No, that's not right. December the 5th, 2022 the select board where we're meeting to most of this meeting will be a public meeting to address ARPA, but we'll be getting that after the some of the direct business that we have. So the first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Do we have a motion to approve the agenda? Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the agenda? Yeah, I've got to add one topic, if I could, brief topic. Okay. It's kind of a more of a question than a conversation, I guess, at this time about school board at the end. Don't care. Yeah, let's go after ARPA. Let's keep that after the ARPA. Okay. Okay. Are there any, is there any other discussion on the agenda? There being none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries. Next item on the agenda is the consent agenda item is a minute meetings and approval of the third class license for CHCM LLC formally cold hull cider mill. Make a motion to approve the consent agenda item. Thank you. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the agenda, on the consent agenda item? If not, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries. Now is the time on the agenda that we will take input from the public. This is not on the ARPA, because I know many of you may be here for the ARPA discussion, but if folks have any other brief items that they want to bring up to the select board now is the time. Skip. Not wanting the opportunity to pass. Just a brief update on the employee appreciation and thank you to Bill Breakfast there. It's set for next Wednesday at 8 o'clock at St. Leo's. I was disappointed to hear that Danny and Alyssa aren't going to be able to make it. I did try to change it to Thursday, but St. Leo's was occupied that day. Roger and Tom have graciously volunteered for the pancreate crew beginning at 6. And I'm going to be assigning Chris an assignment there shortly and things. So it's on and you're welcome to. There's a lot of setup and things to do that if you have time before 8. Yeah, I think Danny and I both can also be there at 6 till 8.30. I had a work meeting for three months, so I wasn't able to move it. I don't think either of you have been to one of them before. No, COVID. So I was going to assign Natalie kind of being charged and kind of the setup while I got the pancakes and the other things started. So she knows and I'll have everything there before 6. So whenever you get there, it'll be fine. Sorry that you're not going to be able to. Yeah. Yeah, next time just for future planning. If you just check first before, you know, check with the board because I'd love to be there. It's literally the only day of the week. So just for future planning because I definitely want to be involved. You know, it was kind of, I wanted to do it in St. Louis. So thank you all. Skip, I hope it's a good event. Sorry, I couldn't be there, but I'd much rather be doing the pancakes and cleaning out my mom's apartment. I do appreciate that. Understand. Thanks. Can I just say, did you not get the invitation to the town municipal workers? The pancakes are for home. Town employees. I just wonder how you're getting word out of it. This is the first I've heard of it. They're going out tomorrow. This is the preview. Yeah, that's too many Christmas trees and meeting. Alyssa, you had a question? Just on public form. I wanted to thank and acknowledge everyone who was involved in the River of Lights celebration on Saturday, including both the town rec staff and town general staff who helped out with the logistics. I know MK put a really nice post on from porch form today, but also MK, Don, Sarah Lee, and everyone who made it happen. Always a wonderful life brings the Christmas spirit to the town, and especially after two years of COVID, it's kind of a welcome thing to have. Thanks, Alyssa. Any other comments from the public? If not, we'll move on to the main agenda. Select board items. Update on the grant application for 2023 Vermont fruits and nut tree program, Steve. Okay, I'm the tree guy tonight. You're the fruits and nut guy. The fruit and nut guy, yeah. We're mainly going to talk about fruit. So this is the project that I brought to you at your meeting on November 21st. So there's a few maps. I've got a little more detail tonight. Are these the same maps that you had on before? Well, I've got an additional one that, let's see. No, Karen, here's one for Karen. Turn that down. Thank you. All right, so this, we're all set. Oh, good. So this is a grant program. It's a new program, and it's a collaboration between the Vermont garden network and the Vermont urban and community forestry program. The urban and community forest program is the one that we've applied for for many years for tree tree plantings, plantings in the cemetery in the parks. So this is a new program. It's geared to fruit and nut trees. And we're proposing to plant eight fruit trees. And this map that is the detailed one on the other side there, Danny, shows the location. So this one shows the community gardens north, which is right behind this building. It's the old community gardens. There's still 12 plots there. And the area beyond the garden plots is underutilized. We brush hog it and a pollinator group did some pollinator planting back there of annuals. So we'd like to put the fruit trees along the about 15 feet back from the top of the bank. It's a good sunny location. They'd be about 20 feet apart. And we'd like to plant a combination of apples and pears and possibly plums. This is a collaborative project with the recreation program. This particular grant program is geared to planting fruit and nut trees in conjunction with community gardens. And the goal is to provide fruit for people who are underserved in general, low and moderate income people or at least have that as part of the program. So the idea is that we would involve the recreation program kids in getting the trees planted, watered, mulched, established, and then within a couple years when we start getting fruit, they can do the picking. The fruit can go to their families, perhaps to the food shelf, the senior center, and then any excess we make available to the broader community. So it's a pilot program. We try it, see how it goes. I think it's a good site for fruit trees. And yeah, so that's it in a nutshell, so to speak. I couldn't resist that one. Can't wait to see it blossom. So the budget, let me just talk about the budget, and Roger got to your question. So the grant is from, we can apply from $500 to $1,000. The trees, we'd like to plant potted fruit trees. They're available from a number of local sources. They cost about $75 to $80 a piece for a