I want to check in with the board and ask if there are any additions or changes to the agenda. Yes. We need to decide the Blue Cross Blue Shield plan tonight. We wait for Lisa. Yeah. Right. So noted and we'll circle back. Yeah. Yeah, we need to, and I have a recommendation. After. And then we have the warrants here that we're going to circulate. Right. Right here. Also I'd like tonight, we can do it under the Round Robin. Try to see if we can find a date or a series of dates that I can to deliberate. Yeah, we can do that on Round Robin. Yeah. So we have a shade tree here and that's the first item of business. And Neil's going to convene that. Then we have, when the shade tree portion of the hearing is done, then I'll make some more remarks about kind of the order of events and their meetings tonight, but before, but I don't want to like use up Neil's time to do that. So Neil, on this term, so do you appreciate the preservation plan? I'm Neil Baker. I'm the tree warden and I'll give a brief background. The state passed a law pretty recently that changes how the tree warden works. And one of the things it did was allow towns to make these shade tree preservation plans. And so that's what we did. And the shade tree preservation plan does a number of things. It lays out kind of protocols for planting trees on town land. It only pertains to trees in town properties or right of ways, like right of ways of rows. So planting and maintenance of trees. And then the big thing it does is define which trees are considered shade trees and kind of get a trial for their cut or there's a process before hanging on cuts or prudence tree that's considered a shade tree. And before the state law, it had been a little unclear what we were supposed to do and the town had treated trees in the public private way. It worked greater than six inches as shade trees and needing to approach a tree warden before you cut down those trees. And that's pretty much what we've done in this land. We've stuck with that on town and right of ways and on town properties doing a small 4 inch. So that's really the heart of the shade tree preservation plan and we've met once before how to hear about it and how to make changes which were mostly procedural kinds of things. And then this is the second floor around. So I think if anyone, I'll just let people who have comments or questions about it. So this is a plan, not an ordinance or a policy. That's right and there's later on we will figure out an ordinance or it goes like this. But the way the state law is written, it's a little confusing because the plan does have teeth and it mostly invents definition of shade trees. That's kind of the most meaningful thing that it does is define which trees are shade trees. Okay, Sid, do you want questions? Comments? I have some questions. I'll have to go first. Somebody in the audience can go first if they want. Why don't we maybe go around the board and face because that may eliminate some of the questions folks in the audience have. And then if you have questions or you want to speak on this topic then I invite you to raise your hand and I'm going to have you come and actually join us at the table to make a comment or ask a question at Neal so we can hear you and you can hear us better. Do Denise want to ask your questions and then I'll turn to John, Mark, Rick and then folks in the audience. I'm sure there's quick answers to these. On the first page, on the third set of these properties, it talks about promote and protect, protect from what? What note that I made. The plan is intended to promote and protect. And my question is protect from what? Oh, yeah, to protect in the public health and safety. So I guess it's protecting the public by treating more trees as well as that would be to prevent disease and public safety of trees as hazardous, allowing it to get cut. Yeah. Okay, on your number two. Two one. I'm sorry, do you want to speak? Yeah. It says ownership interest held by the agency of transportation. What would the agency of transportation have anything to do with our trees that are in the right of way of state? Like 314. Yes. And that is a definition from the state law there. Okay, under number five, the third bullet, it says our travel quarters that allow animals, does that mean wildlife? Mm-hmm. Under, it says relevant stakeholders and it says utilities. So you mean utility companies like LACC or Hardwick? That is what I meant. Yes. Planning individual plantings. So that's residents and that's on private, but we wouldn't tell private property owners what to plant, right? No, this only pertains to trees that are in the right of way, but towns right of way. So a private property owner shouldn't plant trees in the town right of way without coordinating with the tree warden. And if they were going to do that, they'd have to get a permanent plant. Anyway, I think that's all right. And can you have a link here to where it says the rural road is only at the right of... Is it where you have a link? You have a link for... Yeah, I wonder if that's already up on the website. It is on there, I looked. So that would be just a... I can do that, yeah. And then... Oh, right here where it says 15 days and we'll approve the removal after that period if no appeals are made. So now here it is needed? Yeah, that's the way the new state law is written is that a tree that's a shade tree gets posted for 15 days and then if nobody appeals it, then the tree warden automatically gives the person permission to cut the tree. No, but if I... As the tree warden, I don't really have to say although I could appeal the decision myself and then it would go to the select board but if no appeal is made then it doesn't have to go to a hearing. So if there's kind of stuff that's not controversial you have to plan ahead but you don't have to go through the whole hearing process. And one last comment. It says here the tree warden and deputy tree warden should advise with landowners. It's not a challenge. It should. Yeah, that's right because we're talking about the hazardous trees because people are allowed to cut hazardous trees without notification and that's the way the state law is written. So the tree warden and deputy tree warden don't have to be involved in that decision but if there's any question about whether it's a shade tree then the person who wants to remove it or who has to contact the tree warden in order to get out of it. Yeah, well, thank you very much for doing that. Well done. Yeah? Yeah, thanks. Thanks for doing this. It looks good. You have some questions. So before the shade tree, a tree that's in the right way that was not intentionally planted by the municipality or the municipal program becomes designated as a shade tree has to be designated by... In this plan, it's designated. If it's greater than six inches and it's in a public right way, it's a shade tree. Okay, so it's designated by operation of this plan. Yes, exactly. That was my question. So if you approve, if you guys pass this plan then tomorrow every tree in the way that's greater than six inches. And if the town of Calis was looking to preserve this kind of a look, I'll call it the messy look, it's not the fours there's many here, but as opposed to the look, Calis may have had a hundred years ago where there was space between kind of this mode, it was a new grace. Before, if a property owner wanted to achieve that outcome, they would need to consult to select the woodcourt of this plan for a tree warden. They would talk to the tree warden and then it would be, we would kind of do a notice for all the trees that they wanted to remove at once. And they would have to leave 15 days and then other town residents or whoever would have a chance to lay in an appeal. And if there was an appeal, if somebody didn't like the idea of an appeal then the select order would decide it. So I think, I didn't see it in here, but I think maybe a clarification is in order that if trees just grow up on their own, on their own planet, yet they become, by