whereas if you could park here and buy your gas and slip down around there and get up on the trail system, you're not getting anybody else's way up on the hill. And the hope is to connect that down into because the ATV trails now come up to where exit flies come down down to the gas station, which connects you into the Northfield Lost Nation system, which takes you clear to Braintree, which in turn connects you as far as south as in the Bethel and down through there, trying to connect these systems together in any place that where you have within eyesight of each other, first class services and interstate access and everything. And then look over there. It's a pretty awesome wooded territory. I was reminded that I hadn't been up in there years of how it's, it's a pretty amazing and scenic route up through there along the ridge and down through there, the sort of thing that give the opportunity for a lot more people to enjoy and to use and we've got a lot of folks up on the hill up here that have machines that they can't access the trail system because they can't get down under the bridge to get onto it. There's a lot of angles to that. Mostly it seems like other than this part where we're having here trying to get this piece of road. It's really an ideal place to be. Nick Sargent, Lost Nation ATV club, trail coordinator. This is the first year I was actually up on that ridge and it is gorgeous. It's nice for us to be able to take our trail system and get out to the services, let's go to the hotel and bring some money in to here, get some money into the gas station. It's just a beautiful ride up across the top of the mountain and it'd be nice to be able to enjoy that a little bit more in the summertime. I mean, we typically, during the summertime on any given day, usually less than 10 ATVs during weekends and weekdays is limited, very limited.  A lot of people tend to go out to bigger places to go ride more and we're just offering services and get people out to enjoy on Sunday cruise. Yes, sir. Steve Monati, Berrytown Thunder Chickens. I've been a director for almost 20 years, a rumor and trail builder. Back when I worked at Rossi Buick, it goes, 1991, the Berlin Wolverines were up here and the trail went through and I believe last meeting we said something about why the trail was closed on this side and I don't think it was quite right. The reason the trail was closed, we had a landowner issue on our side that prevented us to keep this trail open and inevitably was the end of them because nobody was gonna come up to ride up to ride back if they couldn't get through. That trail was there for many years going under that underpass, not any situations that I ever knew of. I used to ride the trail, single file, everybody knows the deal, they ride snow machines. It's not like summertime, 10, 15 Harley-Davidson's going through there with cut off exhaust pipes and flatten up over that hill. People are in their houses for most of the time, windows are closed, snow machines are lower decibel rated. So I don't think there is as much of an impact is what's led to believe. I believe if this is done right and everybody's on board with it, it would be a very good access for the vast system to get on to the other side of the hill because if from here down it's all the way to Bolton before you can cross 89 again. So you're committed once you're on that side of the mountain for quite a long trail. I think it would benefit in a lot of ways. I don't think you'd see a lot of traffic. A lot of people are out for a good ride. If it's a short ride, it would be a shorter trip back over to this side of the mountain. The aspect of trails being on the roads, we do it up in Washington, Corinth. There's many places where there's an actual, I can't come up to the word, there's a legislative number for being able to ride the roads. The ordinance. What's that? The ordinance, I'm sorry, yes. And we have it right up on Cheney Road. We go right down Cheney Road up off the Access Road. So there are several places. It takes some adjustment with everybody, both parties. I think one of the concerns has been that it's not so much the snowmobiles and ATVs on the road. It is the number of cars in the traffic counts that we have here in town. And I think it does lead to a little bit of, or will lead to conflict between tires and snowmobiles and ATVs. What can you do to shorten the span that you are on the road? Shorten the distance. Yeah. Up on the, I mean, I think you've got up on the Black Road and up in that area to go down the backside of the pond. Sometimes land owners are reluctant to let you use their land the first year or so. They see you going down the side of the road, see you going down the side of the road. The year or two, they're like, use the back of my property, get away, get away from the road. They see common sense in it. Down here, we're very limited to what we can do. That underpass is what it is. The closest we can get to it on each end, the less we use, but you can only come up so far. And there's an issue of coming up on a right angle onto the road. The trail does not have to be at a right angle. We can stake it, post it, so they come up so they're not coming right up and then trying to turn their snow machine. We can make things safer. We can do a lot of things. We run a lot of places that we have to coexist with the road. Who roams the trail over here to make wood now? I do. Yeah. What are you using for a grubber? We use a Tucker Cat with a rubber track. No steel track, no damage to the road. We run it in the parade in Berry City in the middle of the summer, right off the pavement. There's no harm whatsoever. The Tucker Cat, they actually use them for agricultural use in summertime, fields and stuff like that. How wide is the grubber? Grubber's eight foot six. So what are you grooming in the road? We wouldn't be grooming in the road. What we would actually do is, if we had help with the town and they push the road, push the snow down in the side, we're physically just going to come out and go down and make sure the other part of the trail, we pick everything right up and we have wheels and we just travel down that portion. We're all lit up. Reflectors, just like any town piece of equipment, we're subject to being seen like that. So we would just go through and go up and we're gonna meet with Northfield somewhere up in that field where it's the easiest for both to turn around and come back. And for the most part, when it's perfectly fine through here, we'll turn it to maple wood and head right back. There's no need for us to go through there three, four times a week. After a snowstorm to bust down the snow banks to make it safer to groom the trail to where we turn around, that would be pretty much the extent of the grooming. So to be clear, because in the beginning of this, you were gonna be in the ditch along the side of the Northfield road. So are we in the road now? Or will we be in the ditch? Some of us. Where there is space beside of the road, the groomer will come in between the plowing with a snow plow and the groomer as he's transporting from one side to the other will run in the same track. So it squashes down the snow banks and creates kind of a plateau off to the side. There are places where the bank gets too close to it so you are on the side of the road. But the sleds follow down the traffic the same. They're motorized vehicles just like everybody else and they go pick the best lane they can find based on what's there. Whenever there's snow available and you can get further off to the side, you do. But there are times when you're not able to get all the way off of there because the terrain's not the same all the way out to the side of the road there. Wherever possible, it swings wide and it packs down and the sleds themselves will get up on the snow banks and pack them down. But there are places where they will be in the actual travel part of the road where it comes out too close so that you can do that. We have explored many possibilities to get around that. Currently, this is the best case scenario we have. To loop up around to get over the water here as best as I can tell and there's something that somebody can tell me that I haven't been able to find that the city of Montpere's got it right away on each side of the water and they won't allow us to cross any of their property. There's an old road and a power line and sucks it was going to let us to get around all of the black road except that's the city of Montpere once again has jurisdiction over that and after a lengthy process with them, they decided that they're not willing to do that, that I didn't quite follow the logic and how they went with that with its air property so it doesn't really matter what they say, it's their property, they don't want us to cross it, they don't want us to cross it, the same as it is here. I mean, the machines literally, we share lots of roads and lots of places. I understand everyone's, because originally since they're not used to seeing it and not used to having things there but these are people who, they're the smallest machine on the road they are the last guy that wants to be in an incident so they're kind of paying attention when you're riding, it's just like driving your car when you're on the interstate and there's 10 miles of straight line in front of you you might relax a little bit but when you get around with your stuff moving you're on your toes and paying attention and you're not even allowed on the trail without having to pass the safety course and have to, you know, there's a process that you have to go through to go there. Do you have any? So I've got three email comments if I could read those. Sure. First, I'm just doing this in order how we got them. First is from Mary Vapelle on Highland Avenue I think she lives over there. She writes, I just saw on Fromportshire Forum about the possibility of utilizing some of the town roads for snow abilling to connect Northfield and Maplewood trails. I'm absolutely in favor of this and was wondering if there was something available to outline exactly where the proposed new trail would be. See the minutes are not yet posted from last night and I was wondering if there are any decisions made or future meetings regarding this. I responded to her and kind of explained to her the rough path of the trail that we talked about at the last meeting. Next one is from Shane Miller who is on Black Road who would be, who's right, his driveway would essentially be crossed by this. I do not support allowing snowmobiles slash ATV use of town roads. I have concerns about the negative impacts on established uses of the roads and the quality of life along the roads. Snowmobiles are required to meet the noise level specifications and not more than 73 decibels on the A scale at 50 feet in a normal operating environment but allowing road access would put some houses and many road users much closer than 50 feet to the loud vehicles. I also have concerns about the safety of allowing additional motorized traffic and added cost of road maintenance and policing for Berlin. Please keep these issues in mind when considering road access for snowmobiles and ATVs. Next one is from Vicky Law on Brookfield Road. The thought of having yet more traffic along any portion of Brookfield Road, especially during the winter months when the road tends to become more narrow with heavy snowfall, is beyond troubling. First of all, to cross the road from the