They actually told you, okay, yes, there are multiple conflicts this morning and actually I believe that both Alice and Dick are going up to Montpelier today, they both sit on Senate appropriations and they're meeting tonight. So we are, this is what we call crunch time. We hope to be done in three weeks, so we have one more week of serious committee work and then probably, they'll be very little committee work the last two weeks that most of the action will be on the floor. So we're at the point where the big bills are that we hope to get done this year are moving. This is, we are in the first year of a biennium, so there are bills that have gone through one house, either the House or the Senate that may not actually make it over the finish line in the next two weeks, but they'll still be alive in January. So we get another chance to take them up. I thought that I would just start out with something local. We all know the damage that was done to Bethel Mountain Road from the most recent storm and on Friday I presented a proposed amendment on the floor to try to see if we can find a way to really keep overweight trucks off our class two roads. I actually don't like floor amendments very much. I think it's a bad way to make law. I don't think you should make law on the fly, but the good news about the amendment, although we didn't go forward with it, was that the transportation committee spent an hour and a half with me and with my colleagues as we talk about the problem. One of the problems that we have right now is that truckers are using GPS to tell them where to go. Nobody uses maps anymore, so nobody knows that, gee, Bethel is south of Randolph. Who would have thought? Because all they know is that the little voice is saying, turn right here, turn left here. And interestingly, my colleague Butch Shaw over in Pittsburgh talked about the AMIA plant and apparently trucks coming out of AMIA. There's a big sign saying trucks turn here and they turn the other way because that's what their GPS is telling you to do. And what we have now is we have all these heavy, heavy semi-trailer trailers going back and forth over the mountain road. And I am absolutely convinced that that weakened the camproke. I actually drove on camproke once. I won't do it again. And you can see the cracks along the side. I'm told that that's when you see horizontal cracks along the length of the road that that is from the weight of the trucks. So it was a good chance. It was a good opportunity to get the attention of some of the folks in the house who live in the cities and don't know what we go through here. That whole mountain road, as you recall, was totally rebuilt after Irene. So the idea that it has to be rebuilt again is just nuts. And on the Rochester side, we had serious sliding of the hill. And again, I'm told that it's the vibration of the heavy trucks that has weakened that. So on the Rochester side, they're going to do a complete rebuild between now and November. We have a detour that allows people to get up to the hollow from the village. But you guys don't have anything quite comparable on this side. I don't even know. Can people use camproke?  It's open to local traffic. They need to put a sign on it. And I heard that they had a flag person last week and that they couldn't afford to keep a flag person. Yeah. Was there a big washout just above the village? In Rochester. Yes. Yeah, on the Rochester side, there's actually a Jersey barrier all the way across. There are about four houses that are just basically still in the village. And you can get to those driveways and then they put the Jersey barrier just above that. You have to go up Rook Street and around. So, you know, we're going to have to find a way to do that. One of the things I learned last week that I didn't know is that there's such a thing as a portable truck scale. I have no idea what it looks like, how big it is, where you put it, what it costs. But, you know, then the other problem, of course, is that my colleague now lives in towns that have police departments. So they say, well, you just get your police department to take care of this. And I try to remind them that we don't all have police departments. So we have had, you know, my understanding from the select board is that in the past when the constable stops somebody, they don't have any way to check.  So we're going to have to find a way to enforce. But it's not that we don't have weight restrictions. We have laws in place. They just don't get enforced. So I'm going to be pushing on that. Sanity, just to say, I live on Lily's Goldberg Road. And three times two summers ago, I met Tracker Trail, I tried to turn up Wynchill Road, which is a class 4 road. Wynchill. Yeah, it's a class 4 road. It doesn't even go through anymore. But GPS hasn't going that way. Well, what's interesting is that there is such a thing as Tracker GPS. Apparently, according to my friend, it costs about $300. And that was what his proposal would do, was to say trucks have to use GPS for trucks and not for passenger cars. And the transportation committee was kind of lukewarm about that. Motor vehicles hates the idea. I'm going to have to figure out how we get motor vehicles. Motor vehicles is part of the agency of transportation. And it's the agency of transportation that is helping us pay for all of this. So you would think that they would want to work together. So that's another avenue that I'm going to pursue because we need to solve it. But what Butch wanted to say was show us that you're using truck GPS. And if you're not, that's a secondary violation. The transportation committee believed that maybe we don't want to be using GPS at all and we probably don't want to put that in law. So anyway, it's a longer conversation. We're going to have it. That's the good news. So that's one thing that's going on. You may have seen in the news that the minimum wage bill, which had passed the Senate before crossover, was just voted out of the House committee. General Housing and Military Affairs on Friday. It will now go to House appropriations. And I have no idea what they're going to do with it. It's the just to the as it's as it's drafted right now, it calls for increases over the next five years. So in January, next, the minimum wage right now, the minimum wage is 1078. Next January, it would go to 1150. Then in 2021 to 1225 and 23 to 1310 in 2023 to 1405 and in 2020 January, 2024 to $15. That is that is what came out of committee. One of the complications is that of course it applies as well to state workers and affects the state budget. So I'm not, as I said, I'm not sure what our appropriations committee is going to do with it. It also affects it affects not only not only state employees, but it affects a lot of other programs that that government funds, such as Medicaid payments for nurses, you know, visiting nurses and folks like that. So all of those all of those reimbursements would need to be increased. And that's all state money. You know, I think it would be nice if people made a living wage and didn't need and didn't need to use other government services. It's kind of crazy to have somebody working full time and still needing food stamps and heating assistance. And so, you know, there's we haven't really been able to calculate what the savings would be on the benefits side, you know, if we're paying if we're paying people more. Those are those are complicated calculations. But our fiscal analysts have been working on that. What about farmers? My understanding is that they're exempt. I just was looking at the bill this morning. The there's their bill calls for two study committees. One to look at agricultural workers and another to look at tip wage. So the current law is that if you are if you work in a restaurant and you get at least $120 a month in tips, the restaurant only has to pay you half of whatever the current minimum wages. So we're at 10 78, you're getting, you know, $5 and change guaranteed an hour. And that that's that has opponents and proponents on both sides. Interestingly, some of the people who get to wages are really happy with that and other people are not so. So that's a longer conversation. So there's also a study of opposed study to look into that further. There's there's a national push to get everybody to eliminate the tip wage and have everybody get a minimum wage. So we'll see without without limits. You say 120 a month of tips. Yes. If you if you get if you get if you get that much in tips, then then you are then the the restaurant owner only has to pay you $5 and change an hour. And if you're bad. That's your restaurant. You probably made that.  Oh, yeah. I don't know. Because they're good. And they're the company favorite. They want to work the other way. You know, it's being mandatory. If they are terrible. If you don't learn to do it, right? No. It's our summer time. Or you if you can find somebody. That's the other. Right now. Right now is we have no workforce. We have zero.  We need real people working. We need people to serve your coffee to, you know, do dishes to mop floors. That's what we need. That's what we need to say. We, you know, the tech people are great, but we need people to service those tech people. And we don't have that right now. So I'd like to see the state do something about that.  You know what's interesting are the economists who works with the legislature said, you know, refugees would be the answer because they will accept the low wage jobs. They're hard workers, you know, and it's too bad that we don't have that program going, going more strongly. As long as we do it the way it was done a long time ago. Everybody comes in, they do the legal thing. Just to go get a bus for people and do a little job. I'm not seeing you do that, but no, maybe he could be... Oh yeah, you have to be sponsored. American language and American laws. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. American language, I'm sorry. We're the only countries that's not bilingual. Well, we are because more people speak Spanish and they do English. In those countries everybody speaks two languages. But he was talking very specifically about the refugee resettlement program, where people are very strictly vetted in housing. That's great. That is a well-organized program. Have you thought, I'm sorry I could just jump in here. I hear you talking about a lot of things. I don't hear anybody say anything about it. What about the country? It was making 15, 25 an hour. And these other people that haven't been there very long, whatever, are making 10, 75. And they're going to make $15 an hour. And there's no reason for an employer to compensate this 15, 25 an hour by, accordingly. So you were talking about what is known as wage compression. I have a different attitude about that. I understand that 15, 25 is going to feel resentful. But I had a really unhappy experience several years ago with a co-worker who was ecstatic about the size of her raise. She thought it was plenty of money for what she was doing. She felt she'd been recognized for her good work. But she was mad that the person sitting next to her also got the same raise. So she wanted the person next to her to get less. And I thought that that was, to say, uncharitable would be one way to put it. So I guess I'm more interested in seeing everybody have enough that I am in seeing some people worded over others. Well, I'm sorry. I think I'm a pretty good electrician. I'm not going to work for what the guy is coming into business.  He and I are going to have the same money. Right. I'm out there. I'm done. What's the incentive? I mean, exactly. What you're talking about, in my opinion, creates or not creates but fosters mediocrity. Why do I want to do better? Because he's going to get $15 an hour and he shows up.  But your argument is not with the status with the employer.  You don't need to prevent your employer from paying you more than the guy except for the back of the bottom line. I'm saying you're going to raise that money job. It's not the employer. It's other guys. I just came in.  You've been on the job for 20 years and you're only earning $15 an hour.  Why aren't you paying more? And he says, I don't have to. You say, well, I'm gone.  That's always the way it's been, isn't it? Or I can't. I mean, I've been exactly going to say that right now is that you... What ends up happening, okay, $15 an hour happens. Guess what? Your cup of coffee is now $4 instead of $2. Because I'm going to have to make up for that. That's cutting into my bottom line, Dave's bottom line. I understand we need to do this, but everything's going to follow suit. But the trade-off is the people who can't afford to buy coffee at all may come in your shop. Well, they won't pay $4. They won't pay $2. They're not going to pay $4. It's really important to keep in mind that we're talking about something that we're talking about. I realize from what I understand Seattle did this. They went to $15 an hour. They started cutting people's hours. It's not that great. They said 20 hours. They said 20 hours. They started to pay the $4. And I would say to you that for some people, that will be a good thing. Because it will get them home with their kids more. So, you know, is it a perfect world? No. But I think there is a big push to try to make sure that people can take care of themselves. Somebody who's working full-time should be able to pay their bills and should make government assistance. I think that's, for me, that's the bottom line here. I have a small problem with that. In fact, I see people who are having trouble paying their bills and they are on assistance. And in her hip-hop, it's a $1,000 pipe pack of cigarettes. I don't have a smartphone, but it was $100. Well, I have none. My point being, we're not going to be able to make them do it.  So that's where I get... We all make different choices and we disapprove of other people's choices. So that's exactly right. We made the choice to have an iPhone rather than buy the next better piece of meat for their kids. Okay, so... Well, this whole five-year plan, what we're talking about with this whole thing, it's mute because look at fuel prices for the working people. I mean, what's it going to be in five years? I mean, what is it in the last month? It's on the rise, it's 25 cent rise in the last month. So, you know, we're in a mess, right? And then you want to add a carbon tax to it? No, no carbon tax. No, no, no. That's everybody's favorite... What is that I want? Moving forward, it's not happening. There is a proposal and I think it's now... Well, it's definitely on hold to increase the tax on home-delivered fuel by two cents a gallon. So my $2.79 gallon would be $2.81. That's...  So, you know, where's two cents and all of that? And what that would do is it would allow us to greatly increase the number of homes that got weatherized because then overall we cut down our use of fossil fuels. We make lower income people better able to support themselves. So, you know, it's... But a lot of us... I had mixed feelings about it. It's a regressive tax. It's one that hits everybody the same way instead of having people who are better off pay more. And the Senate is looking to find a different solution to that. So I don't know that that's going to work. We passed it out of the house but I don't think it's been passed. But after the time the people are on fuel assistance, we still got to pay two cents more a gallon for that even though they're getting subsidized and all that. So we'll go right down to them. I'm a guy who pays a lot more money. We got to do something to keep our kids. We have 16 grandchildren. Seven of them have left the state and not come back. And another one of my granddaughters, she leaves the 10th going to Tennessee and they're going to be moving with my two great-grandchildren. They're not coming back. We need to get our natives to stay here. Yeah, or get some of the college kids who are coming here to stay and they do. I've got a college kid. He's a senior this year at the Champlain. Easily, he's not coming back. Two of our four children have gone and not coming back. And they all say we can't afford to live here. I hate to say this but I moved here in 1978 from Connecticut. I remember my father saying, what the hell are you going there for? Because in the 60s there was a mass exodus. Everybody went to Connecticut to work in the aircraft. He couldn't believe that I was moving to Vermont. What are you doing? So I think this is an ongoing thing that's going on. I mean it's unfortunate it's happening. But I have friends who have kids that are in their 30s and they've all left. They're not staying. And it's part of this because they don't want to deal with the winter. And sometimes you just want to change the scene. I looked around. I left Connecticut because I didn't want to stay there. What I did up here, I could have done that and never made three times the money. But I came here for the way of life. Mason. Just today, coming here, one issue that came up is that we're talking about going ahead and making the seatbelt law a number one violation. So that if you're cut without your seatbelt that's going to be a ticket right away. Now we talk about the carbon tax but we don't do anything related to... If we're talking about our saving lives what is going on with the idling issue and making it stick? Like if you go river. We're going to give people tickets mandatory for no seatbelt. How about tickets for this idling? So in fact it is illegal. You are here. In fact it is illegal. But once again it's not enforced. In my experience some of the prime abusers of that are the state police. I once had a state trooper sit and talk to me for an entire hour with his motor running. I did not have the courage to tell him to turn off his motor. Probably why. You know there's an exemption for law enforcement because there's so many computers on board that instead of installing two batteries maintain one battery and then run the car. So why aren't we installing two batteries? There's so many simple solutions that our legislators are not accomplishing. In this session. Thank you. So the legislation exists. Getting the police to enforce it is a different thing. So be careful where you, you know, we passed that law about five years ago over huge pushback from all kinds of constituencies so it has about 25 exceptions. But I notice that when I go to the local mini-mart that people go in, you know, well I'm only going to be there a second but then they run into a friend and hang out for 20 minutes. Meanwhile the motor's running. Yes, yes we need enforcement. So some of the other things that are moving. I wanted to talk a little bit about what's happening with the opioid crisis. We've been, this has been, has had many approaches over the years. The program that has been the most successful is something called Hub and Spoke. And there are now, I think there are five or six hubs in the state. So a hub is a place that is actually a facility that has medical providers who are approved to dispense methadone. And there's one in Rutland, there's one in Burlington, there's one in St. Alibans, I think there's one in St. Jay. So they're sprinkled around the state. And for people who are looking to get off of heroin and fentanyl, they can go to a hub and receive treatment there. They do regular urine checks on the people to make sure that they're taking the right drugs and not taking the wrong drugs. And they get counseling that goes along with the methadone. It's called MAT medication assisted treatment. And another drug that can be used in the same way is buprenorphine, which is administered either as pills or actually as a film that you put under your tongue. And that can be prescribed by physicians in their offices with a special, they need a special license from the DEA to do that. And when somebody is, it has stabilized at a hub, then they can be referred to a doctor, so the spokes are doctors. So for instance, Gifford Hospital, their health center now has doctors who prescribe buprenorphine. So someone who is in recovery can get regular supply of drugs from them. These are people now who are, so they're working and they're paying taxes and they're taking care of their kids. And so that, and we have gotten to the point, with the rollout of all of the hubs around the state, we now have zero weight list to get into those places. That has been the case for, I think it's at least half a year that we've had no weight list. So that's been really good news. We also have treatment courts sprinkled around the state and they take various forms.  