tree that's a pretty decent size, six to eight foot tree, and they'll start bearing within a couple of years usually. So we're looking for a grant of up to about $750. So we'll buy the trees. We may not apply for quite that much, but I was thinking if you could authorize up to $750, then we'll also get the tree guards, the plastic tree guards to keep the mice and stuff from chewing the trunks and deer, and then some soil amendments and mulch, and that'll be about it. Did you have a question, Roger? I did. I just wanted to make sure that you were planning to get disease-resistant varieties, because apple trees are some of the most heavily sprayed agricultural products out there in commercial settings. Yeah. Yeah, definitely we'll focus on disease-resistant trees, and we're not planning on spraying a bunch of chemicals we'll do to our oil and some preventative maintenance and that sort of thing. Pick up the drops at the end of the season, so that's the way. I like to do fruit trees, and I think that would be the intention, to make it compatible with the organic gardens and so on, that people who do organic garden. So you're doing the harvest as well for the participants as well as the food shelf? Right. That would be the goal, is we'd make fruit available to the food shelf, but the main focus is going to be the recreation program. So in the summer, we'd have one of the recreation groups would be assigned to keep the trees watered, to get them established and keep them mulched and so on. And then in the fall, we've got the after-school rec programs, so they could be involved in terms of picking that happens after school starts, basically, after the summer rec program's over. And so we'll keep some of those kids involved through the fall. What's the plan? If you need help, I'd be glad. I have a pretty extensive background in both orchard and vineyard work. Great. Well, we'll tap everybody's experience. Okay. Yeah, definitely. So what we'd be looking for is authorization for the manager to apply, sign, if you will. No, I need a signature, but to apply for up to $750 for the fruit tree planting under the Vermont Garden Network grant program. So moved. Is there any further discussion? All second. We'll move in second. Now we'll go into this. Is there any further discussion on the program? See if it goes while there's opportunity in future years to apply for more funding and grow the program, so to speak? Well, I don't know if this program will be repeated. It may. But if it's not, it's not a lot of money. We could budget funding to do subsequent plantings. I think we want to make sure that it's a manageable project. It's really a pilot, see how it goes. But there's plenty of space there to do other plantings, other pollinator kind of plantings as well. Yeah, so hopefully it will take. Great. Any other discussion? There being none, we'll vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstention? Motion carries. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Sounds like a great project. Okay. Now we come to the bulk of, we left plenty of time for people's input on the ARPA money. We have asked people via electronic and mailing in survey, how would the town residents like to spend the $1.2 million? And we are working in a plan for how to spend on the survey. It does indicate some of the things that we have already appropriated money for, ARPA funds, but there's still a significant amount of funds for other projects. The existing projects are $100,000 for the ice center of Washington West that was approved by the voters at town meeting. $90,000 for the highway department approved by the voters as part of the 2002 budget. $50,000 for CV-Fiver for providing broadband internet to underserved addresses in Waterbury. And that was approved by the select board in April. And $76,000 was committed to the Waterbury Ambulance Service for the new station creation project. And funding will be included in the 2023 budget. Bless you. The process moving forward is we're looking for input. You know, we don't want to be a unilateral source, so that's one of the reasons why we asked the community to complete surveys. What tonight is, is we're going to take what people's opinions are, but we are not going to, like, have a dialogue. Because there have been, just as you know, I think it's over 450 completed surveys that we have already gotten, both electronically and by mail. So as much as your input here is equal to those, we're going to add the comments that we have here to those comments and then try to synthesize what the community is looking for, for future projects other than the ones that I specifically said. So I don't want to belabor this. I would like to, is there anyone, do we want to first? Yeah, thanks. So in addition to the public comment, we're sort of considering the comment like the additional notes. So if you haven't filled out a survey either on paper, there are some here online. We'd love for you to do that in addition to the comment so that we can rank those as well. And then there was some clarification, I think, on one of the categories. So I'd love for Tom to do that first and then we'll dive in. Do you want me to give a 30-second overview of the ARPA process in general, how we got to here? That'd be great. So the real short version and some of the surveys reflected this is that the main and a half that's been allocated to this town has to be spent. So if people are advising us to save it, we can only save it for so long. The funds have to be committed by the end of 2024 and have to be spent by the end of 2026. So this is not funds that the town can keep in its back pocket forever. So that's the short version of why we're here is that we have to spend these funds. We can't invest them. So there was also a little bit of feedback from the public that I got related to the gravel and the quarry question. So by way of background, and Chris is more familiar with this so he can correct me. So we currently get our gravel from Bolton. So reasonably close. The road crew is pretty happy with the quality. The Bolton gravel pit, the owner has told us they are no longer selling gravel. They will still sell sand, but no gravel. And our total budget for road materials, gravel, sand, mixtures, it's about $120,000 a year and that varies of course. But about a third of that most years, 40,000 or so is just gravel in our budget. So the issue is in buying gravel from other sources not so much the cost per ton, but the trucking cost which is a huge part of that $40,000. So in the short term, we'll be going a lot further to the gravel or we'll be paying other people to go a lot further. So your 2023 budget