beginning of Painter and Pike South to reach the field across from it would be a hazardous to traffic coming from Painter and Pike South around a somewhat blind corner, even in clear weather. Second, the Brookfield Road area in question is dangerous as is, let alone attempting to fit in yet another, quote, lane. There isn't even a shoulder on that road, only a fairly deep ditch and lined with trees that are too close to the road to even consider there being ample space for anything else. To think that a groomer could even create an additional space for snowmachines slash ATVs is absurd. Please reconsider this proposal that as it's simply an accident waiting to happen it would make those living on that road even more nervous about safely getting to and from our destinations. I also have one from Shea Miller. That was the same one he emailed all of us. Okay, so I just want to stress, I'm sorry, it's not going to be, we're not looking for an eight foot travel portion. It's a single lane, but is it coming and going? So that's two lanes or at a point in time. You know, I think the Brookfield Road, I walk that road 24 days out of every month. I have changed my glasses, my socks, my hat, my shirt to look at that ditch and try to find a safe way to put anything on there. I stand to the side of the road when the pickup trucks whiz by, I just can't imagine another vehicle. An ATV went by us the other day and may have been registered, but there's just no way it would fit on the side of the road. And I think Brad's sort of talking this up. Can you shorten the distance anyway? We would love to do that. The problem becomes, you have to have landowner permission wherever you go. We have a tentative route to skip all of that. And somewhere between when I was here and in between, I'm not really sure. They were supposed to be, I got to talk to my dad or something, sorry, anyway. Well, Josh got an email that they had presented that possibility. And we would continue to look for that. But under, you know, with today's reality, that's what we have to face that we don't have enough of the people in a line in order to connect up through the woods there. There's plenty of opportunity to build a trail except you have to have permission from the people who own the property. And it only takes one in between to block that off. And yes, the whole part of talking about a ditch until the side of the road and stuff was just to show that there are places where you can get picked in the wintertime to get so you're not on there. But you're tapping a machine that's between 48 and 60 inches wide, which is smaller than anything else on there, just using a lane down the road. The same it is if you have two cars coming down the road. And it's not like, I mean, I understand from folks that don't do this all the time.  When you got room, you get to the side, like you were driving a tractor because it's moving slower than the rest of the traffic. And you go along and you look twice and watch where you go. And it's a short period. I used to ride that same, that road myself. I was proud. I couldn't have been 13 or 14 years old the first time I rode up and down that road, which was a couple of days ago, but. Unfortunately, we're at the end of the public hearing. We're running into select board time. Again, there'll be another hearing in... On the 15th and two in the next meeting. Yeah. So that's the 15th. And thank you all for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Dana, additions or changes to the agenda? I think that Jeremy wants to add an item to the agenda reporting on the Center for Modern Internet. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see here. Is that it, Dana? Yes. Okay. Public comment? Seeing none. Treasury report, none. Yep. Okay. I did include the September trial balance budget status report and delinquent tax report for the select court in the packets you received. The state of Vermont has asked Sullivan and Powers to audit the VMware report, the Vermont pension plan that we have. And so they're going to all the towns and they're auditing all the towns, which is fine. I'll be audited next Friday is when I have a schedule and all they'll be doing is looking not for this past fiscal year, but the fiscal year before that. And they're just verifying the information, make sure that everything is in line. And like I said, they're doing every single town that has numerous. So just, I'll make you aware of that. I don't know if I'll hear anything from that report because everything will go in the state of Vermont and the state of Vermont is paying for it. Interestingly enough, that is also the same material that our auditors are quite careful about auditing. Yes, they're very careful about that. And they're going to give us the results of that audit and we can sort of... I'm not sure if they will or not because they'll be giving the results to Vermont, the state of Vermont, because we're not hiring them. State of Vermont is. Well, but maybe we could request them as a public record. I think that's a good idea. We probably could ask the treasurer's office for this. I mean, it's probably going to look the same as we're paying our auditors for, but I think having another set of eyes on it, if we can... I think it's a good idea because they may be looking at it differently. Something like that. Okay, that'll definitely answer that. And otherwise, not the other things I have in the agenda. Okay, we look at the approvals of licenses, permits, vouchers, and applications. Do you have a cheat sheet? Yes. Oh, there you go. Move to approve general funding house payable warrant number 19G09 with checks 18563-18600 in the amount of 301,555 dollars and 82 cents. Also payroll warrant number 19-09 for payroll from October 14th, 2018 to October 27th, 2018 in the amount of 43,069 dollars and 17 cents. Second. Any further discussion? I'd like to mention that that accounts payable, the general fund is that large because we're paying that paving bill. Just for anybody who's watching. Any further discussion? Hearing none, those in favor? Aye. Move opposed. Motion carries. And signature of the traffic ordinance. You had changed the amended the traffic ordinance. It was a small amendment on Brown's Mill Road to from 25, I mean from 35 miles an hour to 25 miles an hour. That was voted on August 20th and there is a 60 day look back that we have to wait before an ordinance is effective. We did not get any comments or any concerns regarding that. And so October 19th, the ordinance became effective and I would ask that the board sign, this is the last page of the ordinance so I can give an updated copy to the clerk's office. Any motion on this one, Dana? I don't think so, you've already voted on it. The sign's already been solved. All right. So if they didn't sign it, we'd be in trouble. They were not yet? Not yet. Discussion of the audit, Diane? Yes, I guess that Dana and I were talking about that because the auditor is Bobby Bills the Galway that we have right now. They've got me entering the third year, okay? So it's going to be the contract to be up. So Dana, I'm kind of talking about. We had, we just thought we'd have this discussion because normally we would automatically put out an RFP for an audit on the audit. Every time we change auditors, I think it costs the town some money because of coming up with speed where the audit is. I think it's a good idea. Many towns might use the same firm but ask for a different team. So I just thought I'd mention that to the board before we went ahead and necessarily started and sent out a new RFP. There's no extension of this? We don't have, and that's the, no, we do not have an extension. There was not an extension written into that RFP, the last RFP. And we are charged by the hour. So if they have to get additional information that we'd already be supplied to other auditors, we're paying to that. What we found last time, I think, was there are three firms, really, that were qualified to do this in this area, to do the audit. And they're three good firms. I mean, it's, certainly, they would do a very good job, although it just is expensive, for lack of a better way to put it, to change horses. Do we have to? You don't, no. It's our policy, too, but I mean, it's the board's decision. I think if I could also pitch, because the fire department also incurs a cost for an audit, too, and we've talked about the wisdom of including some of the fire department finances and possibly making them a municipal department in some fashion, over time, or whatever, I don't think we're ready to do that now. But, and as the budget is also an item here, maybe that's something for us to talk about, too. If we do put it out to better, even if we don't, would it make sense, just more think it makes sense, for us to sort of try to get that as a package deal? For both. For both, have both audited at the same time. I mean, their books are separate. It's not Diane's thing. But what if, you know, what if the fire department hired the town or something, however we would manage that, and Diane could essentially manage their books and have the audit kind of capture that at the same time. So I think that Diane would be willing to partner with them to help this process through. We had talked about that, I believe, Joe Staub was here, and talked about that. I think it was a very viable, for whatever audit firm to have them do. And the fire department board, while we haven't passed any sort of resolution about that, they seem to be generally amenable to that. There were a lot of questions about making a municipal department, a lot of logistics and other questions that still need to be answered. But I think in terms of this, that's sort of the kind of the low hanging fruit where we could save, I think, a fair bit of money. And having talked to you before about this, Diane, you said it probably wouldn't be a heck of a lot more work for you. I don't think so. Obviously, I'd like to get something as audited first. Of course. I'm into issues, but beyond that, I don't feel that there would be that time consuming for me. Does the program you're using, will it support that? I don't think I would be using NEMRIC that we have right now. And I don't know if NEMRIC has anything for fire departments. They might, and I could certainly acquire. I mean, you'd think there's a lot of cities that they do that have fire departments. Yeah, so they probably, they might. I'm sure it's just like our software is just another department. Yeah. And if I had to get general ledger software just for that, I don't think that would be expensive and I think that that would be easily done. Keeping a subsidiary company as you will. Yes, right. Yeah, because you would want to keep that separate. You would not want that with a general fund. Since it's not a department. But where to become a department, that would be a different story. Right. So that was our thought on the audit and wanted your opinion. And you don't have to give us your opinion tonight, but if you'd like to, we wanted to plant the seed and because we will, sometime in November, if you choose to put on RFP, we usually like to get it out. Well, if we don't, will they sort of repaid a new number? I imagine they will. Yeah, I imagine they will. And we haven't really spoken with them. I mean, to be candid, we have not spoken with Father Kelsig Alley about what they could do for us price-wise. I didn't think it was appropriate until we had this discussion. I mean, if