designation in this plan, a shade tree, those trees are still those owned by the property owner. That all they need is a question about the municipal planted ones, but those trees are still owned by the property owner. Even the municipally planted trees, are owned by the property owner, but not the rights to manage it. Right, exactly. I think that should be made clear and it's also helpful to, I think our current road crew knows this, but future road crews may not realize that the wood on those, the results from work done along the road sides and right of ways, whatever that necessary work, that might involve some tree cutting or a tree that falls if that wood is owned by the property owner and that I just think the public needs to understand that the property owner has the discretion to keep it or leave it or give it away and the town is not owned by that. And I guess my last question is more of, this is maybe next steps, tree planting I know some probably 15 years ago, in fact I stumbled on it, looking through some old minutes, just a few days ago, if I had an answer. We had a discussion at this board regarding re-establishment of the historic shade trees that we've seen fall down and not get re-established and the conservation commission was interested in that. And I think at the time we said we should look into seeing if this grant money is available and maybe come up with an approach to doing that, reviving our historic look on our roads by having the town put a program together and however that would work. So are you anticipating as a next step, or maybe would you want to add that here as a recommendation that you don't do that. Yeah, fine. There hasn't been talk about that in terms of building a clear field in that committee in the conservation commission there's been a conversation about that. And I see the plans like what the plan does is makes clear who should be involved in that process and how that would work and allows it to happen. There is a section here and I think that making clear that the road three's got to be involved if you're planting along the roads or doing that kind of thing so that they can put it out and maintain that kind of thing. But we kind of haven't taken that step of getting more honest about planning that. Thank you. I don't have any questions I think it's great. I do have one small in paragraph 7 tree removal you know the first sentence just makes it look like it's up to you you approve healthy shade of tree is not blah blah blah cannot be removed without the approval from the tree. But in fact that's not the case. It's not up to you to approve it or not. That's all you have to do is notice it and no one objects. It's approved. I have to give a written approval after the notice. So I think you might want to say something like because people don't always read all the way down to the bottom up here you might want to say something like following the process notifying the tree board following the process of the paragraph or something like that. That's a good idea. Now this is great. All these suggestions are really good as well. I think in terms of we're coming in this time with the dashboard and it's here now so how we're implementing some work side cutting. Don't deal with this carefully. Those trees because we're in that quarantine zone for them by state law those are exempt and so those don't need to go through that process before removal which makes it a little easier like the road crew can just kind of they're cutting ash trees along the road if they want to. Yeah, they're basically considered a hazard tree because they're Have you marked the significant ash trees that are hazarded on this side? No, there are thousands of them so I think it's something that we'll have to do kind of a road stretch at a time. Okay. But we're going to have to talk about that. We're going to have to do a piece of it. Okay. Okay, so now I want to open up Doug I mentioned before you came in if you have a question or a comment for the board on this topic or as we move forward through the rest of the meeting process improvement why do we come forward? So Doug, feel free not just feel free please do come and sit at the table so we can hear you you can clearly introduce yourself to us and so Lisa can hear you and we'll hear your question. Okay, I think everybody knows me. Have a seat. We saved you a special seat. This is not a tree garden, right Doug? Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about trees. Let's cut out two trees. Two trees across my house. Kill them. They're dead. They're dying. They're maple trees. Big maples. They're probably 300 years old. No, it's sad. Yeah, it's sad. I planted a few years ago I don't know how many years ago they get no game of the tree garden marked all the trees down there and threw them out of there and marked them. Do you remember that? There before they had a fiddle with that. They had a fiddle with that. Now, Shannon and I went down there one night and we pointed out 19 trees. Maple trees were dying on our livelihood. Tuck a rope to grave up. 19 maple trees. The reason they're dying is because they're quite salt in the ropes. Salt in the ropes. So Doug, I'm going to stop you there if you don't mind. Because I don't think that the salt is part what Doug is talking about is outside of the scope of the shape tree presentation. Is that correct? That's true. The plan would, if you want to manage those trees or remove them or something, the plan would kind of come into play and how you go about doing that. But the road crews, management of those trees is subject to the plan but not there salt in there. But Doug hold that thought because not right now I think that would take us down a path that you may not have time to get into fully, but we're all very aware of the issues that you're raising related to tree health. Do you have a question or comment related to the tree plan? And if you don't mind. I don't know too much about what you're talking about but I do know this. I do know when a great cloud wrote, the sky the trees up and they could have died. And they do not like this. There you go. Denise is giving you a copy of the plan. We're not going to pass it tonight because we're already here. And I've been in this town for 80 years. No you haven't. Seven, nine and three months there we go. We require honesty to speak to this person. So I know what this town looks like. I know what this town looks like. And I'm sick of people moving into this town on a vacation to New York City. Thank you. Let me just get a hand on how many other people can come and make sure we're kind of facing ourselves. On the father tree presentation plan. Okay. A couple more folks. Scott, why don't you come up and join us? Introduce yourselves to the construction. I'm Scott Vassage from East Coast and I have the privilege of watching Neil produce this document with an incredible amount of patience. How many graphs? We're on the slow track. Yeah. Many, many, many graphs. And Denise, I'm complimenting you on your obviously paying close attention and very carefully. That was great. I just maybe have one comment in the middle of page three. Shame trees should also be protected for mechanical and salt damage wherever possible. I hope the select board will remember that that's here and when the time comes for an ordinance put some teeth into that because the trees along my road every single one suffered mechanical damage. I have photographic documentation of the trees that W was talking about which I'm glad to share with anybody. There were at least 25 of them. So please when this becomes an ordinance let's remember this important part of what we're trying to do with our shame trees. Thank you. Even though I just thought this language often in plants Scott, our plants tend to use words like should or could and I think when you get down to the ordinance it should be shall or shall means shall and should means well if you feel like it. So when we split when we get clear is when the ordinance comes in again. That leads to