Judge Greerson was on the bench there. He is now the chief superior judge, so he's sort of the administrator for the superior courts. But at that point he was running both the drug court and the mental health court. I went on mental health day and was allowed to sit in the, there's a meeting that precedes the court hearings where prosecutors and defense attorneys and social workers and drug rehab people and the court administrators and the judge were, there were probably 20 people at the table. I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement because everything that's there is confidential because these people are in treatment. What struck me the most that day was that although these were people whose primary, number one, they all had many, many, many criminal violations. They all had records, they had multiple pending charges that they had pleaded to. So these are people who were constantly getting in trouble with the law. They were, they all had diagnosed mental health issues but they also were all using some kind of drugs. And I was struck by that because I was told that this wasn't drug court day. So even so people who have mental health issues do what we call self-medicate. And so there was alcohol, it was heroin, it was cocaine, all kinds of drugs that they were trying to control. So in that process they had regular urine tests that got reported to this group. So the judge sat there and listened in this informal group, listened to the recommendations of the treatment people and the lawyers and the court people who had been working with the various clients and came up with a plan for that person for that day. And then we went into the courtroom and I was invited to sit with the judge at the bench because they don't do it, it's not, it's an open room but the conference actually happens up at the bench so that the rest of the room doesn't hear it again because these are people who are sick and this is confidential. And he talked to each one of the defendants who was there that day. So these are all, in this process these are all people who have entered into a plea agreement so they have been convicted of whatever the crime is but the condition of their continued release into the community is that they participate in this program. So he talked to each one of the people and if they had done everything they were supposed to do this week he congratulated them and gave them some little token like a card for a cup of coffee or a donut and some of them got little pins. The one, the couple of people had been not compliant and they had some kind of sanctions.  And I think there was one person who was in fact kicked out. That person had been given two or three warnings and still was not following the program. So that was one day. On the alternate weeks they had people who were in the drug court. The drug court is done on the record, open section, everybody listens. They have the same pre-court meeting with all of the workers in the court but when the defendants come in, they all listen to each other. So the drug court is a little bit more like a little bit more like group therapy in the sense that they're listening to what's happening with others and reinforcing each other and trying to keep each other going forward. So those were two things happening in Burlington. In White River Junction, in Windsor County, they have a DUI court and there the people who are entitled to participate in this program are people who have their third charge of driving drunk. Now think about it.  This is somebody who has been, who has had one drunk driving with conviction and paid the fine and gone through a crash and had a license suspension, has done it a second time and all of those things and now has done it a third time. So these are not people who have been using the rehabilitation tools that are already out there. So once again, they come in, they report to the judge, they listen to each other and I looked around the room at these folks and I thought, oh my God, I could encounter any one of these people on a country road late at night and maybe not walk away. So that program is working and people are getting through it and they're staying clean and they're getting back to their lives. And the good news, this time last year I wasn't sure that all of these treatment courts were going to continue because they are, as I talked about, the number of people sitting around the table. They are in fact expensive. They are labor intensive for the courts, for the lawyers, for the counselors who are involved and even for the judge. So the judge, the day that I was there, that was what the judge did all afternoon was go to this meeting and then sit and listen to the people in the courtroom and there were maybe 20 people on the dock at that day. That was his afternoon. So what they've been able to do over the years is that the courts have gotten various grants from the federal government to keep the doors open on these programs and this year they were successful in getting a big grant that will keep it going for several more years. So that's another piece of the program. In addition, the governor instituted an opioid coordination council. He did it by executive order a couple years ago. A woman named Gelinda LeClair who has had various jobs in the state and federal government over the years is the executive director of that group and we right now in my committee have a bill that would basically institutionalize that concept. So we are trying to figure out what does the council look like, what does the administration of it look like, where should it live and what are the realistic things that it should be doing. The governor's council was looking at the full range of things related to the opioid crisis from treatment and policing and all of that. Our bill is specifically focused on the issue of prevention and prevention of all kinds of substance abuse including tobacco. So we are trying to work that out and get that. We have a bill that came out of the senate. We're doing some major changes to that. And maybe I should stop talking and let people ask more questions. I'll start. The first subject you talked about was camera probe. I didn't hear you saying anything about ANR being involved. Oh, but they are. Oh, I'm sorry, ANR. Let me, I'll explain to you. I went to several meetings after Irene with these river experts and said all the stuff that's in the river, leave it there. It's good, it'll slow down the water. There'll be no flooding. Half the reason that the bottom quarter mile, no more than half, a large part of the reason that the bottom quarter mile of camp rub went so bad was trashed around the river and plugged those colors. I truly believe, I can't prove it, that the rivers or the brooks have been clean, especially the upper color, it was big enough to handle the water. So from there down to Audrey Turks, good chance I wouldn't even have been affected at all. The next one down, I don't think it's big enough and especially it's on a corn. But still, it plugged over the bank it goes and washed out the room.   So one of the issues, one of the issues is maintenance that's covered. That cover was fine until the trash came down. They brought it next to it and saved it a little bit because he went in there and started pulling stuff out. I've been in Lilliesville, the same thing happened. The load of his timeline over plugged up with trees. I can tell you some of the trees came from my backyard. I had trees this big around across the brook. Monday morning when I went down to the brook they were gone. There was no sign of them. No where. They're all down at the bottom of it. Beyond that bridge there's a mountain of lumber that came down that brook. I feel bad that I could, it seemed like I, when I speak to these guys, I can't be heard because I don't have P-E-X-Y-G-R behind my name. So I don't know nothing. I'm sorry, I'm 64 years old I've been in this town for 60 years. I'm a tradesman. I've been out on all these roads. I've seen these things. I feel like I know some of this stuff. No, but you haven't understood to learn these things. That's exactly what I said. On the select board. The state was bugging, bugging the town. Don't take anything out of the river. You're prohibited. You're prohibited. That's right. So can you explain where is the logic of the state? I don't expect you to come up with an answer right now. Can you look into that and why is the state so strict? Who is overseeing these geniuses working in those departments? And how it all started? We used to get grabbed out of the river by Avery's form. And then Barry Calhoun was the engineer. If you leave a note on your piece you have to do a good job. Next thing you know, you had to get a permit to get it.  