they're going to come to us with a bid anyways, we could start the bidding process knowing full well that if we bring in one of the other two bigger players in there that we're going to be incurring additional costs. We could add to the RFP codicell that we might continue with the same auditor if we were so inclined to do so, similar to what we have with the ambulance contract. I'll be very careful how we discuss that. I think we talked about it out of executive session one night and got spanked pretty hard. Well, we won't do that. I don't like being spanked. Anything else on this discussion? No, thank you. OK. Reserves? Yes, there's a couple more reserves. These are the last of the reserves that I haven't talked about yet, and these are very small. They look relieved, I have. Yeah, they should be relieved, too. It has to do with cemeteries and water supply. And I think you've gotten a little bit of a blurb on it. I've gone back. I've looked through the notes. I've found what I can find on it. And it appears to me that back one of them was like in 2006, the other one was in 2012. But what they were doing is they were budgeting in the amount of money for water, which was engineering that they were looking for, and cemeteries, which was mowing. And if they didn't spend the whole amount in the budget, they would carry it over into reserve. Well, it just seems like this has been hanging out there for at least four years, if not more. So in the water supply, which we use for engineering, back in the day, there's $2,165.39. And in cemeteries, which was used for mowing, which we do set up money for mowing every year, there's $2,758.37. So those reserves probably should be used for what they were intending, what we had actually set them up for. We're just not touching them at all. And there's small amounts. Well, I mean, the one for the water we're going to be doing the engineering on the other well. Just roll them up for me. There are, yeah. It seems to me, yeah, good to do that. We certainly could use the money in the water division. And the cemeteries, you and I were talking maybe if there is stones that needed to be fixed or something. I think it would be nice if cemeteries thought about maybe fixing some of the stones, perhaps that there's no relatives left. Now, obviously for $2,000, you're not going to get a lot of work done. I wouldn't think. But it was set aside for mowing and it seems to be reasonable just to use the small amounts for what they were intending to for, rather than keep them in the bank forever in the bank. Because we're not getting interest on them. And that is worth anything. So can we just throw them into mowing or maintenance or whatever? We could, yeah. What road? Yeah. No, that we can do, but we can mow your lawn too. So if you'd like to do that, we do need a motion to allow us to use the reserve. Make that happen when we have bills come in in the future. For those apartments? So the one is specifically for cemetery mowing? There's one that was cemeteries, yes. And that's just called cemeteries and it was used for mowing prior. And that's $2,758.37. And then there's one for water supply for $2,165.39. Okay, so I'm gonna make a motion that we authorize the treasurer to pay for cemetery related expenses out of the cemetery reserve fund and for water supply related expenses out of the water reserve fund. Second. Are you approved of the discussion? Hearing none, those in favor? Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. And budget preparation for fiscal year 2000. This is so exciting. And we just wanted to remind you that it's budget time coming up again. And I guess I just wanted to, I'm going to be going to department heads and asking for the annual wish list, which we'll go through several meetings and be pared down in order to make it feasible. And I wanted the board's advice. Was there anything in particular for a goal that the board had in mind? And also to advise, get the board's idea on meeting schedules, oftentimes we meet weekly and not in a few cases. I think, I think weekly, like we've done in the past, I think it makes sense. On a Thursday probably would be good. Work so far. Okay. Any idea as far as a goal that we should look for? I mean, sometimes it's easier for the department heads of myself to say, Tim, you're not going to get a new building this year.  Well, I'd like to think we could level fund again, but I don't think we're going to be able to. I am very hesitant that you could level fund. We're not adding a new officer this year. Well, you have, last year you voted to add an officer. However, you only budgeted half a year for that officer. So this year it will impact the salary line and police because we'd have to budget the entire year. But are we actually going to have a full complement of officers the entire year? It hasn't happened yet. But I think that if we had- Jeremy. Just say it. So I'm not going to say yes. And so obviously when that happens, we do have excess funds in the salary line which goes back to the citizens as far as fund balance. However, we don't know. So what was that at the top of my head when we didn't have like an equipment reserve? We were funding every year. But that was added to the budget and that if we level fund that, we're going to still keep plowing that same amount in there. So that's there. That was increasing it. Right, same amount. But it goes in. Do we have any huge equipment to buy this year? We perhaps will have an expense following our accident with the excavator. I can't tell you how much or anything, but again, that's what that fund is for. Right. Maybe another cruiser coming up. It's coming up. Usually we replace a police cruiser. So I don't believe Highway has any trucks in mind. No, no, no. We're going to talk about the grader. Do you have them used? Yeah, they were both used. The excavator and the grader were both used. I don't think we're in the position that she didn't do the grader if we do another. The excavator got a year left on. Yeah, but you're going to get insurance money on the excavator. Well, you're not going to be able to buy a new excavator for the insurance money. No, but I mean, you're going to. I understand. Yeah, we can figure something out. You'll probably get more than you would if you had to trade it in, that's for sure. So maybe we should think about buying part of the grader next year. Or that was the reason why you got here. Would you be later in the reserve? Yes, that's what I'm thinking. I mean, you don't need to buy an excavator. I mean, they can fix it. So the insurance should cover the repairs on the. Well, we are speaking prematurely. We don't know. The insurance could very well say we'll pay for the repairs. And that would be great. Because with the price that I got today, it's not going to be more than what the excavator's worth. So they're not going to total it, I don't believe. OK, well, that I didn't know. And that's insurance hasn't given us a decision. So but I'm trying to make the board just aware that we have some expenses that we know we'll have. And of course, it's a trailer, but. Right, insurance is fire department. I'm just thinking of the biggest. I think the fire department can probably come in level. I mean, I haven't looked detailed into the budget, but we're working on it right now too. And if we can push down the cost of bookkeeping and the audit, I mean, we could come back with a budget that's 3% lower. Without, I would say, without too much effort. So maybe not level of fun. But again, with salary increases and. We usually do, I think, traditionally around in the 2% range for salary increases. And other big expenses that are different. So culverts, I think those are all counted for. I think we have Richardson Road culvert coming up, but we do have funds that we have budgeted for that. And so I think it won't impact us too negatively. So we could be in pretty good shape as far as if you're trying to keep it level as possible. But I don't I hate to promise it's going to be level when we really haven't gotten to the bottom. I'm just thinking that things that we're going to expect to go up is that the salaries and then plowing some money into a reserve for equipment. The insurances. Yes, it was a creep up too, also. Creep some of them. They're about 14% that the benefits are. Try to be slightly optimistic. So we'll level fund the insurance. Now, right? So I think we'll be starting the budget. Maybe we'll start the budget series next in two weeks. And get going. We'll start working with that. So Diane can have those. Put those up to the department heads. I will do that. And then I'll schedule them to come in to talk to you. Diane and I will do the administrative. We can do that in two weeks. And then we'll ask the police chief and Tim to come in at a subsequent meeting. And I will contact the fire department. They usually come in December sometime. So I will contact Joe Stobb to arrange something with him. That's it? That's all we need to say to you on that? I'm sure that's all we want to hear. I'm sure you didn't want to hear that. Small Business Saturday. Traditionally, every year you have approved the Small Business Saturday. And they send us a script for you to approve. It changes ever so slightly every year. So I guess I'm asking you to consider supporting Small Business Saturday, which this year is November 24th. It's the Saturday of the Thanksgiving weekend. And that, of course, is to shop locally and support small businesses. I'm going to have to sign the Small Business Saturday resolution that's presented. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Those opposed? Not in motion to carries. It's just a little late on the eye. Oh. I think we're OK if you want to. If you'd like to leave us. You don't have to. Thank you, Diane. Town Administrative Report, Dana? I have a few things that I'd just like to tell you. As you know, I've been talking about the town plan and getting the town plan approved. And we did have some bumps along the way. We have the letter that just came that the plan has been approved. It has a few conditions for approval that were noted in your letter that you sent out regarding rewriting a few of the support of the, I think it was, the child care portion. And there was also an employment portion. Not a huge, huge deal. And we agreed to do that. So that is, and I, again, a lot of people worked very hard on this, not myself, but a lot of people worked very hard on this. And I applaud them, the Planning Commission. I did receive a notice that there is a class on the Emerald Ash Borer on November 28. It's going to be presented by the University of Vermont Extension at their office down on the Barrymont Peely Road. You're interested. We received a thank you letter from the Good Samaritan Haven for our contribution to them. And since the town plan is now approved, we are starting to ramp up our follow-through on the designated town center application. And Tom and I met with Mike Rushman this week. And as you remember, Mike came into you on the board, supported the idea of the town center designation. The mall is providing Mike Rushman's services. And we are going to first start by actually formally deciding what will be included in that town center. In other words, they need things like civic organizations. The school would be a good one, for example. And whatever else. And I think the hospital was another one they had in mind as a community-type thing. So we're working on that. We did