will have an increased cost no matter what we do and that's probably going to be the case for a few years. We've got in our hands an engineering report from 1974 and Alex Tuscany and Woody have told me that the data in that report, much of it really originated from when they built the highway. So that report identifies good gravel sites in the town and the problem is since 1974 a lot of those sites have houses on them now. So they're just not available. Some of those sites are just not accessible. There's no road to them. Some obviously have environmental issues but even if we had a perfect gravel site which we don't and even if the town owned that land which it does not, we have an expensive multi-year permitting process in front of us. There is also an older quarry on Sweet Road and my understanding is that and the state owns it, my understanding is the state opened that quarry to build the highway and I further believe the state has not used that quarry for a long, long time. So we don't have knowledge, direct knowledge right now about what is there, the quality of it, what's available. But there's been some internal conversation about the town beginning the process of inquiring what's there, would the state ever sell it? What are the costs related to acquisition and operation? The other piece is that quarry is in the watershed protection zone for our utility district, for our water and sewer district, sorry for the water piece of it. And so given it's in the water protection zone you can imagine the permitting requirements open the gravel pit and in a water protection zone they're even stricter. So I think the thinking related to the quarry and the gravel issue was related to this conundrum we find ourselves in. And I think in the short term there's not a good answer aside from paying more. In the long term maybe there is a better answer, maybe it's not in Waterbury, maybe it's a neighboring town and not Morrisville but closer than that. Is that a good background Chris? Yeah, if I could add a couple things to it. I'd appreciate it. So Bolton's crushed gravel at one point didn't pass state spec a number of years ago. But I think because of the lack of aggregate sources they eventually had to qualify it simply because it was the only game in town. Years ago, after using that product myself for several times there's other quarries, stone quarries in Berry, Berlin. Those are crushed shale product. Bolton is basically sand and cobblestone. Very clean sand so it doesn't have any binder in it. The shale product in Berry and Berlin is shale. It's a soft rock, it packs like heck but it doesn't wear well where the cobblestone rock is hard but it just doesn't have any compaction. So on a whim I decided to try to mix the two together. Load for load, combine the two because they both on their own lacked what each other had. I came up with a product that I called 50-50 Mix. Shale 50% gravel. I did a project in Richmond and it had to be tested for compaction and the guy from Vermont Testing came down with his apparatus and the first swing he took with the hammer he said, I can tell you already this is going to pass compaction. So the product that I created really had some incredible compaction rate and wore better than the shale on its own. So I started using that exclusively unless somebody wanted the separate ones on their own. I did finally convince the town to start using that and they've adopted that and to this day I think that's pretty much what they use on the back roads. So Bolton's getting rid of the crushed gravel and other products and from what I understand they're boiling it down to just winter sand which I'm in fear of that resource drawing up at some point too and have discussed a little bit about what we could do to maybe safeguard ourselves for the future. All the other quarries and pits are quite a distance out and as Tom said and we haven't felt that impact yet because we haven't been through a season where we've had to haul from who knows where and back. Diesel prices being what they are the cost of vehicles these days back when they were rebuilding this section of Route 100 up through Waterbury Center they were hauling aggregate all the way from Irisburg. And to me that didn't make sense when we had local quarries that they could reopen to get that same aggregate. The problem with that is hauling large distances number one if we're supposed to be conscientious about greenhouse gases you're putting a lot more into the atmosphere hauling those long distances plus those trucks are heavy when they're loaded you're pounding the hell out of the roads back when they were doing this Waterbury project I said we're pounding the hell out of 40 miles of road to fix 10 miles of road it didn't make any sense. So there's that aspect that also plays into the thinking process when it comes to this project. Now I know there's some fears that maybe we can answer about having this quarry open back eight years ago when I went to Act 250 Ed Stanek was in charge at the time he basically handed me this project this operation of that old quarry I brought it to the select board back then and they had no desire to look at it for fear of upsetting people who were walking and pedal biking up and down Sweet Road in the residence but I think a lot of that those problems can be solved this is would be strictly a town quarry it would be operated only seasonal and it would be operated during work hours and speed limits I mean I operate out of a gravel pit on Sweet Road the owner of that pit who's since passed set a precedent with me 25 miles an hour and I refuse to exceed 25 miles an hour driving on that road I'm very conscientious about driving on the back roads of my big truck so that's where we're at I was hoping to get a second bite of the apple on this for fear of taxes being driven through the roof because we're having to haul aggregate from who knows where and as we witnessed last spring our back roads are in very terrible condition and if we'd had this quarry back when it was handed to me from the state we probably wouldn't have gone through the winter that we did I did at that time as well talk to two geologists who said that that aggregate or that rock and that quarry was some of the best that we could acquire for the use that we would need it for so that also encouraged me to try to get a second bite of the apple on this so that's kind of where I'm at on it thank you Chris I'm curious where that state site is on Sweet Road it's the old stone quarry across from just down beyond the hunger mountain where they parked for the hunger mountain trail across from the old quarry no it is the old quarry so Ed