I said, very well. What made you change your mind? You had an expert come in from Colorado. Tell us what we should do with our rivers. I think that expert ought to go back to Colorado. No, it was Colorado. But it was paid for by the... Yeah, it was paid for by Traveller-Hunded, the salmon people and another A.C. Vermont. So, stack back. Yeah. These are the professional... These are the professional demonstrators who protest the right. Nobody objects to taking things out of the river. As long as you're not speeding it up. Most of the things that get taken out of the river most of the work has done in the river that removes material. Whether it's the 1% of the material that's wood, the trees for the 98% of the material which is stone, gravel, rocks. When you take that stuff out and speed the river up you're only moving the problem somewhere else. Well, that's... except for the things we made and we've been living here for 40 some years. I don't know how long you've been here, Dave. And when the gravel was being removed from the river, there was never a problem. All of a sudden the problem was being developed because the experts are telling us leave it like this. The nature will take its course and destroy you. I mean, that's how we look at it. And that's how we see it and that's how we leave it. I was out of... I couldn't come anywhere for two days in my house. And I was wondering what if an emergency vehicle has to come? I was told by another expert that they'd send an ADV to get you or your wife. Wonderful, yeah. I recommend everybody take five or ten minutes of the Tundridge Fair this year and visit their table. They have this little model of what happens in a stream when you put things in and take things out and put more water in. It's an instant tutorial on hydraulics and it clears a lot of things up. The trees that block the stream are not going to be a problem. Did that exhibit get washed out? Did that exhibit get washed out? What are you talking about? You slow the river down. You're doing the right thing.  It's not the amount of water that creates the damage. It's the force with which it strikes the banks. Well that brings into the in fact, in the last 40 years as you're speaking, we are experiencing more water drop. You know, you can question the science about climate change because it's a piece of the puzzle. And one of the things that on that house floor like you did for the Bethel issue just now you should get up and make sure that Phil Scott has an electric vehicle. Why? Because it's educational. You know, we have you gotta slow down the water and we're not doing it. And the legislation needs to do a lot more small direct actions to make this start working. Taking out the gravel. Dave's right. As part of the problem the water volume increases and if we're getting more rain that is one powerful wall of water coming down. I live higher up on a mountain and my problem is I'm trying to stop a road from being built which is totally insane at this moment to even think about allowing a road to be built with that much slope degree and that much water and I'm not getting any help from any legislators by the way. And this would be two and a half years of fighting to prevent this from happening which if it happens will most likely flood my house. So in the in the town of Ripton after Irene one of the things that they did was they found a way to create a new flood plan that was behind the village. I don't know how many of you go over 125 but Ripton is in a way it reminds me a little of Bethel in the sense that it's that it's narrow and it's winding through the village but what they did was they found a way to get the water to go behind the village upstream they created a runoff water so that it didn't then take out the houses that were in the village. So there are there are other solutions to where you direct the water. I came over Camp Brook I probably shouldn't have I ignored the road close on the couple of days after the rains and what I saw up at the top was that I described along the sides were there but the brooks that were coming down off the hill were scouring under the pavement so a lot of the damage was we call it fallopian erosion I think where the water's coming in and it hits something and it just scours and it just keeps scouring and so it takes away the underlayment of the road because it's already been weakened by heavy loads it just breaks and that's there that's the damage at the top I will give you that I'm just I'm not saying that the trees I was going to fix everything two culverts near the bottom there was no wood in the river the biggest culvert would have taken I don't know about yellow because it is on a corner and that's a tough thing no matter what it gets it straight nothing to block that culvert truly the water would have gone through there from there to Audrey Turks would have been fine as far as the breakdown of the roads that's known as building the road correctly I don't know if you remember but I do because I went into some of those meetings after Irene and the contractor which would by the way a little bitter who rebuilt that road told the town we're going to close this road on those slopes we actually have to put some matting in to try to control it which they did but it wasn't enough I mean I don't know what that is well it's like a plastic composite you put it in to try to keep the soil makes the road and it just wasn't enough we have a culvert it's actually more short but it's up by me that washed out from Irene they went and put a lot of different sizes of granite in and around in the head wall it had been all white and it washed the ground off the top and it was dry it's there no work needed we don't spend enough money on the road it's been driving enough for years you've got $100,000 work on the road so you can do them all a little bit instead of okay you're right we did on the Rochester side many years ago, I want to say 20 they had there was a place on Bethel Mount Road after the T coming towards Bethel that was constantly being damaged and they rebuilt it with a rubber bladder so they put a rubber and it was very expensive we had lots of debate about it it's held up and it's been years now so yes, you're right doing it right is of course it didn't have the traffic from my road to my sugar house I'd rattle it every three years I'd leave that down costing a lot of money that year 15 years ago I'd just keep driving I don't have to fight more gravels I don't have to grade I don't have to make it right to fight fabric makes it like a trust on all things anyway, I know we don't have any money but the biggest problem is most of these roads they're made for a horse and buggy they'll make them a little wider the sub base isn't good and you just put another bandaid on top of that and the most important thing with roads is drainage you've got to keep the water out of the road they make an island out of it but before I forget I want to compliment you for taking this moment I would yell at the others I will let them know that you know, you're talking about the weight on the roads were you supposed to count the trucks away with our wet clouds sand it and load of sand so if you're going to cut this restriction back how are you going to water it with a 10 millers? another question they shouldn't be able to go any better than what I can so they would notice notice a huge huge pile of granite that's being built up next to the other state from Corey yes, I just saw that the other day and they're running out of space to put this excess stone it's spoiled except that they have to take it out to get the stuff it's not of the size and quality that one they stockpile it until the state needs a lot of it and it's worth bringing in a crusher and then crush it and spread it that's what I don't think that's happened more than once happened for me problem in this town one of the committees I don't even know which one has the coordinates or whatever they want to call it we can't crush that you can't make it feasible because they put a limitation on three trucks an hour going in and out well, when we're running a crusher they ain't going to have three trucks an hour going in and out when there's an emergency when we had those minor trucks on the road that shouldn't be on any state road during the emergency while that rock around needed to move fast in an emergency all those rules get thoroughly weighed it's too bad that we couldn't have had something weighed so that there was 10,000 yards of crushed granite upon Christian Hill so that when, because I know this town was scrambling trying to find something for material I mean they were hauling it and they were mining from the pipe from now to Bear wherever it could be found and we had right in this town huge resources that other people would come and buy actually there was a time when Rock of Ages was given a sense we didn't pay for it the rep rap we still get and I don't know why I don't work with Rock of Ages to use that material to straighten some of these roads out the basic problem with log roads is icy outside of any of the sixties they weren't built to begin with what I said they were built for is absolutely right the roads did not can't work as a preferred example when I went up first on the select board we already contracted to rebuild Camber Grove and it was in the hoop log and I haven't known the contractors for a long period and I don't know I don't know no less respect this road isn't going to last and we had a big to-do of the grand opening of the new Camber Grove and how it was going to last for a lifetime it was a very brief lifetime yeah it was a white time road it just wasn't built white and then all of a sudden it's correct it's all band-aid on it put it into new grand rails and stop to see the cracks come back and that's a dead giveaway but something out of there was going on for the state they couldn't take care of that's an idea well how long have we been trying it's like the state to take over the Camber Grove I bought it's still a road it was going to be for we're still going in and the state would just put a band-aid on it too they don't fix stuff the state keeps raising the specifications for what the road has to look like before they'll take it you know if you drive out on 107 in any direction at all wherever the state has come in and made improvements and brought that section of road up to spec you know there's this it's not just the pavement which has improved it's the right of way which is wider and the guardrails which are different and everything is different it's making it harder and harder for towns to get to state to take some roadway on to there we'll have to bring it up just back if we don't take it isn't it broke a federal road it does get federal highway assistance because it connects to highways but it's in a kind of special category but it's definitely town roads it is special because I believe that repair is not within the next amount of time there will be