apply for a grant for Better Roads. To follow up, Tim and I went out with regional planning, Dan Currier from Regional Planning, who reviewed with us a lot of our ditches and how to improve our ditching drainage. And to do that, obviously, we have to do some work. So we have applied for a Better Roads grant for that. The Mirror Lake Road culvert is coming along. And it was noted today to me of how big it is. And it kind of looks like a quonset hut in the middle of the road. And I do have a calling to John Grenier because I'm a little concerned about it. I have not heard from him back yet. But I will follow up with that. But they are working on it. The police department doors. I know you're tired of hearing about these doors and so am I. But we absolutely have to do something. We got the one quote. So I did go back and I spoke with EF Wall and I spoke with Lodge and Ask. And Ask if there's what they could think of, even in a different way. If we fix it a different way, what might we be able to do? I have a feeling we're going to end up in the $10,000 range with those doors. But at some point we have to do something. The hazard mitigation plan, the grant was approved that the state got through the feds. So we're really, now we can set out an RFP for the hazard for the plan to be done. However, we don't have the signed grant paperwork. And I'm hesitant to do that until I do because we can't use in-kind services if I start working on it before we have that paper. So I would like to have the grant done quickly. And we don't have it done yet. So that's a little update of what we have going on. Tom mentioned to me today that the water division used this month 50% more water than they used the month before. And we have added, which is a good thing, it gives us more revenue for our customers because the motor end hilltop is now connected to the water system. The mall is going to be connected to the water system within the next few weeks. So we have some very large users coming on. We also, at the next meeting, you'll be meeting with a gentleman who will be coming in to give you an update on an idea for a parcel at the mall. And they have not made an application to DRB yet. But they asked if they could come in and talk with you about that. And I made an appointment for them for next time on the 15th. So you got one restaurant that hooked up in the water. You stubbed one up by 50%? Well, I don't think it's the one restaurant. No, well, it's the motor end, the motor end. Oh, and the Genesis, the nursing home. So they're on now? Yes. And Tom just mentioned, I didn't really analyze where the water. But obviously, we keep track of pumping records. Oh, sure. And so we're pumping up. The motel must use quite a bit of water. With that? The motel must use quite a bit of water. Oh, I would think so. Yeah. I think in the very beginning, well, not the very beginning, but just the hospital would have used over 60%, they said. What's capacity? Well, I don't know if we're gallons. I think it's like we can pump 216,000 gallons per day. And that equated to like 432 ERUs. And we are more than that, not a great deal more. But that's why the next, the other well is being developed now. Obviously, again, and we keep telling you this, there are many ERUs that are not actual in use. We're at a different spot. And the ERUs, which is a good thing, the ERUs are estimated on the high side just for protection. But I think through all the struggle that everybody had before us, whatever, getting that water system in, that it's pretty comforting to see how quickly and how Berlin embraced it once it was in place. And I think these developments that are coming down, since we have water sewer, it makes it a lot more attractive to that type of. And speaking of the sewer, what is the timeline for that, again, if you can refresh my memory? The project on the sewer. I'm not exactly sure of the exact timeline. They are working on it now. And I think they had hoped to have the project completed in the next year. So they're working on the engineering of that? Right now, they're doing the engineering and that type of thing. And also, we've met with a couple of financing sources. And it probably will be, I always get this mixed up. I always say FDIC, but it's the same. And CUA, the credit union? No, it begins with the federal, rural, agricultural program. That's it. Roundtable fee. A second, central internet item? Oh, that's right. I can just do that quick. So central internet approved a draft annual report and a draft budget to solicit feedback. It was supposed to have gotten to all of you. It was sent to all the town city clerks to be disseminated, so I don't know. Did everybody else get that? It was a report to be included in the town report? Possibly, it's still a draft report. It's before. Was there any action item with it? Because I do believe that the clerk received that. So there was a specific ask in the email that I sent out to the clerks to distribute to the select boards and the city councils. Well, I'll follow up with that and make sure you get a copy. OK, so I can go over briefly. We're not installing fiber optic anything yet. So the first couple of steps that we've, a couple of milestones we've hit, all that unglamorous work of bylaws, policies. We have a draft budget. We're rebranding it from central internet to CV fiber. That's in central Vermont fiber. We've registered CV fiber.net. So the mission statement that's been, I'm sorry, the mission statement here, and a vision. Our next steps are starting to survey residents looking at a pilot project. And the budget that we put together is roughly $300,000. It's not anything that's coming from towns. That's going to be either raised in terms of loans or donations or grants to do the initial pilot project of about six miles of fiber to hook up, hopefully, between 30, 36 and 50 subscribers, wherever that might be. Not really sure where that is, so any sort of feedback that the individual legislative bodies of the towns have on that budget or on the annual report is something that can be presented at our next meeting. We have a public hearing on Tuesday, November 13th at 6 PM at Berlin Elementary, where we have our monthly meeting. So any of the 16 member towns that have comments, ideas, direction can bring that to that meeting. Or you can send it to me, and I can communicate that at the meeting as well. Some big steps. Yeah, and whether we will actually land that much revenue and actually build the thing up by the end of next year, it's not entirely clear. So it's somewhat aspirational, but I think there is a couple of really promising options that we could start hooking people up with gigabit fiber much sooner than denied initially imagined. I mean, it's amazing, looking around in different parts of the country, add stuff, and there's a lot of place that does not have internet, and it affects the price of housing dramatically. I've had people call me, because my number is listed on the central of my internet Facebook page, and they'll call me, and they'll say, I'm looking to buy a house in wherever. Do you serve there? I was like, well, hold on a second. But I can usually tell them pretty much. I can bring up maps, and I can tell them, is there cables, or DSLs, or anything. And I tell them, it's like, well, there's DSL there, so you'll probably get what, six megabits per second. They're like, oh, I think we're going to have to look somewhere else then. It's dumbfounded. Yeah, I don't have access to high speed in it. I mean, I have high speed, but it's not the maximum. And I don't have access to cable, even if the cable's opening, I mean, it also says right here. Do you have access to cable up on Junction Road? Yeah, we're on, well, Rita types to the hospital, so she has that height. So a dedicated link there. Yeah. OK. Let's see here. What about all of them, Jeremy? Yeah, all of them. Roundability. I'm all set. Jeremy? Well, one more thing. I went to the memorial service at the fire department. They dedicated their plaques on the front of the building. It was an incredible turnout. They had Norwich, the Hebsen Drums Band, whatever. It was great. I mean, so there was a lot of people who hadn't been there in years and years, who came back to say hi and sort of show their thanks and eat food, you tell them. Any executive session? No. Move to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Motion carries.


Welcome to Free Thoughts, a new project of the Cato Institute's Libertarianism.org. Free Thoughts is a show about libertarianism and the ideas that influence it. I'm Aaron Powell. I'm a research fellow here at the Cato Institute, an editor of Libertarianism.org. And I'm Trevor Burris. I'm a research fellow at the Cato Institute Center for Constitutional Studies. For this first episode of Free Thoughts, we want to look at politics and community in the relationship between them. Libertarians often get called anti-community, that's an unfair charge, of course, but it's a plausible one if you assume no difference between community and politics, between community and the state. This mistake is in fact a rather common one, and thus results in many bad arguments against libertarianism. So what is community, and what is politics, and can we have one without the other? Trevor, let's maybe start by defining our terms here. These people, I think, have a good sense of what community means, but we can get to that one. But let's start with politics. We talk about politics and we contrast it with community or compare it to community. What do we mean by that? Well, generally we're talking about some method, you know, there's a lot of, whether it's dictatorship or anything like that, but we just can stick, I would say, to modern political philosophy. Some method by which a group of people enact control, it's usually voting over other people in the area. It's not voluntary, that's first of all clear. It's not all voluntary. No, and I think the voluntary is, that's the really important issue here, and that's where we start to really distinguish politics from community. I wrote a post for libertarianism.org this week where I said that politics is basically we start with discourse, with group decision making, so we vote on something and people agree to go along with it or not, and that happens all the time in our daily lives.  