one of the comments I have made. I think you can hear shall is basically I think I pretty much only use shall for things that are in state statute already. And that's if we're introducing the concepts kind of incremental it's good. Dan, you want to come forward and speak with us. So with some of my comments I made last time not entirely sure are we talking about the March version that we had last time or the May version. I don't know if there are any changes and some of those are additional comments. Any of the few changes as recently as a month ago or something like that. So then I'm pretty much just comments then really going back to the designation of a shade tree I really think that the blanket six inch diameter up is really not correct. That it's not really based on science. It's based on I don't know what you guys probably tell me you must have had to come to it as a conclusion with the conservation commission. It's also I don't think consistent with the statute as well because I think you have a hard sell with you know it's easy to make a zone like it calls for the ability to make zones or areas where all the trees are shade trees but then it goes on to give the ability to have an individual tree but not really every tree and then that individual tree you know it calls for language it has to be critical I'm going to pull it back up I'm going to copy in front of me and so it's the tree is critical to the cultural historical or aesthetic character municipality and so I don't know if you can prove that for every tree there I think I really think you can you know there are certain places in town that every tree really almost should be protected in some form before it's cut down to that due process but there's a lot of places that really most trees that they disappeared wouldn't be an issue I know there was some concern about the road crew having you know some side boards and some regulation this document does that the way it's written now we've taken away as the landowner's ability to manage their trees and it's not just the trees or the trunks in the right away one branch in that three rod right away is now also protected it's a big reach from what the chain point we had in the past I'm not sure it's as big of a problem it's more this document makes it out to be you know and so for some landowners it's not a big deal they're probably not going to manage their trees anyway some people actively manage all their trees it can be a big deal the fines associated with it are real they're not tiny you know for example what Doug did on his property like three years ago that's in the tens of thousands of dollars if he did that without permission there's also no civil cultural exemptions for this and so potentially you run into that same situation where you know using Lightning Ridge as an example again roadside trees were cut as part of an approved civil cultural plan through forest management you know it doesn't take much through this process and plan to stop that and so you know if there's no justification for an appeal it just has to be I don't want the tree cut just to my knowledge then it goes to the select board and the select board can just use their own discretion when essentially you know I think landowners have to practice civil culture there is a statute Neil and I sort of went back and forth through some emails about it League of Cities and Towns came up with their clarification of it which said that the ordinance prevails I don't know if that ever would push it if it would but it'd be nice to see some sort of civil cultural exemption included in this for people that manage their right-of-way trees through forest management yeah I know when we were when we were figuring this out we wanted to find a balance between making sure that trees that people care about because they are community resource to get cut needlessly and also giving people flexibility to do what they wanted and we opted for kind of this blanket section sync because it was it was really arbitrary to try to decide which trees along the road it wasn't like there are certain sections of road where you could say well in the villages but outside none of them are it was clear in the conservation commission that like there are trees along all of our roads that are important to people and it was hard to pick those out without you know you couldn't designate them ahead of time and so the downside is that you have to think ahead and give a 15-day period before you come and you're at the beginning of the select forest so you know if someone was really didn't like your silviculture or better yeah so that's why we came to that and I hear what you're saying about laying rich we did work with the verandah we can find in the verandah community forestry who's been kind of states interface with tree wardens and the tree warden of the law and I know we're not the only town who took that six inch approach and they kind of advised us that that was a legitimate way to go about it so I think it is I think it's an okay language in that sense but I hear what you're coming from and I also feel like it kind of is further on that end but we didn't like it to be but we couldn't find a compromise they haven't tried though it hasn't gone out to public comment it was built behind closed doors not really closed because anybody can come to the conservation commission it's like they can come here right so most people I think when this goes through aren't going to be aware of it until they're in trouble you know fuel is going to be six bucks a gallon this winter or somebody wanting to maintain their fence row or hedge row and then all of a sudden you know this passes and then somebody has to enforce it and then it goes back to finding on a per tree basis that's what we knew the six inch thing is not there was no fine it was removed last July right and so technically even today I got cutting tree I want I'm not sure that's right either there's a lot of people that did what they wanted to even with the last reiteration because it really didn't have any teeth had some but not done is there Neil some of the what I heard conversationally in other places is that some of the some of the land owner flexibility was actually removed by statute so am I understanding so for example Dan said the land owner doesn't own the tree anymore but I somehow understood that that was gone with the statute not necessarily with our plan so I'm looking for where it's not really the way it was is that shade trees were just not defined and it was unclear what trees were shade trees and the legal precedent was every tree is a shade tree and there were a few court cases in different towns in Vermont where that was established even if you cut a two inch tree it was a shade tree and callus had a roadside tree standards which set this six inch diameter that we considered that a shade tree and that's what we had been using but there wasn't there wasn't an ordinance behind it I think this is what Dan was saying that if you cut a tree that was a shade tree you weren't going to get in trouble unless someone cared enough to give you a court and then you have to pay a much right and we still don't have an ordinance we still don't have an ordinance so I wanted to ask Dan a question you said about getting this out to the public how would you recommend we do that? right most people don't care about trees right until they do until they do until it's in the face and so I don't know maybe it's presented to obviously we could we posted it in other places that's where we do now maybe it's held off until discussion at town meeting or something like that you know outreach through the conservation commission similar to what you guys did with the ash trees where you flagged the ash trees and hung signs I don't know but most people like I said aren't going to care until they have to and I also we did try to find compromises like I think you're talking about looking at just main canopy trees or using I don't know if you're familiar with the shoreline