Stanek at the time told me Chris you can use this quarry without an Act 250 permit because it's under 10 acres that property that's enforced in parks is more than 10 acres but I think he was referring to the quarry area itself was under 10 acres was it a quarry stone and not that I couldn't tell you but the geologists when I spoke to him they said best stuff in the world Chris for what you'd want to use it for and I talked to Fred McCullough who owns McCullough Crushing back at that time and he said Chris if you can get yourself if your town of Waterbury could get themselves their own quarry be the best investment they ever made and my my objective here is not necessarily to purchase that my objective is to lease it if we could at a very reasonable price that would be our better approach and there's a there's enough residual just rock laying around there that would probably serve this town for five years without even having to do any more you know blasting or anything like that just cleaning up what's left so this whole this is the first time I've heard about a need for gravel we always need gravel but for the town to be making this sort of initiative so I just want to be clear it's the Bolton source that has stimulated this investigation the fact that it's drying up is what's prompted this and I just want to clarify the stage we're at right now is we are seeking public input on a variety of different potential projects the town can work for so thank you Chris Chris brings really deep expertise in this field and has raised this as a potential future concern for the town which is why we included it on the survey with other potential future projects across a variety of areas so just to anchor in tonight's conversation recognizing that we are gathering input has been framed out the input both from here tonight from online from the paper surveys will all be part of us considering what priorities may be and for whatever priorities may be whether this becomes one or not we recognize that there will be future outreach and conversation and budgeting again just I want to anchor like no decisions have been made this is one bucket as we called them of ideas there's a couple of other buckets and tonight is really just about seeking input thanks everyone for being here in person or online thanks Alyssa maybe we'll go first too we have a one written comment that someone has Roger if you could yeah I'll read this on behalf of Allison Schleppi Allison came forward with another resident from Little River Road previously concerned about traffic and addressed the select award this past summer and this is a follow-up so this is on behalf of Allison I am speaking on behalf of the residents of Little River Road we have spoken in front of the select board several times to ask the town to dedicate funds to fix problems on our road these problems include increased traffic trucks hauling ever larger boats cars and trucks traveling at unsafe speeds and the overwhelming dust that is created by all of the above on our unpaid road all of these are related to the increased recreational use of our road the boat launch campground and mountain biking trails in the state park we believe that paving the residential section of the road and putting in speed bumps would go a long way to keeping the residents safe and visitors feeling welcome we know that you are discussing how to use ARPA funds tonight and we are again asking the select board to use some of those funds or money from the town budget to help keep us all healthy and safe and to allow all to enjoy the wonderful recreational resources that our road provides would anyone else wish to come forward if they could state your name and address in Waterbury and we would love to hear your comments Skippy you kind of well I didn't know whether you were speaking to someone or you were inviting everyone to no we're asking everyone in the audience and on zoom lands well nobody is ready if you could come forward thanks Skippy here just helps with folks on zoom right absolutely yes thank you for holding the forum and seeking input and things I come here as a need-fight commissioner in the unique position of having turned down $600,000 of ARPA but bringing together what we think is a better project so we just want to get it on your radar screen it's a project that eFight has been working on for a couple years Bill Woodruff has put a lot of time in it it's a waterline extension from over to the town shed over to root 100 by the Cabot Panics Cross Country for an 8 inch line we started the idea there were some customers plus you have a lot of development over there that doesn't have fire protection there are no hydrants or anything over there and it would be good to get fire protection all that commercial development and everything over there so we've been working on this a couple years we were going to come down root 100 but now we're coming cross lots it's not cheaper but we can pick up a couple of private public water systems one of them is the mobile home park that has water quality issues a couple of other smaller private systems and things we think there's going to be about 80 customers we pick up it's kind of a pricey project it's about 3 million dollars we're going to be seeking grants what we don't want to do is fund a project where the existing users have to pay for it when they don't get any benefit we don't want to raise all the people in the village rates just to get water up there but there's a big benefit to the town as a whole from fire protection and things that you get a lower insurance rate the fire department gets a higher rating because you have adequate fire flows all of the water storage that we have the hydrants and everything are put in by the water users but that no charge to the town and things so we think it's a good project that the community benefits the green list of the town gets protected from fire protection and things and I think we've calculated some calculations if we don't get any grant money and there's 80 of the users it's about $2,700 a year about $2,200 a year which is pretty pricey on top of your water bill so any grant money that we get would go to reducing that we're also looking to apply at the state they're talking about revolving loan funds rather than grants at this time so we just want to put it back on the table if we got 50% back from the $600,000 we turned back would be good anything is appreciated and we'll be working on this regardless of where you are I think it's a really good project if we can pull it off but we're going full steam ahead at this point to get plans in place if the state and feds have money for projects ready