no no money out of Bethel or Rochester that's my understanding we have to do it within 180 days but about mid-October are we still won't solve the problem of the trees of the road I don't see it happening if you call with Irene and check us I don't think you've got all the money yet from the same one we don't have, we haven't got our last thing you did get the, well how many years has it been so in a period we've had to go across the street and borrow money and the interest free is quite favorable but the same token you do have to pay the interest so it's not free if you have to wait five or six years to get your money whether it's Irene or not the state is going to take that on we are not even going to be involved the state is going to get the money it's just the first money all we have to do is make sure the work is done it's 180 days what do you expect in terms of so it's open to local traffic now I've done up to the guy who does very well changes and except for one spot it's a too late road a few places but there's one culvert that last week Thursday it's a big washout they've just replaced the culvert but dad didn't have material to fill I'm assuming that by today they should have that I'm hoping they have that and then it gets up to about I think the next really bad place gets up around the trail from there up or over there's several spots I said to Sandy earlier once she came back already this weekend there's a big difference people have realized the road is closed and tourists are not coming through they're all headed up on a 7 so Bethel's going to be in good part of my business comes from people going over the camper so I help her to go in the sugar bush go in the middle of the area try to kind of ruggle like plastic it's going to be closed all summer long we're in trouble remind me not to tell you something and I'm not sure what the plan is my understanding is that they're going to find a way to have it open temporarily until they're ready to do the big work I help Rochester Rochester doesn't really get hurt because they're going to go right through one month it's going to be a little longer for people to go because right now they go 107 they bypass Bethel completely not 107, not 100 Rochester, the businesses are going to be impacted as much as I see it I'm also thinking about the workers there are a lot of people in Rochester who use that road to get to work so David, do you have people stop on their way to sugar bush all the time I've got regulars there's one girl I hate to stand with after ours is bizarre sandwich have you ever experimented with staying open until 11 or 12 on Friday by that time they're headed, they're gone people aren't going to stop a lot of it is my summer business is people traveling cruising around and GPS put this town on the map by bringing people over camp on the road, instead of that when I opened up eight years ago on a Sunday afternoon you think you were in Boston not one car is remotely so I can't hate GPS so I'm not allowed to I don't even know how to say GPS that's what put us on the map three weeks ago I had a drive to Warren I had four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon the ski season was winding down between here and Hancock I must have passed 200 cars going south in about 25 so I mean I remember the days of traveling we never went we were 100 you never went that way we don't have rear wheel drive cars so you were crazy if you did drive up the top of the east drive up more town and come down that way this road closure is going to be tough for Bethel it's going to be hard hard thing for them you mentioned about crushing we can only crush two weeks a year not more active 15 where is this? two weeks it's everywhere in the state there's regulations everywhere the high on the hill nothing they had problems crushing and they could only crush certain period of time and they finally might back and they could get a longer career map but you can't meet this fact I know it's very very difficult times when we had to get crushed on in the archipelago as well it created all kinds of havoc with neighbors dust on their hay for their horses I can't even you think it's more the dust or the noise you think it's more the dust or more the noise control nothing around us it's the former control active 50s it's taken me three years to renew my active 30 and 40,000 dollars here on the other hand we're spending 10,000 dollars to bring new people in the state with no guarantees they're going to stay here once they see rules like that fuel taxes higher wages for who the farmers already have bitching and complaining they're not going to be able to make ends meet but the state is always doing for the right thing we got to do the right thing more money for everybody either you're good for it or not you stand there like a dummy and you get 15,000 dollars an hour I mean I was in business 47 years and I'm sure you have the same thing trying to find people so what's your response to that I mean not yours but the state 10,000 dollars to bring people in so I have real mixed feelings about that but the governor loves it got a lot of pressure yeah I mean that's so number one let's be clear about what the money is it's not a check it's reimbursement for certain kinds of expenses like getting broadband trying to get around the state and so it's up to 5,000 dollars a year so I don't know that anyone has gotten that and it is the intention is to bring in people who have high tech jobs, make good money and will pay taxes here that's the concept they've gotten my understanding is that it has in fact produced a lot of interest in people thinking about we're looking for young families that's the demographic that the governor has identified as being underrepresented in Vermont right now there are lots of us who have gray or graying hair and not so many kids and yes it is true that some of the kids leave I have to say if anywhere that I grew up I would want to live somewhere else for a while it doesn't matter I moved here from San Francisco so people at a certain age want to have different life experiences and that's one of the reasons that they go somewhere else people come here because in fact they like to live here and so what the governor's program has done is it has in fact increased interest in the state it's sounds like a lot of money in fact I believe that the I don't have the clear number in my head but it's something like it would be a total of 50 people if everybody got everything they were supposed to get that's the budget amount so it's not a lot of people who are actually going to get any money but it's been used to promote the state don't you think if taxes were cut down cut some taxes down that you're hiding every year you had more and more and more wouldn't people bring more people in hey look the taxes are low the real estate taxes are low I mean no matter where you turn around you don't know if you're going to be there or alive next year for you to pay all these taxes so all I can tell you is that every study that I've heard about taxes are are not even on the list of the things that people give as the reasons that they come here or leave here it has to do with family it has to do with weather it has to do with job opportunities housing is actually a big issue right now I would say I would say the biggest hurdle that we have in the state right now is is available affordable housing affordable housing well but even available I mean there aren't that many affordable housing yes at every level we have a problem that's what I'm hearing about and that's true now I just read an article this weekend it's true even in Burlington you know we think of Burlington as oh well they don't have anything to worry about they have good jobs and lots of people and lots of money but in fact the workers in their 30s are saying I can't find a place I can afford to live I mean it's great to make you know $50,000 a year but if you have to spend 30 of it on rent you're not getting anywhere so you know we have to figure out how how to make housing more available and more affordable well then this is what the Yole was here for the last 20-30 years the state has to figure out how to do it how long does it take to figure problems like well what I can tell you is that so I've said I have been on the Rochester Planning Commission since 1982 and one of the things that we did very soon after I came on the board was we changed the zoning to increase the density in the village so the people with big old houses could cut them into apartments and it doesn't happen and we have zones where we say you can have a business here if nobody wants to do it you know how do I go out and recruit and say oh here's a nice piece of land why don't you do a business well you're retired so you don't want to do a business so there's a limit to what government can do we can make things possible but it's business that has to make things happen and the same is true with housing well here's a business right there he's staying in three years to get a permit for his gravel renewal here's a prime example right there if the state is putting the thumb down no you can't do it you have to do it this way do you think these people are going to stupid enough to come here and say oh this is a beautiful place to live I can't make it though think of these things as before whatever you said is fine but how is that going to work I know people are left to stay and still live in and I can name them my son is number one for the same reasons another one says he's looking to get him out of the state full slot years ago and you know I can't make anything over here when you're here with the real state taxes in other states compared to here it makes your hair stand it means that other states are more populated that there's more of a tax base but here's again not Montana not Montana I mean the folks by the backs up here are missing they're not purchasing but there's a certain reason they're looking great here a prime example in Massachusetts my son says well it costs a little more to live here but I get a lot more like