Even though it looks a lot like the stuff that goes on, it looks a lot like voting, the difference is you add and the winners get to back up their position with violence or the threat of violence. Ultimately, violence. You could also, you could go, I guess, a little bit above violence. We might be going, maybe some people would think we're going hyperbolic, violence is part of the equation. We might just want to say that the losers view it as legitimate, that they have to comply with the winners. That's one thing, that's one function of democracy, and a many dispute resolution that if you lose the game, if you lose a dispute, you abide by the results still, and those who don't, most people voluntarily abide by the results of democracy, and if you don't, though, there is a threat of force to back it up. But isn't that sense of needing to abide applies even in the non-political examples of the, say, going out to the restaurant, that if we all say we're going to go to a restaurant tonight at eight and we'll decide when we get together, the losers, so to speak, in that case, still probably feel like they're not going to say, well, then I'm just going to head off on my own and go to that other restaurant I wanted to anyway. Generally speaking, and that would be against social convention, but they don't have to, right? Right, and so I think the have to is where for, I mean, we're taught that we should, and we internalize this notion, but ultimately what sets politics apart from all the other things, even other things where we have a really strong sense that we ought to abide by the decision, is that in the political arena there is this specter of violence out there, that if you don't, if the society decides that everyone's house has to look a certain way and you don't want to paint your house that way and you refuse, you get fined, and if you don't pay the fine, then they'll come and threaten you or garnish your wages or whatever else, and if you still refuse to pay it, then they'll come and try to arrest you, and if you resist arrest, you get violence. Exactly, and that is a very good touchstone for why politics is something very different than community. You don't have that in your going to dinner example or even necessarily in a gated community. A gated community can bring force upon people, but it can't make you live there. You could say that the state can't make you live in the state, but that gets a little bit difficult for something you've been born into and everything around you, all your friends, they all live there. You'd like to stay there, and of course the violence is the crucial thing, and that gets us to the definition of the state that is most often used by libertarians and non-libertarians, which is the holder of the monopoly on violence within a geographic location. Or legitimate violence, because there are lots of people who engage in violence within a state, but the state claims that it's the only one who may legitimately do so, that it's not wrong when it doesn't. It's on mob shakedown operation or something like that. It's a legitimate community-oriented, at least that's the theory method of figuring out the things that we have to decide together, and that's of course the other thing that comes into this in the words of people like Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama pretty recently, where we talk about politics in such a community type of language where we say, you know, Barack Obama said, politics is the one thing we all participate in. I don't know if it was politics, but government is the one thing we all participate in. And then similarly we have Elizabeth Warren saying, you know, you didn't build that, and other people picking up that vein of discussion to talk about how this integrated hole that we live in where we vote and choose all these things through political methods and then use violence ultimately to enforce that against the people who lose that election or decision making, that that is some sort of instantiation of the general community where we depend upon each other. Yeah, the point that Elizabeth Warren is making is this kind of gratitude account of why we ought to obey the state and why we ought to pay taxes, which is that, you know, you weren't kind of born into a vacuum. You were born into this pre-existing society that had a pre-existing amount of stuff, resources, services, all of that, and that because those things were either in some cases provided by the government or supported by the government in some way, and that that government is us. It's, you know, it's us coming together, it's us paying for these things via taxes, that anything that you, any goods you derived from using these things you found in the environment. So the education you got going to the schools, the places you were able to go, driving on the roads, whatever else, to some level you owe everyone else for that. And because the government is everyone else, in this view, you owe the government, and so then you're then obligated to both obey the government, respect its laws, so that it doesn't have to use violence against you, and to continue to pay for these services, to kind of pay it forward. As much as the community demands, I guess, I don't know if Elizabeth Warren would draw an upper line of, for example, progressive taxation, if that was your fee for, you know, becoming a millionaire because you use roads in schools. But aside from that, I think that it's interesting to take the, what I have called, and I know what we have called together, extremification of the conversation. So the counterpoint to, and we're recording this during the government shutdown, so we're hearing a lot of discussions of, you know, anarchists, I'm making scare quotes there, Tea Party people, and then not people who want to keep the government running, and the Tea Party people are against community and against government, this kind of rhetoric. So the counterpoint to the Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, we're all in this together, government is what we do all together, is the idea of the atomistic individual who apparently, or at least in terms of the straw man argument, denies that fact totally and thinks that men are islands. I think that's sort of a caricature we get a lot. Yeah, we get it quite often. It's probably the, that's probably the most common one next to maybe were selfish and greedy and just want to get whatever is ours at the expense of everyone else, although the two are very related in this kind of straw man picture of libertarianism. In fact, that particular charge has shown up quite recently in several attacks against libertarianism published. So there was Peter Corning publishing in Psychology Today, wrote a piece on, I believe, what's the matter with libertarians, or what's the matter with libertarianism, and he said that quote, the more radical versions of libertarianism rely on a terminally deficient model of human nature in society, and he adds, we evolved as intensely interdependent social animals. So keep in mind, this is what he's saying, this is what he's saying is the real model that libertarians reject. So he says that the real model is we evolved as intensely interdependent social animals and our sense of empathy towards others, our sensitivity to reciprocity, our desire for inclusion, and the loyalty to the groups we bond with, the intrinsic satisfaction we derive from cooperative activities, and our concern for having the respect and approval of others all evolved in humankind to temper and constrain our individualistic selfish impulses. So there you've got that. In another one called Libertarians Are the New Communists, and not been published in Bloomberg by Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu, they said radical libertarianism assumes that humans are wired only to be selfish, when in fact, cooperation is the height of human evolution. These quotes, when you look at them, they strike me as really interesting. We could have discussions about how much, let's just take the welfare state. There's so many other things we talk about, but the welfare state is always a big one, and we have these people advocating for forced welfare payments, right? And apparently, I would assume not believing that voluntary welfare payments, charity, private charity would do the job. Yeah, because we should be clear what they're not. When they talk about we are libertarians and these radical individualists and selfish and whatever else, they're not saying libertarians are going out there and violating basic rights in order to get what they want. They're not saying, well, libertarians are these, are muggers, and are out there stealing from people. But they might think that about business men or something like that. Sure, but I mean, we're talking like genuine muggers on the street. That's not what they're saying we are. The reason that they are saying these things about us is because we are rejecting certain ways of interacting with and in their minds, helping other people. Exactly. And so the welfare state, if they apparently think people need to be coerced into providing welfare, and we think that people can be pretty good at providing charity by themselves, you have to kind of ask who is actually thinking people are selfish, right? We need to have temper and constrain our individuals like selfish impulses. We are wired to be selfish when, in fact, cooperation is the height of human evolution, but they need to make people through force behave the way that they are saying people are anyway. People are so cooperative, but they're not cooperative enough for us, apparently. Is it possible, though, that their argument is with a certain type of utopian thinking that they see libertarians as engaging in? Because if we replaced all coerced welfare system, welfare programs, with totally voluntary, like private charity. So right now, everyone pays taxes in some form or another, and a portion of each person's taxes goes towards these social welfare programs. And let's assume that it then is just dispersed to people who need it. There aren't these inefficiencies. Yeah, there's no noise in the system. Right, it's just going. Then under this coercion, everyone is participating in providing welfare for the needy. If we went to a strictly voluntary system, many people would continue to give, just as many people right now give to charities. But it is the case that fewer people would give in a voluntary system. Yeah, that would just be an economic calculation. Your marginal person would stop giving. There are people who are really into giving to charity, and there are people who are less into giving to charity. So those people would stop giving. And that's always a question of economics in terms of how much private charity would result, but in terms of it being a question of community and whether or not we're against community, we go back to this question of whether or not these mechanisms that politically choose welfare recipients, politically choose everything from schools, the quality of nature and quality of our schools, the curriculum of our schools, any of these things that we decide about, well, I should put we in quotation marks again, any of these things some people who vote decide about are in fact community, and to deny that is atomistically individualistic. And I think that's interesting just in terms of a broader debate that has been happening in political philosophy for, I would say, a couple centuries now, which is a slow erosion of the private sphere in order to make it public. And that's when they're sort of denying that there's atomistic individuals. They have to say, well, you're not really all on your own. You affect things outside of your private sphere and things outside of your private sphere affect you. One of the things that strikes me about that is feminists have brought this point up a lot. They say that the private sphere, keeping it private, allowing husbands to beat their wives as was possibly the case in some places in the 19th century and allowing different types of pressure to go on inside the home leaks to the outside of the home area and perpetuates the oppression of females in the broader sense. So this idea that there is no such thing as private, right? That all things are ultimately political and the government has jurisdiction over all these areas that are private to your personal life, property, and individual. Let me ask, just stepping back and going back to the violence issue, because we've gone into communion. I want to talk about what these different conceptions of community, what the libertarian view of