to go that we would jump on the bandwagon as soon as we can so I'd answer any questions if you have any you've got two proposed routes here one would sort of go straight through the other sort of alternatives well I think there's Bill Woodruff could answer it better rather than using eight inch line to go over there's an alternative for an inch and a half copper line to go feed a couple residents that wouldn't have the full eight inch line to go there you're just jumping off the eight inch going with an inch and a half to service those yes have you already spoken with Landover? yes, Woody has talked to everybody they're excited to get rid of their ugly water in the well they described and they're willing to grant us a right of way to go across things so it's turning out to be a project people are looking forward to there's a lot of the medical building in particular in the development there really was excited about the possibility of getting water I think they're one of the public water systems now that have to go through testing and everything that if they connected on us they wouldn't have to do that so anyway you'll hear more about it regardless thank you for your time all the other requests will probably be smaller other I don't see any on the line what's the problem if you walk out that's me right so if we're asking folks to I'll take two minutes hi guys I'm Justin Blackman chairman of the board of the senior center so as everybody I believe knows one of the main programs at the senior center is the Meals on Wheels we're currently operating from a kitchen where all of the appliances were put in 25 years ago we're aware that although everything is working right now we don't really look forward to the time when that isn't it isn't all working properly so very much like the group to consider helping the senior center to get out of the kitchen with stove cooker and the hood that goes over the stove that by the way we're led to believe probably the current one would not meet code right now we don't have any particular numbers in mind but in very very rough numbers talking to a couple of restauranters I know we're probably looking at a couple of restaurants and we're looking at a couple of restaurants as well as to re-kit and bring up to standard what the senior center would ideally need to help keep us going for those Meals on Wheels any other detail I could provide on up? Is the senior center an independent nonprofit from Down Street Housing? I was going to say the same organization that just got the approved 51 South Main yeah and so Down Street Housing owns the facility? Simpsons Graves if I may since we're internally starting the budget process we've emailed and we're meeting soon nice to meet you could you tighten up that $50,000 estimate and get some formal numbers because even if there's no ARPA funding there's budget process coming up and now's the time if you're going to ask for specific funding for something to get it on the radar we can certainly look at that we haven't done so far it's been one of those things just kind of a little bit too big a pipe dream to even think about too much but yes we can certainly work towards trying to get some better numbers on that if you do these improvements do you have to shut down for any period of time do you think and how do you serve those people so in the same way as a restaurant that might have to shut down for a small space of time we are already we have emergency procedures for instance ice and snow we have a backlog I think it's somewhere there even it's normally between six and eight hundred frozen meals able to get people looked after okay thank you thank you anyone else would like to make a comment would you like to come forward I'm chair and walker Beecher and stagecoach Lane whatever so I don't have a specific request it's more a question and a consideration when I when I read about the ARPA funds I believe it's supposed to go towards people municipalities or businesses that were hurt by the economic impact of excuse me of the pandemic and so I guess are we thinking about that in terms of where this money is going because I think about in terms of the vitality of Waterbury the businesses that have been hurt the lack of labor that's available which relates to you know affordable housing education the impact of kids child care things of that nature and I didn't see a lot of that listed on the survey and so I guess I just ask that we not lose our way here in terms of what this money was intended for and where it gets spent because it kind of feels like we got the lottery we won the lottery and now we're just trying to figure out where to spend it and not really looking at the sustainability of Waterbury and the impact of the pandemic specifically comment it's not just the ARPA funds and not specifically folks that have been impacted directly it's the community has been impacted in many ways so a lot of you know you can't say like roads and infrastructure you know you know COVID didn't probably affect those things but it probably affected the way the community was able to fund some of those projects along the last couple of years because the funding sure falls so it's not just direct you know they have what is it called funds lost I can clarify yeah so when the ARPA bills were initially passed there was a pretty strict categories upon which we could spend it and what you talked about were within those categories some months went by and I think mostly out of practicality the US Treasury changed the rules and they said if you get 10 million or less which is every municipality in Vermont except for Burlington I think you can declare revenue loss and then those categories become as broad as the ocean so that being said what you're talking about I think has a lot of merit because you're talking about the original legislation and spirit of the bill so what you're saying was indeed correct yeah I'm just thinking in terms of you know the impact to education right it's huge it's going to take years to get back where we were the impact to the labor market were massive so I just ask that you not lose sight of that in terms of how this money gets spent thank you for your comments other comments don't be bashful please on zoom as well you're invited to speak if you'd like again we you know there are still surveys please feel free take one of the surveys and you know we'd be glad to include information from every one you know maybe tonight has inspired you to think of some other things that you might you know want to think of inclusion we don't want this to be a kind of cop down we want this to be a community minded project yeah I think I want