what he says trust removal is free the county or the town takes care of it that's number one besides other many other things but here we have to tax everything we have to force things to make the state livable and nice and green which you all know it's green and we're all glad to live here but for how long I don't know tell me the name of your court I'm sorry I'm sorry what's that? steam drills how do you how do you remove the material? oh drilling glass what kind of drill? we saw it out subcontracting twice a year is it using steam? it's a microchist it's actually made for stone walls and fireplaces and they just bought a wet saw put a stone on it cuts the backside off the background cuts the backside off 90% of that stuff goes to Pennsylvania now I have 250 it is it took me it was 11 agencies we had to go through that particular business everybody in this room goes by it once a week at least once a week and 90% 90% of you don't know where it is because you can't get there until you figure it out you're not making one dust in my cat doesn't it's cat block and you it's just a clean clean operation we have three acres down between the interstate and the railroad track two owners wanted to move they bought it but no money changed the engine it was 2.9 acres down there so they're talking about putting a building mat down there well they call that prime ag soil so we had a guy come down from the state made this 20 minutes speech you'll have to buy six acres somewhere else and set it aside now let's just think about this thing a little bit there's a 50 foot right away all down the side of it turns, goes up through the box culvert the other side of that the other side of that is the swamp you might be talking an acre, an acre or quarter actually it's grass ground Mike Chase says two head of cattle it's seven acres over here and any fences that will acres out two head of cattle that might support one cow in the summer but you could do nothing in wintertime so what's more important if you have a building here if you get some tax income for the town, makes a plan or is that one cow more important well we'll take that into consideration I've never seen anything except for a couple of family beef yeah I saw that there's no roller crop there there's nothing else to know nothing else to know the animal doesn't need a tree you'll get them full on any bushes in the fall that's a private egg that's a private egg so what does that what does that what does that what does that I'd like to back up something Mason said earlier about getting the governor into an electric car that's a great idea but again I think I mentioned on my last time here on my way out the door that all this electrical electric cars are still putting the car in front of the horse we have still got a lot of work to do and permitting and designing and coming up with correct alternate source of energy we've got a lot of work that we have to do before we put everybody in an electric car you're not going to save any money you're going to still be buying your electric from either a hydrocombat that's probably not or out of the Midwest they have all the coal and whatever fossil fuels or wood burning or whatever there are other ways that just don't get the attention or whatever they need to to be not ANR but whoever says do not put a dam in the river that's probably the best source of electric power we have of the rivers in this state it's probably the best source and they're gone also we're gone and your piece is still going the big one on the Connecticut river and there's this one up in Waterbury but I mean you can count on one hand you've been at the Connecticut river there's a lot of dams on the tributaries my wife went on to the 251 so you can't imagine dams up there plus they hold the water back you don't have the ice flow but this is on the small tributaries that come into it that feed the Connecticut river but anyway and maybe it's solar maybe it's wind before everybody joined the electric car we're going to have a good source of alternate energy we'll tell you that what's going to happen with these batteries these cars when they are no longer useful if anybody figured that out what are they now they're lifting the coal ball there's all kinds of new stuff I mean it's just like I just had a guy come to my house wants me to buy a solar panel from my house because I rounded it what are you going to do with that solar panel what are you going to do with the hazardous waste it's in you don't know hazardous waste that's still in the panel no more than there is in your TV I won't get into that conversation with you sir that's something I might know more a little more about one more final question who oversees all these government agencies who do they respond to when they come up with these beautiful ideas to keep the planet green the state green whatever the governor every agency is within the administration and is therefore overseen by the governor so the governor is responsible to overseel these agencies the governor is in charge of administration of the state okay that's an answer to my question maybe you can get me down here next time that doesn't work just like you don't do that anymore we have to have something drastically happen probably I mean it makes me wonder who makes these rules I mean every attention good attention you have to pass it's new laws and everything but how they are enforced is the big question so there okay so there are there are laws that are passed by the legislature and signed by the governor there are rules that are done by individual agencies under their within so we might pass a law that says you know here's the policy you guys make a rule that that puts the policy in place so those are done at the agency level and they go through a process where they you know they have public hearings on them what we call stakeholders weigh in so you know it regulates certain kind of business business representatives are there there are advocates for let's say you know something that affects elders that with AARP would be consulted all of those folks okay and then they come up with a draft rule that then is sent to all of the other government agencies to review so okay well how does this affect transportation well the transportation you have to look at it so that I'm going to call that kind of an in house reviewer an in government review then it comes to a committee of the legislature called the legislative committee on administrative rules they meet every two weeks all year long administrative rules and they look at them to see whether they satisfy legislative intent whether they are overreaching arbitrary in some way and so the committee chairs if a bill if something had come out of our committee my committee chair would go through it and give her comments again all of the same players I was talking about business and advocates and all of those folks can be in the room to the committee and this committee then says that it does or doesn't meet legislative intent and after that review then it takes effect the legislative committee cannot stop it from going into effect but what it does is it shifts the burden of proof that there's ever a challenge so for instance if the legislative committee says it's fine then it's solid and it's a rule that can be implemented if the legislative committee says no it still gets implemented but then if a citizen comes forward and says this is arbitrary the burden is then on the administration to show that it's not as opposed to the reverse so that's that we do have you asked about oversight earlier we do have certain things where there are committees that get the government to come and report for instance I said on something called justice oversight that meets in the off session it used to be called corrections oversight it was actually born years ago when there were some I think suicides in prisons I want to say 15 years ago and so the legislator said oh we need to keep an eye on this so they set up a committee that meets about once a month in the off session and the corrections people come and tell us what's going on we have expanded it it's now called justice oversight because it now includes some things that relate to juvenile justice but there aren't many of those there are oversight committees for things like health care reform but and in our regular in our day to day work when we are in session we do in fact have government people come in and tell us what's going on since I talked to not sure you were here when I was talking about all the things that we've been doing on the opioid crisis we get reports about that so the commissioner of health comes in and says okay these are the things that we have in place this is where we're going next this is a piece that needs new legislation because we don't have the power to do what we want to do here those kinds of things so we're looking at where where do we need new law and I will tell you very honestly I resist the knee jerk there ought to be a law I need to be convinced that we need a new law and when anybody presents a bill on the floor of the house the first question they answer is what's the problem what's the problem we're trying to solve here because there's no problem we don't need another we don't need another law and so a lot of us are very conscious about that and that's why when I talked about the amendment that I brought last week it didn't work so we recognize the problem but that's not the right solution so we're going to keep plugging at it I understand what you just said but it seems to me that there are very few hands that have something to do with it and the general population has been ignored that's why we're all here this morning I think yeah well it's the same number every time so the thing that bugs the hell out of me is when you're talking about bringing new people in in the state and you let others go because they can't live here they can't afford to pay the taxes and all these are the problems we have to solve instead of the opioid years ago the then police chief of Burlington named Scali he would deny there