protection act has this complicated they were all non-starters so I'm certainly hoping to ideas and I think the conservation commission is too but this felt like the best compromise to us because we couldn't it felt like one way or the other either you say like the trees in this part of town are protected because these ones aren't or you said a diameter and go with it to me I think it could be some hybrid approach where it's those critical not really urban but historical village districts shoreline protections wetlands things like that those areas are protected and then outside of that it's maybe diameter targets most people don't notice some trees but removing enough of them say trees per lineal feet of road then it catches their attention the one or two isn't going to make a difference when you start taking the big ones out it's going to be a problem but there's a lot of trees to pick another arbitrary number I don't know what that is but smaller diameter classes where there's more trees per lineal feet of road aren't going to make a difference not substantial enough to make it a critical tree my experience as the tree warden has been that it's like I can't remember how about there are trees that people care about and then trees there are a lot of trees that people don't really care about or there are some that they do and it's hard to figure out what to do thanks dear thank you very much I have a quick question yep can you make multiple trees in one application yes so if because of solar culture I threw my property including the right of way and and more 20 trees I could do all at once and the silver culture thing is a little bit of a question but Vermont native cities in town says that if you are doing it for silver cultural purposes you would not have to follow these rules so that's my question you can still tap the trees you can manage them otherwise just to improve the tree health and the silver culture the actual that's what the belief of cities in town says it's not entirely clear to me or Dan so we should probably incorporate those kinds of informative statements in this plan because we shouldn't be that they advise us and then we should be informing this is the informational document for all people and so they should come away after reading this understanding the whole program and what's in it and what's out and not having to go elsewhere I'm sure this is not an action item not an action item so we're going to have a comment period that's going to be open for a while so we can take a written comment it's open until until we decide to put it back on the agenda yeah I think we should allow like 30 or 45 days to come up here and we can post we can post a link to it on the front page of the website and Neil you could post something just a link on front porch or if you want to with contact information in terms of receiving the comments and we could have copies available like in the town office we can print copies from that little table by the front door there's one there now but we might want to add some extra copies and maybe it's just letting people know that's where they can pick up the contents they might not have a printer or post it on the front porch or just the facts here's the link the comment period is going to be open for another 45 days or something and then we can counter it to put it back on the agenda do we approve this plan? yes why not? it's in our administration so I'm going to we don't have our December meetings but I'm going to I made a note to put it on there towards the end of November we did in December okay why don't we Neil? thank you very much I want to thank you all the comments are not easy thank you to the conservation commission I'm going to ask so before we head into the rest of the volume meeting I wanted to make a couple of preface comments we have a as we promised at our last meeting we have tonight an expanded period of public comment usually our public comment is 15 minutes tonight we have half an hour on November 14th we're planning to allow even more than that for public comments I want to point out a couple of other things I'm holding a document that some of you may be familiar with you may not be familiar with it it's called the town of the palace we call it rules and procedures this is something that we visit we do and adopt generally every year this copy was adopted by this board in April after quite a few working sessions you conduct ourselves as a board it's on the select board landing page of the website and this is where the 15 minutes of public comment comes from I wanted to say that out loud because I realize there's a lot that we do in a lot of the ways that we conduct our business here that is normal and we take for granted and it may not be something that you are familiar with or that you expect 15 minutes comes from our rules of procedure and the procedures say that if a topic requires more time in another meeting then we look for that time in the agenda a really good example of that is roadside invasives Peter Harvey came to us during public comment one period at one point and said we want to talk about invasives the topic we put it on the agenda and spend more time on it in another meeting so I wanted to say that so I have only printed out one copy but as I said it's on the select board's page of the Chowding Palace website tonight we have a half an hour we have other items on the agenda as we usually do and I'll say more about how we're going to run the half hour that we have tonight when we get to that point on the agenda but I wanted to just set the location for everybody now because we're not doing the public comment now we're going to give you a chance to hear some of the business items that we are working on before we shift to public comment so without any further ado I'm going to turn to Wendy Wilton Wendy is here with us from Nemhurth the New England Municipal Resource Center Wendy has been helping us enormously get the work of our town done never always helped us and they're helping us even more now because we are in the process of you know recruiting the treasurer so Wendy's been helping out with that thank you Madam Chair for what you don't know me my name is Wendy Wilton just as a little background I was the treasurer for the city of Rutland for 10 and a half years up until a few years ago when I transitioned to a federal responsibility and now I've I'm back in the municipal world I work for Nemhurth the experience that I had previously and Nemhurth is New England Municipal Resource Center it sounds like a non-profit or something but it's not Ernie Saunders owns the company and he started it many many years ago recognizing that there wasn't a really good software program for municipalities so he created that it's basically a general ledger with a whole bunch of different modules for payroll accounts receivable tax and all kinds of other things so that's why it's a start to finish product for a municipality particularly here in Vermont because we can handle all the state payments and homesteads that come from the state so in a nutshell it's what it is we also offer consulting services which is what I'm doing for Calis that I am actually your interim treasurer except they don't have signing authority but I'm handling all of the other financial tasks that the treasurer did plus a few more and that's one of the reasons why I did want to come and talk to the select board tonight to give you an update the public can hear also on whatever happened with that when the treasurer retired the select board asked Nemhurth to step in to be the interim treasurer in the sense that we could do some basic functions and keep things rolling keep the payroll done keep the bills paid for the town the bills on so to speak and we agreed to do that and we have a contract with the town and I was the person selected Cynthia who's the manager of the support group I work for her started here with me and then eventually she got so busy with other towns that needed that help too she asked me to just take