community actually looks like and how it relates to politics. But the question of violence here, we often, I mean, when we call something violence, there's a sense in which all violence is illegitimate, right? It's not acceptable to engage in violence. Yeah. So is that actually the case? Do we have to, is there a place for violence within politics? Or is it, so I guess, is there a place for politics? That is, I mean, that's the way this should be considered. I'm not an anarchist and I find, I think about where politics should be in a place. And I kind of think about this. Best represented is sort of where are Venn diagrams most overlap. And that's the way I sort of think about it. If you think about everyone's preferences for various things, and where the Venn diagrams most overlap is the place where politics is better suited for decision making. And so some of those that are mentioned, and we believe here, Cato, like strong national defense, for example, has a far more overlapping agreement on where we should be using politics to decide these things. Where we have schooling, for example, and how people should be taught, how children should be taught, also what substances should be prohibited, a ton of how our health care programs should look. You start having just very little overlap, and you can tell that when you start hearing rhetoric that's incredibly vague, like everyone needs to be taken care of in their health care needs, that explains a lot of different opinions about what health care needs are. And so that would be my general very inexact theory of where politics is best suited, is where we agree on more things. But even still, there's going to be some areas where even agreement isn't necessary for or violence or politics to be justified. So if we have a set of basic rights, so a right not to be assaulted and murdered, a right not to have our property stolen, those rights don't depend on agreement. And yet violence is permissible around those rights in the sense that if you violate my rights or you're going to violate one of those rights, or you're coming at me with a knife, I am allowed to engage in violence to defend myself. Yeah, it's not the agreement that makes them makes violence permissible. It's the underlying source of the agreement, I would say. So the desire to not have our stuff stolen is a very, very widely shared desire, but that's not why violence is justified to prevent that. It's not the agreement, it's the fact that having our stuff stolen is a violation of right. That's the core reason. But again, that gets you to what the meaning of like minimal enormity of state, which is what a Hayekian term would be, or just a minimal government that protects life, liberty, property. Those are sort of descriptions of things that have very, very wide agreement on where politics is less pernicious to community in those areas. And this has been discussed in political philosophy for centuries. And in the 20th century, both John Rawls, who is sort of the torch bearer of modern liberalism, and then also Friedrich Hayek, who is a very big fan, we're very big fans of Hayek at Cato, both of them talked about sort of overlapping social consensus and Rawls in terms of the things everyone agrees that are minimally needed. And also Hayek's point about minimal normative normativity for where the state should control, where we can create a community out of politics better than in more specific things. I mean, I'm not saying anything different than right now is like, think of the disagreements that would arise if we tried to vote about decorating our houses. And those disagreements, that's very maximally normative. Those disagreements arise because we have a lot of very different opinions about how to decorate our houses. And they aren't violations of right. And so the Venn diagrams are just scattered and they rarely overlap. And in terms of basic violation of property rights, we have a lot of agreement on. And I think this gets to where our differences are with these quotes that I read earlier, the conception of community and politics that's expressed in those is we see far from saying denying politics or denying the expansiveness of politics or wanting to scale politics back, far from saying that that is somehow corrosive of community. If we shrink the state, it means we're necessarily anti-community. We in fact tend to argue that the more politics you have, the less genuine and effective and well-functioning a community will be. And much of that is for exactly these reasons is that a community, in order for a community to really work, in order for us to feel like a part of it and get a lot out of it, which is enormously important for us. And we need to be part of these social relationships in order to be happy. That there has to be a level of trust and we can't feel threatened by the people around us. And so if we're using politics to decide all of these questions, like how are we going to decorate our house, but also ones that are more important to us. I mean, how you decorate house actually is important to a lot of people, but things like how do we educate our children? What sorts of ways do we address health concerns? How do we religious questions, all these other things? The more that those are determined by the political process. The more it separates us. Yeah, it turns people who would be members of the same community with differences.  It starts pushing us in the direction of being enemies. Because if you get your way, it means that I don't get mine. And if what we're arguing about is something that's really important to me and to my sense of purpose and the direction I want my life to take, then you're doing real damage to me. Yeah, and I've described this, I guess it's somewhat of a little bit of a joke, but I have an essay on the Libertarian Social Work site called The Problem of People Liking Different Things. And it is only a problem under certain circumstances. So it's not a problem that someone listening to this likes Mexican mariachi music, and I don't, generally speaking. It is a problem if that is suddenly politicized. And suddenly the fact that the guy likes Mexican mariachi music and me, we can hang out together and be friends. But as soon as I'm starting to try and pose my music taste on him or vice versa, it suddenly is very anti-community. And this is, you can analyze a lot of political theory just to say, that person likes different things, and I think the fact that they like those things is bad. And I want to take control over them, whether it's they like SUVs or they like corporate products or things that destroy the environment, which on some basic level just means that they don't have the same preference for the environment as you do. And so now it's just a question of whose preference for the environment wins out. Although to be fair, there are instances where their lack of preference for the environment could be a legitimate threat. Absolutely. So if they're dumping waste into the groundwater where you get your water, that could be very harmful to you. Yes. And those are difficult questions that we talk about here at Kato All the Time and the best way of solving those. But you need to come up with some story like that. Generally speaking, I mentioned these private spheres a few minutes ago about the erosion of the private sphere and getting into them to say you're causing harm. And you have this question, for example, in environmental regulation, where no, your pollution is leaking outside of your private sphere. We're going to regulate that. But generally speaking, respect in private spheres are very good ways of letting people live together in a community-oriented way, in a good fences, make good neighbors type of way, where we're suddenly all not, you have control over your place and I have control over my place and barring some sort of leakage. That's generally the rule. And now we're not voting on everything under the sun because someone has sort of a just-so story about how your music taste or the cigarette smoke that's leaking outside of your house or whatever is causing all these problems. So I need to come into your private sphere and regulate it. I think what's an important point to make here is that in addition to the argument that we make that the bigger politics gets and what we mean again by bigger politics is more decisions in our lives being made via the political process as opposed to being made by us. And by us does not mean just radically isolated individuals who are totally uninfluenced by anyone and anything around them because all of us are deeply embedded in cultures and communities and families and networks of friends and they influence the decisions we're going to make. And it would be too large and impossible to make decisions that weren't influenced in some way by all of that. But those are still voluntary decisions in the sense that they're not backed up by violence if they're not being coerced upon us. But we argue that that as politics grows it degrades meaningful community. But it's also the case and these are I think it's a subtle distinction but they are distinct that also the smaller politics is if politics is reduced to just the state is reduced to just respecting these rights and protecting these fundamental rights that that will have a huge positive benefit on community. The community will flourish even more than it already is. Yeah and the people will solve things voluntarily. You have the sort of utopia of utopia's idea in Robert Nozick which is within a minimal state you can have a thousand flowers. And a minimal state is one that limits itself to just protecting these basic rights. Yeah and a thousand flowers can bloom about the possibilities of freedom and voluntariness. And that's in different policy areas. Kato here we talk about that in different ways. In the education context we talk about how the thousand flowers that can bloom are a thousand different types of schools that have different ways of educating kids and no one is fighting over their kids education and how they want to educate other people's kids in an interesting way. So the left says kids need to learn global warming and environmentalism. And the right says they need to learn Christian values and God and that creates a lot of strife but they can both have their schools in a minimally normative state in a night watchman state if you want to call it just protecting those basic values. And those communities can be friends in a way that they aren't really friends within the political system. And you can still if you want to live with people who share your values you absolutely can. The people do that now. Yeah I mean that's like cities and towns have a recognizable character that differs from other cities and towns and that's because people like to live with other people who share their values and so they start living together and then that place develops a reputation for having a certain sort of community and so people who are attracted to that community move there and all of that happens without these people you know like Given City has a very strong indie music scene and people who are into indie rock go there but that happens without the community voting and saying in this town 85% of the shows that must be indie rock must be indie rock it just it happens organically and it it allows for a much richer more vibrant culture and it also happens within larger cities you'll have neighborhoods that are very distinct in feel