were problems of drugs in his city denied, denied, denied and all of a sudden boom exploded it's all over the place now so look at the things that are important right now instead of just oh we don't have any problem with this maybe we'll deal with it the problem with the rivers and everything we're going to convince these experts to let the counts and private people clean up the rivers before it gets any worse these are the questions that in the minds of a lot of people all the time can you bring some monsters or can the legislature have some monsters about it we do this to protect you protect me from what being killed by the rivers or what I don't know I know it's a hard question to answer and I'm not expecting an answer just like that all I can tell you is that that conversation goes on all the time there are different points of view about the way that it's appropriate to work in rivers and you may not like the experts on one side but there are people who have good solid science behind some of the decisions that they take on your tax bill on your real estate tax what percent of that goes to education oh god it's probably Jesus that's why you need to address things right there I personally believe in public education and that's what we're doing but I don't think it should cost what it's costing right now it should cost $18,000 per student that's a lot of money what are you getting out of it are these kids really qualified and they come out of the real world I don't think so you can't even re-cursive writing even it's a joke no it's not a joke I worked with someone who could not write me a note because everybody does everything on keyboards now so you don't have to write anything I was appalled although I have to tell you that from taking notes all these years my handwriting has totally deteriorated so it happens doesn't get better with age does it like so many things one thing like so many things we want our kids to stay here but they can't afford to stay here if I wasn't 77 years old and love it where I am, I've been here my whole life I'd move too so I'll just bite the bullet and pay the taxes but it isn't because I like to if you didn't have that portion of your school tax I think I probably paid my kids education then you could afford to live here you've got to support your town you've got to support the roads and all this stuff but 80% of my taxes goes to school and if you didn't have that burden we'd all be better off well I in Bethel did the consolidation fact my taxes went up how was it? old taxes went up so what's going on so I believe I told you I did not support that quarter six you said no I I've never quite got it my cynical view is that it was a way to reduce the number of meetings that superintendents had to go to and superintendents have a very large voice in that building there was it was sadly the initial independence was in fact people complaining about about school taxes and so some of my colleagues said oh we have to do something so we did something and it does that and well you know that unfortunately that does happen and that's that's the reality of politics is once you've gone down a certain road and I promised you I'm going to do something about this then I can't back off and say well you know what it's really awfully complicated and we can't figure it out because that is in fact the case about a lot of things that we look at like how do we make more housing well we have the land we have some financing in place we have agencies that do it but you know if nobody comes forward and says I'm going to be the clerk of the works to make this happen it doesn't happen so you know there is a limit to what government can do and every time we get into one of these things one of my one of my colleagues had a sign on her wall that said it's more complicated than it looks in her committee room and that is true of just about everything that we've come up with well this is the scary thing when you're talking about housing nobody's coming forward to do it because they are scared of the regulations and the things that the government is demanding well exactly I agree with them on that I'm a landlord my tenants have more rights than I exactly right and on top of that they get a rebate at the end of the year from the rent they are paying they get money from the state to pay the rent these are the things that blow his people I can see making something so the people I mean there are unscrupulous landlords out there that are slumlords they just don't take care of the property I understand that but it's so hard because you can't the regulations are just ridiculous as to what you have to go through to try to get a 10 and out to try to get them out I have friends and girls that pay people here $1,500 get out I agree with them it's cheaper if you go through an entire eviction process in Vermont you are looking at pretty close to 10 grand 10,000 dollars to get somebody out of a 75 $750 a month apartment that's pretty cheap any evictions I've had always been due to the fact that they haven't paid their rent so you have already you've already lost it and the cost of another 10 grand and the minute you serve you never see another 10 grand then you go to a back fixed place after they get out so that's one answer major answer to the housing problem we have fix that first and then try to get some okay you have to have this you'll start with that from the bottom their welfare check and I asked years ago why don't you send it to me for the rent oh we can do that that's their money okay the education budget about a third of it goes to the school building and heating it and administration another third goes just for the health insurance the teacher but not salary teacher salary just the health insurance the teacher the third of the education budget I don't think it's that much but I believe the number is 80% of school cost is personnel which would include health insurance so it's we're paying for people we're paying we're paying for people who work with children that's where the cost is what are you seeing for a driven pay if I had to put money on it I would say May 18 May 18 it's a Saturday three weeks you're pretty successful he would say no the governor is going to throw a monkey wrench in again this year no I'm not sure about that whether we want to meet again in May or not that's one of the questions what do you have to decide we're going to work slowly now which date did you have because somewhere in there we have memorial day somewhere in May is memorial day what date did you have it I picked 5.20 because the next weekend it's memorial day so that's a question mark that's a question mark so if we don't if I'm wrong about the 18th we might be working that day so I don't know if we can make it I can't do this and go up there of course not well I'm going to tentatively schedule a meeting for 5.20 and we'll stay until I have your email I don't give any money don't show up give me a week let me know a week ahead of time whether we're doing it or not I'm not sure I'm going to know a week ahead I just want to be clear about that give me as much notice as you possibly can it's always unclear well so yeah what happens is it's not a mistake to be on the wall so here's the deal we can't leave until we have budget and so and right now the budget is still in committee in the senate they told me that they think they're going to vote it out this week so by Friday then it has to go to the floor of the senate which will take at least 2 or 3 days legislative days and then it goes to conference when I first started in the legislature I was told that the rule of thumb was that we would adjourn 2 weeks after the budget went to conference which means that we're running late but I also but we now have the chair of the house appropriations committee and the chair of the senate appropriations committee are sisters and they commute together so it's possible that things will happen more quickly from where dandle oh dandle they got plenty of time to convince her yeah they do dandle so so I we are budgeted for 18 weeks and may so that's another that's a huge pressure I got here a little bit late today but I got a question where's the senate seat holders they are at other meetings in other places all three of them this happened actually from the legislative side we've had better support this year than actually many I mean you watch Alice Drive from love love with the snowstorm really I think we've done we have not had public attendance the whereabouts of but we do get an article I gotta look at that this is being funded by the American Legion and the American Legion dues cannot be used dues to the American Legion in Bethel all go to the feds the state feds we retain men of our dues here in town so we have to have fundraisers of sorts and we have a whole lot of people who want to stand out in the sun or that sort of thing and we try also to send kids and boys and girls which is I have not got fixed yet because I've got this council and we will join high school but that's a great problem for young people we have to we have to we have to step in and help subsidize keep this thing going forward why did you wait this long wait wait wait because you just ruined it up no we don't have a lot of money we know that we can be enough you can have me we don't have I think we should thank David for the wonderful food I do too it's as easy as Nick was to work with games it's easier I don't have to I don't have to listen to his cop like I used to have with you he's very push your luck a little more do you really want to use it to work with that's what I learned from the past well at least I know you have receivables like every other I have to be one of them so thank you all for coming and mark the 20th on your calendar and unless you leave the contrary you put it in a paper that's the only thing I was going to say it was a small thing


It is a beautiful minus 23 degrees Celsius here on the Saskatchewan prairies and we have already started planting our garden. The winter sowing jugs are in the snowbank just waiting for spring.