the whole project and I said sure I can do that you were not the only ones? I was not the only ones you were not and that's one of the reasons why you found it difficult to find a treasurer is that there's a real lack of skilled people in Vermont particularly but probably nationwide that have financial experience that can step into a role like this and actually do these kinds of jobs so anyway so I've been here working on catalysts since sometime in June and really took it over full time in July so what the contract entails is that we do payroll accounts payable we do reconciliation and some general ledger management so that's basically keeping the lights on kind of a bookkeeper kind of activity in that sense that we're just doing some really routine kinds of things but because we've gone so long now without a full charge full-time treasurer in this role I have had to take on a few more things which I was fine and I'm happy to do but it also means that that my role has expanded some but there even then there are some things that aren't getting done and I will say that it's also been a team effort Denise collects the time sheets and puts together a time sheet each week for me to do the payroll which is a great separation of duty you're doing that authorization part and then I'm conducting the rest of the payroll and at the town office your town clerk and their assistant clerk have been extremely helpful Barbara I see is here tonight and she they have done a really good job with deposits I'm not here every day and doing tax deposits once that tax bill goes out you need somebody who's there every day to accept those payments get them in the system and get them to the bank routinely so they've been really helpful on that for both the tax deposits and the court deposits which previously Sandra was doing all of that also once you send out tax bills and I hope people to appreciate this I see it in the office is that they've also been especially Barbara has been able to handle all the questions you send out a tax bill well that's not the end of it people lose the tax bill some relative out of town is actually paying the taxes they need a little copy the mortgage companies are calling all the time can you verify this tax bill you know it goes on and on and on so there's a lot of care and feeding that happens from the time you send out the tax bill till the time those taxes are due and then they become delinquent after that so and then it becomes a delinquent tax collector's right but Sandra is still doing it which is great but in that interim period which is going to last until probably the end of November there's a lot of care and feeding that happens every day in the office the other thing that Jan has been doing I think I saw her in there she is as one of the listeners she's also taking on the responsibility of downloading those homesteads and those state payments which is really important because if you don't do that routinely you don't have enough to date tax bill for your taxpayers and I say sure and my error I forgot to thank Jan when we were thanking other people for their extra efforts I didn't realize that it wasn't a listed function that Sandra had been doing with Jan is currently doing well all towns do that differently so tell us the listeners I wanted other towns to appreciate what she's doing is I didn't understand that that wasn't a listed function and anybody else we might be forgetting we might forget other people and I apologize I'm trying to thank everybody anyway so that's been great it's been a team effort with all those people involved and probably some other folks that I don't know about but certainly to keep the financial sailing in the right direction I can say I asked Wendy a ton of questions she's always helpful always knowledgeable always friendly so I really appreciate that because I have a lot of questions and I'm happy to some of the significant tasks that from my viewpoint aren't being covered adequately right now one is insurance management the Galantica cities and towns renewal was doing early October and that's something that's going to take probably the select we'll take a look at I can handle the payroll piece right because it's pretty much getting the reports and filling it out the other stuff which is your fixed assets DM's all those kinds of things I don't have enough institutional knowledge about your town to complete that so there's that there's the renewal we're going to talk about tonight but also grants management again I don't have enough experience with your town to know what's happening there I've informed Denise I found a bunch of records today we've discovered grant files I don't know how sensitive they are they look at them you know they're there and they're in the town office so someone should probably start making those but it's something that's beyond the scope of the contract that we pen if the town wants us to go forward to those things beyond you know to get into the grant files and that kind of thing it would be a lot more time and it would probably mean that we'd really have to think about our relationship in terms of maybe we need to update that contract and we need to have a discussion I certainly need to discuss it more but I'm also finding I try to get here I'm here at least one day a week some weeks I'm here for two days because there's so much to do and I'm really pushing from the end of the day to get everything accomplished when I'm here so that certainly tells me and the letter that I gave to you tonight I want to indicate that this is a full-time there is a need for a full-time full-charge treasure in this town and because of all of the things that do need to get done and so I'm pretty I'm pretty effective at this job and I'm finding I'm trust doing it and beyond the days that I'm here I do a lot of work remotely for example payrolls all done remotely because I was doing that before I came into the you know the full work so some things we've done remotely but it's a little slow because the access to the internet here through what I would need to do to remote is not easy if the town was able to get better internet service to the town office that might help because someone even if you hire you know if you kept with us you hired a town remotely to do stuff or you hired a treasure and there's bad weather or there's another COVID pandemic or whatever you have remote access to so those are things to do so we do not have that now but when we get the my question is when CB fiber puts in that line that should fix that oh yeah if you get fiber optic it's a function of internet speed and capacity not a function of program it's not a programmatic download speed yeah okay I just want to make sure there weren't some other things on YouTube no right now I'll just give you a window on this what I need to do to connect to Calis to do remote work I call the town office they go over the treasure's computer right and they go to the Nemerc website and say connect to Nemerc and I'm doing it like I'm share screening that's really what we're doing that's why it's so slow it's very it's very slow if you've ever worked on an app like that it's not the same I can get so much more here done every day more effectively when I'm here. Payable again is okay it's really important to fully understand this and probably interview you again because we are in the process of interviewing folks, applicants for the treasure's position and treasure business manager position and the question is how much office time do they need to spend, how much content for this job can be handled remotely and we're not confident, we don't have a confident answer to give them I tell the applicants figure four days a week in the office and it's less than that great but if we need you every day that's where you need to be here five days a week you don't have the capacity for someone to work remotely if you hire somebody right now it goes a lot of good I mean Sandra was doing a lot in the pandemic she did a lot remotely how does she need