and again that happens without this without politics. Yes the the possibilities of community developing just sort of naturally and then also the ways in which government destroys community I think it seems it seems clear to me now of course I'm biased but it seems clear to me that if you look at the the sort of ways in which government destroys community we've talked about some of them such as voting on education which both destroys the possibility of multiple education systems and makes you probably not like maybe your neighbor with the bit Romney sign if you have an Obama sign as much as you might like them if you weren't fighting over each other's lives but you also have the possibility of you have the actuality of the government destroying community in far more clear ways so we have a drug war for example that has eviscerated inner city black communities in particular but tons of communities around the globe including South America and Latin America that that's a really bad one we have some really you know just just straightforward ideas of literally destroying communities in the sense of imminent domain when they decide to take out an entire neighborhood that is a could be a thriving community but the government decides that some people who are now voting over that decide that it's not they're not behaving in the way that they want them to be behaving so they bulldoze the entire thing that happens a disturbingly large amount of time disturbing a lot and so there's very direct ways that the use of force that the government is prohibited or permitted to do no other entity is allowed to do is destroying communities in an incredibly pernicious and damaging to just the human spirit type of way so you know that's one of my first responses to the atomistic individuals like because I believe that people are allowed to put a substance with their body and if they're not hurting anyone else that means I'm not going to break into their house and put them in a cage because they did that and that is a destructive community at such a fundamental level that it would be hard to imagine an argument to the contrary let me see if I can come up with one okay let me push back by saying okay so a lot of the examples that we have given are of people who have basically different tastes using the state to enforce their tastes if their tastes are in the majority or whatever other way they're able to win in the political process which doesn't necessarily mean being in the majority and often in fact doesn't mean that but it's about forcing your tastes upon others so what kind of music you can listen to some education stuff but you can smoke what you can drink but it seems like the response that could be given to this is that's not really what most of politics is about most of politics is about kind of two broad categories of things when we're doing this large scale kind of social engineering is the first is preventing people from causing harm to others that can't be prevented from just like you know through these voluntary means of just asking them to stop or whatever else are moving away so the really toxic pollution is one example or you know that some people argue that the income inequality that they say results from freeing up markets is another one where it's really destructive to a great many people or in healthcare you know like people are being hurt because we don't have laws that require everyone to have access to healthcare and so we're not this is about tastes like everyone would like to have healthcare and everyone would like to have access to a whole range of things so there's there's that sort of thing where you know this is we're stopping hurt that's what we're doing with politics but the other one is is we're stopping people from hurting themselves so what we're doing is it's not that we're forcing our tastes upon them it's that we're saying look for whatever reason weakness of will on your part poor upbringing lack of access to whatever resource necessary you are doing things that are maybe destructive to others but more importantly destructive to yourself and and so we're going to help you even if by help we mean using violence to stop you so the philosopher John Stuart Mill in his book on liberty he he says basically there's no kind of no paternalistic exception to liberty we can't we can't violate someone's right to liberty in order to help them we can only violate it to stop them from hurting someone else but he has this exception which he calls the bridge it's the bridge exception which is if if someone is walking along a path and we know that the bridge is out right ahead that there's no way they're going to see that in time we're certain that they would not want to plunge off this down bridge if they knew about it then in that case we are permitted to yank them out of the way or do something to stop them and so that that seems like a lot of a lot of the things that are done in the political sphere are often we're set we're told are done for those sorts of reasons so that would be the the soda bands that were recently struck down in in new york where mayor bloomberg wanted to limit the size of sodas that people could buy because they were consuming too much sugar sugar which was harmful to them which was this sort of paternalism in the sense of these people if they knew how damaging the sugar was and if they could somehow overcome the you know the urge to have lots of sugar they would thank us yeah no i think that that's a very good explanation of the the honest position i mean it's very important at first we don't care caricature our opponents and say that they're you know blatantly trying to to rule our lives because they're a bunch of lex luthers who want to who just want to do that because they see it's a good time they have arguments um and so you this is the two idea you scope them out there's the external harm possibility and the internal harm being harmed to yourself interestingly i think that most people agree so if you're actually just in this sort of economic way of which one is worse so which one so we have to compare government solutions to what's happening in the private place so when is government making it worse is is just one of the questions so we have the question of pollution for example causing harm and the interesting question is whether or not uh you know does this give does the harm principle or even the benefit principle give like universal jurisdiction over all things right because like the first question is is our principal that we can draw that says okay well like you know we're not that's too low but if we could show that like everyone got the same haircut would produce a ton of benefits or if everyone listened to the same music would produce a ton of benefits or if everyone started driving a single car and we eliminated all preferences and that would produce a ton of benefits and we could show all that stuff shouldn't we just do it and uh that's sort of like the technocratic argument that we should we should just get the experts to come in and measure you know get some mutile some cost benefit analysis I think that you know there's a lot of reasons not to do that but for the point of this conversation it's because it's first of all it's not done cleanly and it and it so that's the first thing and when politics enters into the realm of regulating everything as a harm or a benefit that's leaking outside of your zone it's not you have politics and politics is dirty and everyone knows that so it doesn't do a perfect job that's one so there are costs to politics that's one example the other reason is because as soon as you start playing that game that is the only game in town and you diminish the possibilities and you diminish community so as soon as you you have no limiting principle on harm and you start saying well let's all politicize everything if you can just show me that's best practices if you can show me that this is this is causing a problem well then now everything is political and I I mean some people might say that's okay but I'm always interested to ask people like when when is it too far when has politics gone too far what do you think people shouldn't vote on because there is just an inherent part of a modern liberal democracy whereas in the popular response to your entire neighborhood getting together and voting on what haircut everyone's gonna have is not well you gotta get an interest group and you gotta get a lobbying together and you gotta get some studies to show why your haircut is preferable to that haircut the proper response is no we do not vote about that stuff and that is why the spheres of private action are so crucial because politics is not good at solving those questions it's not good at addressing them and that's for that so that's for the external harm for the internal harm question again it's hard to come up with a principle that would not let me you know smoke marijuana take heroin but would let me skydive or drink alcohol or drink alcohol and the reason for that is because there is no principle in those as they're formulated right now there's just politics you know the reason that alcohol is legal and marijuana is not is not based in some maximum study that we figured out the total harms and the total cost to individual people let's say we're just we're still keeping this to the individual it's not has anything to do with that and everyone knows that so that goes back to the noise question like politics does not solve these questions in any rational way even if it should we're constantly endangering ourselves and we have different preferences for how much we would like to engage in risk-free activity and how much pleasure we get out of it and you know you can't really aggregate those by voting some people are risk takers some people aren't risk takers and that's part of the thousand flowers blooming of a world that respects individuals as individuals and not as their political power of whatever group they happen to be a part of and that's the thing that always gets me like I don't want to live in a world where the skydivers need a lobby next to the bungee jumpers next to the marijuana smokers next to the big soda lobby I don't want to live in that world and it's always finding me that conservatives will come along and you know criticize Michael Bloomberg for his big soda ban and then turn around and support marijuana prohibition or any other drug prohibition I can't find any principle that would differentiate that except for pure politics and that's not what we want to be playing and it's certainly not community oriented it always when we get charged with being anti-community I confess to often just being baffled by that but when we get told like that we are you know that we reject cooperation as just a entirely like cooperation out the window it's not doesn't exist yeah or that we reject social ties and all of that like I just or even the better one that we are libertarians because we want to you know be parasites on people and suck them dry yeah like it's just they don't I mean it just totally doesn't match my experience it doesn't match my values and beliefs or those are the people I know but I do think that there is there's a a certain sort of rhetoric that gets engaged in a bit by some libertarians that doesn't support this view but if if not quite understood makes this view look a bit more plausible and I think that that's this focus on rights when talking about morality so libertarians