to piggyback what Alyssa said earlier it may be a different way the survey has an excellent job that was done with it because of maybe not losing people's interest and going a bit too far with information that's one of the things it's short fall was that it didn't have a lot of information about anything that was put into it because I didn't want to get a stack of papers in the mail like this that you had to go through in order to fill out the survey so that's kind of why you guys are here tonight to you know express any interest in any of those things that were there maybe get questions answered and put forward any other ideas that perhaps you didn't see on paper this is you know I don't know how lengthy this process is going to take we want to kind of get the ball in motion on anything that we decide that we'd like to move forward with so that it doesn't you know doesn't take forever to take this money and put it to use thanks Chris Roger yeah I also want to thank Tom for compiling the results that have come through both on the paper surveys that were bailed out I think we've received over 300 of them over 200 and then an additional 200 or so online and again as Mike said any of you that haven't filled it out we'd love to have you take one fill it out now or take it home fill it out and get it back to us I think what we're proposing was to present the results at our next board meeting which is going to be two weeks from tonight and sort of use that as at least one stop in the process of saying okay what is the public telling us about what the priorities are and we can make some decisions there and we'll be getting into the budget process for 2023 soon thereafter and then following some projects maybe put into that 2023 budget but as Tom said we have until 2024 to allocate the funds and 2026 to spend them so just because something isn't in the budget for 23 doesn't mean it won't go into the following years budget as a project because we do have through 24 to allocate the funds any further comments I think you said I have one thing I may I would encourage the town to think a little bit about trying to get as shovel ready as you can projects you might not have moved for instance we know the runuski street bridge is a problem hydraulically if the town took the initiative to do the kind of scoping work that the state typically does when a project goes through their cycle I think it would be a lot closer for some of the monies that are coming down for various programs are just a piece of it the I.I.J.A. is also very big and so it might be an opportune time to take some of this money and try to move something, advance something that's bigger picture in hopes of being in a better position just a few years away I know speaking of the runuski bridge it's a pretty hard to look at after the flood because that was the bottleneck that caused a lot of the flood if there's a lot of paperwork out there it says the span needs to double village floods in large part because of it I forget the results of that study but it's because of the elevation of that thing and how it bottlenecks down it would be very, very expensive to correct that problem but it was I do recall it being looked at pretty hard after the flood because that was one of the main reasons that the problems occurred that they did here in town we'll also share that Chris's observations on gravel are very real it is a real substantial increase in future operating expenses for towns and I agree with your 50-50 mix that's pretty much what we do we're fortunate and stowed to have a pit up in Nebraska valley it is not an unlimited resource and we process material to make our gravel but I know what other towns are dealing with and trucking long distances is a whole different realm of expense and we maybe want to pave a little middle road just to not have more gravel to maintain so I don't know how well you know Harry can we get your name I'm sorry I'm Harry Shepard Jenny Davis Public Works Director thank you thanks Harry and then like you have somebody else okay that's Cindy Parks hi everyone Cindy Parks this is Kennedy Drive here as a private citizen not as a meat fund commissioner I just was curious I noticed the gravel reference in the questionnaire and I just wondered has there been an evaluation of a projection as to how long our current resources are going to last and what resources we need for the town moving forward under storm water control there's a lot more emphasis on using walk dams now so I just would like to know a little bit more about the gravel identification I'm going to have to get back to you because it's a new issue to us we only recently found out that our current source is no longer selling us gravel so that's the real challenge it's unfortunately that we've got a stockpile for now but it's not going to last very long as I understand it so we're going to have to take the winter and figure out that plan but we can get back to you on that sorry I don't have a better answer oh that's alright thank you very much I appreciate it maybe we could buy some gravel from Nebraska Valley Harry might be a little help anyone else who looks spent part of their Monday to come sit Mr. I mean we'd love to have you every week don't get us wrong attendance is always welcome this is your meeting to make comments to help us direct the municipality on what the residents feel of priority and the ones that we've heard already have been good and the ones that we've heard electronically and by mail have been good so we need to synthesize community's wishes but we'd love to hear if anyone who hasn't spoken we'd love to hear from you thanks for having us I appreciate that Monica Callens farm road I got a couple of things that I'd like to just sort of put out there see if they're possible a pedestrian bike path from Waterbury to Waterbury Center connecting these two parts of our community I think they would be great to be able to access them by all ages and all capabilities and not just by vehicles another one is public art projects as an artist and I have to put that out there and as a Vermont creative network zone agent that's something that I can talk at length and if you want to hear about it and about the benefits I'd love to also see safe walking and biking paths on Maple Street and around the center especially down I see a lot of people walking down to the reservoir and it'd be great to have safer access to those resources and support for businesses in Waterbury Center to come back so that can be another little hub of activity in Waterbury Do you have any numbers for any of those projects? I said maybe the public arts project you might have had