to do it and I know she did it, she came out on Fridays there's also, I mean I don't think we need to go too much into the weeds on this but you're describing different kind of aspects of work so like the grants piece that you just mentioned being this whole other piece I want to just look at folks out there and say Wendy said somebody needs to spend you know you said it's a chunk of time and that's something that we envision being part of the public work different times of action being part of the treasure I think how all the different pieces of work get done varies enormously in towns how they kind of plug pieces part so my point is that there's a grant management opportunities that fits well with any number of functions but also could be standalone if somebody says oh I had that background and I'd love to volunteer to help the town out there's an opportunity anyway so I mean we envisioned as I said to Wendy earlier we envisioned the director of the public works doing the grants management the file kind of piece of it the treasure would do the I mean I didn't get the great function the director gets the grants the treasure the manager that was a huge piece of what we envisioned the director of the public was doing but treasurer should really be responsible for the financial reporting whoever's managing the grant applied for it is working that grant is actually responsible for making sure that they are submitting the right paperwork to the treasurer so it ends up where? in here right this is your financial report so this is all about expenditures now expenditures if somebody's managing a grant you're going to code an invoice at least to be paid so that's automatically going to end there right if it's a revenue and they've gone for a reimbursement grant then they're going to report to the state and they will I think we were looking at this and we had a great amount of community support as we did this guy and them so it's really the treasurer's role to report to the public and that's what we envisioned the director of the public was doing the grants the management piece of it knowing what the treasurer would have to do by the end of the year that makes sense it does you asked the year planner specifically to request to be named by the contractor for Blue Cross Blue Shield so that I can terminate those what do we need to do what do we need to do we have a lot of kind of letter right here we just need the board the board needs to authorize it's on the agenda it's on the agenda it's not even off of the letter as there's a couple more other things when Wendy's do you want to make sure that we have one of the things I do is keep an eye on the clock so I want to make sure that we have a chance to hear from you we have about 10 more minutes from you about the specific financial health of the town right now and for you to let us know about these various action items that we have to find out I just wanted to make you aware I seem to need for a full time a large treasurer in this town based on what the treasurer used to do and things that I see that really need some support and some help and I understand you want to fill this vacancy and that's really an important top priority for you I can help with the job description maybe try to type that up a little bit if that way the opportunity to do the job description is a great offer that's fine just real quick so when we put together this trader business manager position we value it to another similarly sized and situated towns are doing and pretty much to a number of all their treasurers are half time so I was wondering your number of experience do you think those towns are falling behind and not getting stuff done or do we take on a lot more here what do you think Callis is demanding of treasurer resources there must be every towns are obligated to make the same reports to stay and you got a lot of grants I will have to say that for a small town quite a few so that's another thing that somebody has to pick up somewhere but I would say just based on the hours I'm spending maybe in those towns is the clerk doing some things I think it's what I said earlier what are the whole scope of duties and whether our treasurer was going beyond what some other towns do with treasurer we've seen models there's any number of models definitely we don't know why there was opportunity especially if we move focus of grants management out I understand it has to be a communication link between the treasurer and the public works director and then some other things that could be decentralized that used to be wholly treasurer and Callis and certainly looking for efficiencies but we looked at three or four research in surrounding towns without knowing what their specific kind of population in a tax base in a population anyway so let's make sure that we have a chance to this is important for us to hear about the financial where we are from a financial health perspective and then we move on to the other and then finally the other thing and then in terms of developing this list of duties might be very helpful to you when you think about that job description and there are a few things on here the first one is deposits cash receipts that was not part of our original contract the property tax business was not part of the original contract and there's some other activities that work as well and also some of these things might be different about as you go forward so I hope that's helpful to you now let's get to this is the first quarter report so it's the period that ended September 30th 2022 the general fund what you have for general fund is balance sheet and a year to date revenue and expense highway fund, balance sheet and year to date revenue and expense due to the front report and combining balance sheets for all your funds including some of the slowness funds so the first thing I would point out to you on the balance sheet for the general fund which is the first page with tiny tiny numbers on it I'm so sorry they're small at the end of September the town of Calis had a little over $3 million in the bank don't get too excited about that because that's offset by what was due to the school for the first payment which is pretty close to $1.5 that payment was made in early October within the 20 days recorded by state law there will be another payment so next month we will also see due to school back again because that second payment will be due after the second payment is collected in November you have a total fund balance of about a half a million dollars but you're still pretty early in the year so any questions about that? does that seem I mean in terms of fiscal health how does that half a million dollar fund balance seem to you? well you're early in the year so I wouldn't really it's fine it means you have a fund balance so you're not negative there that's good, you're not deficit so we don't have to borrow an anticipation of taxes right and you collected your first payment effectively that's also what this means because there's only 5-6 people and it's only for taxes, that's not bad that's amazing that may change after November 15 but I'm thinking that's pretty good now also understand you operate pool cash now what does that mean? it means your general fund bank account that 3 million dollars is not just general fund money look down under your assets due to new fund see the negative number there that is the obligation on that 3 million dollars by your other funds in your general budget any questions about that? where are you? first page it's about a million dollars is due to other funds for example, your ARPA fund has quite a bit of money in it so that's part of that 995,000 we're good there on revenue versus expense that's looking fine revenue for the general fund which is primarily taxes is 34% and your expense here to date is 30% you always have a little bit more expense in the beginning of the year because there are some things that are due at the beginning of the year highway fund is the next one and you can look at the