libertarianism is a first it's a it's a philosophy of government it's a philosophy of what's the proper role of the state but then there's this distinction that gets made between thick and thin libertarianism so thin libertarianism says all that this is about is what the state is permitted to do and not permitted to do and anything that's not a question so that the state's not permitted to get involved in this that is just something we're not even going to talk about because that's not what this political philosophy is about thick libertarianism says no that the the moral beliefs that you hold that lead you to political libertarianism so belief in you know respect for people and their rights and the value of freedom also ought to make you take or lead you to take views on non-political moral matters and I think such as like private discrimination or something like that for example sure yes yes exactly and so I think that people who see libertarians as anti-community often don't see this distinction and don't see that that the thin libertarianism which is what they often attack is is just about politics and so I think it should be clear that you know we're not we do not deny that morality is bigger than rights you know that respecting rights does not exhaust the range of your moral duties you have all of these moral duties beyond that or you know I tend to take this more Aristotelian approach to morality which says that it's not about like how should I behave but what kind of person should I be and so you have these characteristics like being just and being courageous and being kind and beneficent and all these other things and we should we should embrace those values and and live them out in our lives and so yeah respecting rights is part of that it would be you know the being just would mean respecting rights but there's other thing we should also be kind and we should also be generous and all these other virtues and so we we have to be careful to not make it look like we think that the only guidelines on how we behave towards other people are respecting their basic rights because then that that does end up looking like we don't really care about community yeah and I think that that brings up very fascinating questions so we can say that we think the government should do just a minimal amount of things but that the people have higher responsibilities than the government and of course that's what we do say when we say you know private charity is is a moral responsibility but not one that the government can effectively or should enforce but those questions there there are very difficult questions that arise from that that libertarians debate internally to ourselves and some of them for example they often mentioned Civil Rights Act debate so whether or not government should be and this goes back again to piercing the private sphere right the and a very sort of and I mentioned the feminist thing about the thing that happens in the private sphere is not divorced from the public sphere so the Civil Rights Act based on the theory of getting inside and telling private individuals who they can and can't discriminate against is something that libertarians talk about but it is that is entirely consistent viewpoint to say that I believe that the government should not mandate that stuff but I also believe that people I firmly believe people should not discriminate based on race and gender and sexual orientation that is an entirely consistent viewpoint it's interesting when people take their viewpoints on morality in general I believe that people should do all of these things that I think are good and therefore I believe that government should make people do all these things that I think are good and not see that those have to be the same level of moral obligation and I'm not saying I disagree with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 I think there's a lot of very good arguments for it but we have the discussion which is one of the things that the law of criticism that is that like if we even wonder about and question interfering in private activity we're off the reservation for you know normal political discourse that we even question the Civil Rights Act never ever bringing up the fact that you know the fact that they are okay with you know throwing people in cages for years and years at a time for private drug use is so totally unacceptable that we should attack them for that but aside from that fact you know that happens a lot to happen to Rand Paul here's a single thing that I can show your ideology may not believe and therefore your entire ideology is corrupt that's just a silly way of argument it shows they're not taking us seriously but it is I mean it is a fascinating question for example why the government can come in and prohibit private discrimination in a business but they can't do it in dating you know it may sound absurd but like you know if it's just like some guy's like well I don't date black people he's like well that's okay but you have to hire them I mean and there have been a lot of legal theories that come up with that for how you pierce the private sphere but again going back to it you can you can think that it's totally and completely morally obligatory to to behave in some way but the government doesn't have to make you do it and you can also think that the voluntary method of doing that makes you more moral than only doing it because of the threat of force and that brings us back to where we started which is this distinction between politics and community that when you recognize that politics whatever else it is always has this element of force or the threat of force behind it then you can see how you can be opposed to that but very much be in favor of well functioning communities and so I think this is going to be a common theme on free thoughts is that these issues that one side or both sides or all sides have very strong opinions on and think are very clear are often much more complicated and subtle yeah and another theme is what we're going to ask questions about things that people think maybe you're off the table because they're interesting by themselves yeah but in this case we can say that the simplistic view that libertarians because they believe that the state should be much more limited than it already it then it is right now are opposed to society and community is just it's just an ill-informed and absolutely and that and some of that just comes from the fact that you know we always compare in a way that that other political ideologies don't tend to we say oh here's a problem in the market and I believe in market imperfection and market failure and then we compare it to government failure so one of these things is here are some problems with community yes people can be you know racist and they can do horrible things in community but we have to compare to what government does we always have to compare because we do that we can say well I'm very pro-community I think government is anti-community and that's why I don't think it should be involved in these situations thank you for listening to free thoughts if you have any questions or comments about today's show you can find me on twitter at A Ross P that's A R O S S P and you can find me on twitter at T C Burris B U R R U S to learn more about libertarianism visit us on the web at www.libertarianism.org


Because of the social media circus surrounding the Johnny Depp Amber Heard defamation trial, it was easy to overlook one of the principal, yet least likely actors in the courtroom drama, the American Civil Liberties Union, which Ghost Road emplaced the 2018 Washington Post op-ed by Heard about surviving domestic abuse that was the basis of the trial. It's only the latest example of how the group has strayed from its original mission over the past two decades. A wash with money after Donald Trump was elected, the ACLU questioned the due process rights of college students accused of sexual assault and harassment under Title IX rules. It ran partisan ads against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and four Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. A move that current executive director Anthony Romero told The New York Times was a mistake. The ACLU also called for the federal government to forgive $50,000 per borrower in student loans. By transforming into an organization that champion progressive causes, the ACLU undermined the neutrality required to fulfill its original mission of defending the right to free speech, no matter how vile. Enter another free speech organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE. The law is about as good as it's ever been. When it comes to the culture, our argument is that it's gotten a lot worse and that we don't have to accept it. Greg Lukyanov is FIRE's president. It was founded in 1999 to combat speech codes on college campuses. And just as the ACLU recedes from its mission, FIRE is expanding its own, to go well beyond the university. And it's changing its name to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The group has raised $29 million towards a three-year litigation opinion research and public education campaign aimed at boosting and solidifying support for free speech values. Pretty much from day one, people have been asking us to take our advocacy off campus and extend nationally. But 2020 was such a scarily bad year for freedom of speech. On campus and off, we decided to accelerate that process. FIRE is also expanding its efforts beyond legal advocacy and into promoting what Lukyanov calls the culture of free speech. As Politico reports, it will spend $10 million in national cable and billboard advertising, featuring activists on both ends of the political spectrum extolling the virtues of free speech.  Things like everyone's entitled to their opinion, which is something you heard all the time when we were kids. It's a free country, you know, to each their own.  All of these things are they're great principles for taking advantage of pluralism, but they've largely sort of fallen out of usage due to, I think, a growing skepticism about freedom of speech, particularly on campus, that's been about 40 years in the making. Lukyanov has nothing negative to say about the ACLU, and he stresses that FIRE has worked with the organization since day one and continues to do so. But unlike the ACLU, FIRE not only isn't at risk of turning into a progressive advocacy organization, its staff is truly bipartisan. I think that the fact that we this is the first non-profit I ever worked for, where you had people who actually voted for for different major party candidates, a fact of which I'm extremely proud. People like to argue on the Twitter's, you know, is to say, you know, to fixate on kind of like, ah, but you receive money from conservative and libertarian foundations. And my answer is yes, and you should be very proud of them because we routinely defend people who hate their guts, and we never get any foundation saying that they're taking back our funding. Lukyanov thinks that despite the rise of cancel culture, most Americans still understand the value of free speech, but they need to be encouraged to stand up for it. It's really a pretty small minority and largely at the top.  I think that once you start giving people permission to believe in these sort of small d-democratic norms again, a lot of people are going to reveal their actual preferences. There's reason to be optimistic about it.