something I don't have them in my pocket but I can draw them up if you're looking for one That would be helpful Monica, thanks Do you have something Roger? I was just going to ask because there is a path that runs from the golf course into the village to the park and ride to the park and ride on Lincoln Street extension so I was just wondering if Monica was thinking about to connect to that path being tail on both ends there I assume so but I know the conservation commission we were involved in helping clear that and I know it's used by people it's a great place to walk by unfortunately I just was speaking to an employee of the golf course I don't know if anybody has witnessed the pillars they put at the bottom they're actually putting a gate up to prevent the sliders from sliding on the hill or parking up above because they're doing damage to the greens and stuff lighting fires having fires on the property and impacting so now I was wondering what was going on unfortunately so the kids will have to find another place they put out an email about winter use like I think if you request permission they put out something from porch forum and you can email them to request permission for winter use so I'm trying to find a balance of allowing but keeping track so that if some damage happens yeah so that's probably why they want permission thanks anyone else if not anyone else on zoom there being none we will close the discussion on offer funds again still feel free take a survey let us know what you're thinking is you know we'll be making some more decisions at our next select board meeting thank you all for coming thank you all for coming are we looking to are we looking to go into executive did you want to just oh school board right sorry school board discussion so just a little update on the last time the young man was Jacob Parks I remember his last name I haven't spoke with him but I spoke with somebody else that's on the school board just recently hit him right that's the man that's hard yeah this other gentleman lives in a different town you know speaking to him the other day a few different things and I asked him he took a position that was vacated by somebody and I asked him how it was going and he was very upset with the lack of movement at the school board level as I had mentioned when I said that the school board meetings were as dysfunctional as I've ever seen he elaborated on that and talked about the fact that he probably doesn't have the bandwidth he's going to serve out his term but then he's probably done he said I would have thought that I would have been able to handle something like this but he says it's just so unbelievable he said that he said nothing gets done nothing and when I heard the senior center guy talking about $50,000 for for the upgrade in the kitchen I was elated to hear that price tag because as part of their inability to do anything at the school board level there was a proposal by one of the members and you can't quote me 100% on this because I'm not exactly sure how it plays into the whole budgetary process but they were looking to try to show that they're doing something they were looking to have the Watesfield kitchen rebuilt at a half a million dollars Watesfield school gets their meals from Faisted they're made in Faisted and brought the Watesfield and served there so there was some heated discussion about this proposal for half a million dollars and I know that the young man that the board recommended to the school board at first couldn't see a problem with spending the half a million dollars but after some time had passed and he got a little bit deeper into the process of being a school board member he started to realize this might not be a good idea so my concern is and I'm just putting this to the board as I had said before the reason I didn't vote for Jake wasn't because of Jake it was because it seems as though our school board process is just really really broken and I don't believe that the taxpayers are being served by it the way they should be and I know there's probably nothing that we can do perhaps other than speak to our representatives I think it's time to consider a restructuring process of the school board itself how can 14 people not get anything done I mean it's difficult to come to any consensus when you've got that many people on the board now whether downsizing the board to something like we have here whether it be one representative per town I know it's all based on population and yada yada yada but it's broken and broken severely and the public's not being served well we have seen that from the multiple representatives that we have had from our community have all they're on and then they're off and that to me says volumes and that's continuing I would love to think about a couple of really logistical things we see the turnover and that says something yet I'm not sure many or any of us attend school board meetings I've only been to two ever so I speak myself to that's I've only been to if we're concerned I think we want to be very careful not to try to make decisions or suggestions based on hearsay not that I doubt someone telling the truth but someone telling someone telling someone is not a way to make you know municipal decisions especially when it's sort of outside of our so I would propose if there are concerns as a board meetings gather some facts and information when broad statements are said like they're not getting anything done I'm curious what what facts can we look at what were some proposals over the past two to five years that are not following through what are they what can they show of having accomplished in those years so before I think suggestions or big conversations are had I think it would who concerned parties whether it's individuals or the entire board to work on finding facts data being there firsthand so that's my only I agree with you Danny I've attended several school board meetings and I've never seen a more dysfunctional group than the school board I want to I'm sorry Mike I'm really sorry to interrupt you I just it you're entitled to your opinion I rather be a little bit wrong way to say that in a public meeting that school board members might watch I would be really upset if someone said that about me and our board you can still say it I'm not that's where I was going I said that's my personal observation and maybe there's been other other things but we have we have planned to have the superintendent to meet with us and I think that's mm-hmm that's where we need to Danny suggestion is I'd love to attend a couple of meetings with you yeah yeah you know this was the starting point for me because I'm