detail there because you've got every single GL line you are on page now they're not numbered but look for highway they are at the top so you're on highway highway fund now the balance sheet for highway fund is different because it's really sort of corollary to your general fund it is another form of general fund we just separate it in the general ledger so that you've got expenses and revenues actually can you, I'm sorry we do have page numbers one by one but I'm wondering if we it's the next you have to look at the top it's another document it starts at page one again just keep going through this one look at the top it says highway fund okay I'm waiting now that looks like you took the balance sheet it's a pretty short one because really on the due to the fund which is a positive it's an asset to the highway fund is really its share of what's in that general fund bank account that's our due to the fund that's 995,000 part of that is due to highway and why is it due to highway because you folks when you develop your tax rate your municipal tax into general and into highway okay I'll show you this in a second right so he's a little brown so it shows you that the highway fund has money due to it about 581,000 you had an unreserved fund balance from last year that was a little bit negative but it still ends up being positive so it's fine but again remember highway it sort of operates like the Chinese twins here general fund now let's look at highway you're doing a budget revenue versus actual you can see the budget number of property taxes at 757,761 dollars that was a journal entry I made to make sure that that was allocated correctly according to what the red plan so that is recognizing that you budgeted revenue of that amount of money out of property taxes yes back in your town so here you have all your revenues we're probably got a few revenues outstanding still because for highway we're at about 86% of revenue so it might be something else expected to come in maybe under grants or something like that but the expenses are about 22% which is about mine with first quarter 25% would be normal so that looks fine there and again you can look at all the detail on your expenses for highway through September 3 that is there then there's another page after that after the your-to-date budget versus actual which is a due-to-due from Fledger this shows you your operation your pool cash which says out of that 3 million dollars what's due where and you can clearly see those numbers here the important thing is that this report should always have a zero at the bottom because what's due from general fund is due to those other funds and they should match in the back I've added combining balance sheets with different fund types again you can take a look at this the first page of that is general government so we have some more types of general government which is a highway fund this one program and a whole bunch of other things and you can see that there I also come up with special remedy funds and grant funds and then on the last page which is a little utility print it's kind of faded and it's the capital projects fund so you can take a look at that I think that's a re-through on quarter one it's very important to give us a number there's no mess around we're going to invert it to excel but then it could be transmuted and sent to just come to our offices that's why they print so early what's next what's next is we need to I didn't realize that we needed to make a decision tonight on the blue cross blue shield plan you could wait but I think it would be smart to do it so I asked to have this added to the agenda as an action right in the beginning of the week we are currently paying $4,929 a month for employees $4,929 well that's also what the town is paying plus what they're paying so that's the total amount the employee pays $10,000 and it's going up to $5,501 which is like an 11.6 $700 $500 because the employee still pays their premium out of this amount of money the open enrollment I guess it starts January 1st November 1st your open enrollment and then it closes the new rates go to effect January 1st and the reason why it's important to deal with this soon is that open enrollment process started so that if any of your employees want to change their enrollment going from family to 2% you want to get this done as quickly as possible we could do that anyway with a lifetime change but a lot of people decide with open enrollment I mean it's just a process and really we should be offering that to the employees as soon as the decision is made on the plan and how do we notify the employees of this I believe that if I haven't read this in detail but I believe that they also give you information that you can give to your employees about the change in the plan and the pricing it would be a communication process which is why it's probably pretty important to approve this if you're confident that you want to stay with open enrollment and the current plan we have is the gold the gold it's called a Vermont Select Gold this is the same one we've had for a while so I would I know it's an interesting one I would recommend that the board approve staying with the current plan which is this gold CDHP is that the motion? yes any other questions, comments I actually want to make a comment I think that given how hard it is to find people one of the things for our various open positions one of the things that we are able to say with confidence is that our benefits are excellent and this is one of the reasons we've had people say really you have 90-10 health insurance and we can say yes we have 90 most towns don't offer this high of a rate the town pays versus the employee pays a lot of them are 15 20, 25 so this is one way that we can really say you know all right so any other comments, all in favor could we say aye aye and I think it's important to underscore when we only require employees to make a 10% contribution to the health care that means they keep more money in their pocket so folks out there there are some towns that are interested in the struggle with our highway department and where our employees compensation involves and we've heard simple numbers that you know town x pays 10 cents more 50 cents more than us or what comparable and how do we expect to recruit if we're neck and neck we in the general rule it's not only the health care and that's a lot of between 10 and 20% which many towns but not most are requiring their employees to pay it's feet, it's thousands of dollars that they keep in their pockets we also pay a greater increment to their retirement plan there's a recommended amount and in fact we had to get the state retirement program to make an adjustment to their programming in order to allow for our to compensate or pay more of that that toward that plan so the employee matches less than this result so just so you folks know plus we pay wait I'm sorry again plus we pay for dental we pay for life insurance so we put it out there we have a really excellent benefits package and that's been attractive to employees and hopefully recognize that it comes out of taxpayer dollars but I think it's well worth the amount of money that it costs because employees are valuable employees need to give them value one last point we bargained with our last road crew let's say the last one could be about a lot of turnover a lot of change sought to have a union come in and with an eye toward improving their wage and benefits I guess and the road crew at the time it's a different road crew was arguing for us to implement what our neighbor encountered implementing in terms of wage and they said we don't care but just give us what they have for healthcare just give us the higher wage and we kept saying at the end of the day you're going to have less money in your pocket and there was some of this going on when it literally came down we had reached agreement on contract when it came down to the union representative walking through the contract moments before they signed it and