Hello and welcome to the CMC markets chart of the week video with myself Dev Madden, market analyst here at CMC markets and today's date is a Wednesday, the 7th of March and the time has just gone midday, 12pm UK time and this week's chart of the week is going to be the Brussels 2000 or as we call it here at CMC markets, the US small cap 2000. Now the big picture is that the American index like the other major American indices and global indices had a solid finish to 2017, went on to create a record high in 2018, had a major sell-off along with other global stock markets and has bounced back. These vertical lines here that are on the screen are the Fibonacci retracement which is a tool used by technical analysts. The Fibonacci retracement tool can be found under the draw tools on our trading platform and it is this one here that I'm using. Retracement of the move are a fairly commonplace in financial markets. Dow theory talks about how if you have a certain trend or certain move it's not uncommon to see that movement being retracement of one-third, one-half or two-thirds of the original move before the trend continues. With Fibonacci retracement it's a similar principle but the levels are different so the big important levels to watch out for on the Fibonacci retracement is the retracement of 23.6% of the move, 38.2%, 50% and 61.8% of the move. So drawing a line between the high of 2018 and the low of early February we can see that the Fibonacci retracement at very different levels have been respected on a number of occasions and seeing as the Russell 2000 has managed to retrace over 60% of the original Dowert move it's likely that we could see the market retrace 100% and retest 16-16 in the wider term. Granted there's a lot of uncertainty in global stock markets at the moment and in particular American stock markets given the potential of the talk of trade war heating up between the United States and countries like China or a trading block such as the EU. So what we may see is possible we could see some weakness in the near to short term before potentially the wider upward trend continues so taking a look at the areas that we potentially see the Russell 2000 pull back to. If you look here at the 61.8% retracement level at 1539 we can see on a couple of occasions and the lows of the last couple of sessions have there and thereabouts been in that class area. If you look at the 50% retracement level at 1515 we can see that it has been respected as both resistance and support on a number of occasions recently and if it's been respected as support and resistance recently it's more likely to do so in the future although of course there are no guarantees. We've also seen that the 38.2% retracement has also been respected recently in terms of support in the recent week or so and that comes into play at 1492 so between 1539, 1515 and 1492 these are areas that we could potentially see the market drift lower if there is a tension surrounding possibility of a trade war for potentially the market would retest the all-time high of 1616. If you do though have a size of a break south of the 1492 the 38.2% retracement area that could signal that the market is actually going to move lower again and we could set us back down towards 1462 or perhaps even as low as the February low of 1415. Well that's all from me this week thank you very much.


Do you want anything to toilet? No? You didn't see that coming. Another one? Why are you punching yourself? Why are you slapping it up?


Administration can have those resources available for teachers to make sure that referrals are made when a student stops coming to school because of overwhelming anxiety or adverse childhood experiences. Don't let them disappear. Follow them, find out where they are, why they're not going to school, and develop a program that will serve them. I like to think of education as a human right, and we have one system that has a lot of options, but why can't every child have a system that will work for them? So be creative, be flexible. You know, the system is one thing, but I like to see it also as a community, and we can get stuck and frustrated in systems thinking, but if we think about supporting students as a community, it can shift our lens a little bit and help to keep students within a wraparound approach when they've already faced too many childhood, adverse childhood experiences, and help them recover from it.


Hello everybody. My name is Roberto Lineros from Universidad Catolica del Norte. I'm going to talk about the Law Physics Initiative as a tool to communicate research in physics. This is a working collaboration with the Law Physics Coordinator Alejandro Cardenas-Avendaño, Nicolás Fernández, Joel Chodupérez, Walter Cangarif and Mauro Campiastro. To motivate the talk, we are going to use some words from Richard Feynman from the First Inter-American Conference on Physics Education in Rio de Janeiro in 1963, in which he was addressing the problem of teaching physics in Latin America to be similar to do anything in Latin America. We know that the social, political and economic context in Latin American countries is much different from 20 countries in Europe or in the United States. Nevertheless, at that time, the problems that were present in principally regarding to teaching physics were that the students are all alone and the small number of people that are involved in physics education. So for the case of researchers, the problems are basically the same. The problem that we wanted to tackle with the Law Physics are basically to we focus in five different points. One is the small group of scientists, the point of physics, the group case that we are interested. Also, Latin America is geographically far from Workclass Research Center in Europe and in the United States or Japan. Also, the access to funding is much reduced for the case of universities in Latin America. And of course, for the case of PhD postdocs and professors in Latin America, we have the problem that teaching and master duties make harder to go abroad for doing collaborations. And the most important, the one that also we want to address with the Law Physics Initiative is the loss of contact with Latin America collaborators that are outside Latin America doing research. So Law Physics or Latin American Webinar Physics is a web seminar that we proposed many years ago as a way to deal with this big problem that I just mentioned. The goal of Law Physics is making research accessible no matter the place. The type of speakers are basically researchers from all over the world, regardless of the nationality, because we wanted also to allow the communication with Latin America with the rest of the work in the same way that people go to conferences or go to give seminars in different research centers. The format is basically four meeting talks per minute, 40-minute talk in Zoom and in live streaming in YouTube. And the topics that we covered are essentially related with high energy physics as the particle, cosmology, gravitational waves, and other type of topics that for instance orientation for early career physics. So we have been doing these initiatives since 2015. We already have 115 webinars with six Coloquia and one large event that was our Dark Matters Day that we organized in 2016. So what are the advantages for the people in Law Physics? For instance, for the speaker, they have a reach to a larger audience. Also, the talks are recorded and also making public, making the reach of the talk to be much larger than the typical conference. Also, we provide a certificate and open the possibility to promote early career scientists. For the audience, it's very interesting because they can access to broad topics that maybe in a university is not possible to cover just with regular seminars or in a conference. Also, they have access to all the previous webinars and future webinars because of the platform that we're using. The possibility to replay the seminar is very important because especially for PhD students following a specific topic, they can watch again the seminar until to have a better understanding of what is the topic about. Also, very important is to see the phases of the people that are in research. So another big information that we can get from all of these years doing Law Physics is the metrics of the platform. For instance, in our case, we have 1,400 subscribers and in the last year, we have around 22,000 views from all the videos that we, the 115 webinars that I just said. But the most important information that we can obtain from the metrics is regarded to the gender gap that 20 percent all of viewers are female and 80 percent are male and also the age of the people that are watching the webinars. So just to conclude, I'm going to point it out that the webinars are an incredible tool for communicating science and research. A webinar cycle has to have clear objective. This is key in order to if you want to start your own webinar cycle. We have been here getting experience from doing webinars since 2015 and many of the lessons and regarding to the know-how, we learned much before the COVID-19 pandemic and they are very useful to keep communicating. So if you got curious, you can contact us and also I'm going to be happy to answer all your questions here in the workshop sustainable. Thank you very much.