hugely concerned we're looking at an 8% increase in our education taxes this year you know it's how much longer before any of us here say I just can't do it here no more you know that's one of my biggest fears I tried to convey to Dean Salvis here tonight was that you know that's why I got on the board is because that was my biggest fear being shoved out of the town that I been here forever you know in my last days and that's just wrong so you know to suggest me to as a select board member to suggest should the board think about doing something about school board that's how concerned I am for all of us you know it's just that and other issues the drug problem you know maybe I'm stepping beyond my bounds but it's because I give a damn about where we're headed and yeah I mean I have attended school board meetings you know I've seen the same thing that Mike has seen but I'm willing to yeah certainly go again if that's yeah you know this is a starting point for me to say I see to me I see a problem and what can we do as a select board to either point somebody else in the direction of fixing it or putting pressure us putting pressure on somebody to and that's where a two-way conversation with us and the superintendent that's where we have to go you know I just get concerned that they're more concerned with stuff stuff than sometimes substance and that's where I find a problem I think I just along the same lines as a person on a volunteer representative board I think it's I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt just because I know the outside perception of the work we all do I think we all really care about Waterbury and come to these meetings and work really hard and do our best to spend our volunteer time making the community a better place and what it looks like from the outside I don't know being on the inside and maybe it's not always pretty but I was just going to say I appreciate the point that at the last meeting we decided to invite the superintendent so that's a point of conversation and I would echo I have not been to school board meetings so again personally I would not want to do anything and then I also would just want to know more about what the relationship between a select board and a school board is and maybe the board should be attached you know I will say candidly in the past we've said on your municipal property bill did you look at the portion that was local because that's us and the rest isn't us and I think once you start diving into that realm I do think you kind of lose that and so I just also want to think carefully about I don't think we have everything solved on just the local level in terms of issues we can topic and make sure we're taking care of our own house first before we're running around and critiquing other volunteer boards Tom do you have any kind of where how the one thing I know the select board does is we will recommend you know people who they put up for you know for a seat on the school board is there any other that the select board because I don't see there's a lot kind of they're kind of their own thing they're governing body right they're governing body of school systems we're governing body of the municipality seems like the conversation with the superintendent is the great step and then he might be the person to ask for advice exactly the other piece I'll say about school taxes issues last year the state used covid funds to buy down the education tax rate I forget how much but I thought I think it was something like five cents yeah so you're probably going to see that increase regardless of anything else my understanding is it was one time money so I don't know what the increase will be the other piece that people should know is about the education finance pieces schools pass their budgets but they don't the state sets the tax rates and that's pretty complex so they don't actually know the impact their budget on the tax rate and that's vastly different from us so sometimes they can cut their budget and it seems incongruous of what you see in your bill thanks for that input Roger this is a little bit beside the point that Chris brought up but we did last time talk about asking like if he would be able to consider closing schools on voting day and I was wondering if that was communicated to him so I haven't had a conversation with him but on that issue and other issues if anyone has specific questions they would like to answer just give them to me and I can talk to him before the meeting and take it up a bearer consider that one delivered just seems like a good idea as the former PE teacher also very important especially when they could move the in-service day which is usually don't go there school and here the charter was too high they had an in-service day it will be addressed before you I have one thing I want to just bring up to you I don't want to make a decision tonight but the January meeting so just to look ahead in the January calendar certainly tonight maybe next week how about the following Tuesday Bill has advised me that you usually meet every every Monday you do a planning commission meeting the following Monday so I assume I'll work with Steve to get those rescheduled so he wasn't sure if you have a desire to meet on Monday so the office being open on Tuesday or how do you want it to handle that because the second is the mother of the holiday right so our office is actually closed on Monday a second so again you have the answer tonight we can talk about at the next meeting I can talk about this little schedule if you want to just look at this in this room yeah does it work for everyone to just move it to the following date the third I assume I'm not boss I'm not boss that would be my suggestion just on days when we're closed on Monday just move it to Tuesday typically we do do that I don't see I think we can skip that meeting on Tuesday there's nothing in this room on Tuesday so that one's fairly easy if that's what my suggestion is let's try that and then do you intend to meet every Monday start meeting? if we don't meet at great we'll celebrate but it's fun let the fun begin budget season we're well into it internal so it'll be fun it's so good to hear that we're glad the optimism thank you okay now there's section for managers item that we need to go into executive session involving the performance and pay of an individual so I think we do need to you don't want to be here for that or is that not the case we don't have to be okay I move that we move going to executive session second we have a motion and a second any further discussion on that if no one favors say aye aye any opposed any abstentions motion passes