implemented it we had already approved it on our end they say we'll wait a minute we're going to have less money in our paycheck then we would have had to stay he's like yeah I kept telling you that because they didn't want to talk about benefits so they walked away from the contract and as a result there isn't a between contract so we're still at the status quo the benefits have been maintained the level previous to the discussions that's important okay so we've taken action on the employee benefit items can we, are the other two items the approving and signing approving Wendy authorizing Wendy to basically our agent with Blue Cross and the those are health those are just items that we just need to right so I believe I'm looking for emotion on both of those okay thank you any questions before we authorize Wendy to serve as our agent and working with Blue Cross to get everybody set up I think the letter is constructed to ask this board to authorize to sign the letter for Blue Cross to authorize me to we'll vote whatever it is we're making that motion and then we're approving and signing the IRS 941 940 the motions are made one other thing to add to that motion I'm sure we did this back in May I mean I can almost remember it but none of us can find a copy so we all need to sign again because Sullivan Empowers I was wondering about that Sullivan Empowers also switched employees so we have a new person Justin has gone this new person that's the kind of name doesn't matter so I would ask that the board we just re-sign this okay so this is the Sullivan Empowers it's an engagement letter it does it's an engagement letter I know we did this so I also submitted a motion to approve and then I'm sorry all in favor on the two motions for three things all in favor please say aye okay thank you I want to move we have some scheduling to do around our deliberations for Town Highway 7 and later but can we also still have this board and say can we I want to bump scheduling our budget planning until later so we can make a little bit of a time to get back on track okay so then on the consent of the giant agenda I want to just call out for folks this is for all of you we have added to the agenda a link to our minutes on our website again all of our minutes are on the Town's website I'm sorry I have to ask a question here 10 minutes for a couple of meetings on the Town's website so I ended up having a select board in 2020 so Marilyn I can't respond when I don't I'm not even going to be able to look and see what's missing now but I can tell you that to the extent that I I'm unaware of minutes that are not out there doesn't mean that there isn't something missing by this is a manual process it's manual somebody has to get the minutes from Lisa and then we have to we have to get them to a person who is authorized to get them on the website so that's a very manual process things can happen I'm not saying if you're aware of specific minutes that are missing please email me and email Jamie with our webmaster between the two of us we'll figure it out email missing things if you think there are dates missing then email to me and email to Jamie we'll figure out what's missing but in any case the point is we've added we will continue to keep this link on our agendas so that you can go directly to the Town's website and find minutes they are on the select board's page I do want to say the board that I don't think we've had a chance to review the October 17th and the October 10th meeting minutes meeting minutes and those need to come off the consent and what we're missing because I checked the website now we are missing the minutes from the emergency meeting on I think it's the 26th and then meeting we had last week on Thursday so both of those are getting approved tonight and we'll go out on the again the manual process we approve it as final and then it's a whole other manual process for us to reach out to Jamie so they can be posted manual process means somebody has to touch it in this space through people have to touch things it doesn't always happen that's perfect little tiny timeline because we are volunteers and we follow us including Jamie and we get to them when we can so the other that's on the consent agenda is approving based on our last meeting recruiting for a level one constable so with that added or that's not added it's here but just said out loud is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as which dates did you say we're not we're not doing the 7th October 17th special meeting we're not doing October 10th special meeting we are doing October 20th special meeting and September 26th emergency meeting okay the draft minutes should be there the draft minutes should be there okay is there a second all favor please say aye aye okay Rick you're on the road to court and we're running about we're running about 10 minutes behind I want to we're going to give Rick well no you don't need to make it past because some of what folks are here to hear about I believe it relates to the road so we're going to do a full half hour full 20 minutes budgeted budgeted that we allocated for the registered court we're going to do a full half hour as we promised on the public comment but probably but half hour on public comment 20 minutes for road to court we had allocated a half hour on hers upon update and I'm going to look at Denise and John and ask if you guys are going to be shorter no sure okay so that'll be about 20 minutes okay so we'll make up some time on that item Rick go for it okay I'll be thorough but I'll be bulleted so you can get it so we can go around here and we've been busy several months it's needless to talk Rick do you have the updated version yep okay yeah I've been busy too much folks since you know so we we started with a loss of a two-way mission and we had a one week we had a department a director of public works in that time we started we started that transition to the director of public works basically with it a few broken down belt trucks and broken down front and under and then greater as well so working with the road crew we've gotten all that sort of current we had to put a hydraulic pump on and so we'll be ready to win we're fully staffed right now the road crew is working really well to cover our lack of a kind of a road form they've been stood right up I work with the director again Eric is also the ex-director of public works is also recruiting and volunteering is helping with that as well he's the co-commissioner right he is we are both commissioners so and we are yeah we're we're charging forward getting ready for winter we're prioritizing all the operational needs we've got in town getting as much grading as we can get done now that's starting to phase off because we disturb those gravel surfaces and they need to compact before we get a lot of water on them or we'll get a real mess so they're starting to transition back to fixing more pothole areas and not general grade so we probably a little behind on that but doing the best we can the looks the staffing we're actually looking very good we've got our really we're up to full staff in terms of our road crew we've got our four members Tyler John yeah we've got Tyler John and Dana is on part time and we've got uh Peter and let's see who made this yeah August are new hire full time hires he's younger person but he's the other crew members will work developing out nicely he's got experience with equipment and so I think we'll be in really good shape so Rick yeah there were a number of items that we're not we're unattended to that you notice here that should have been I should have attended to you but they weren't and now they're going to be yeah we were out there were a number of things that should have been dealt with that weren't when we started with the DPW the DPW was only here for about a week and he got a lot of that one week's time reorganized and started in place and so and the road crew like I said they've stood out amazing they were worth everything we ever put into them and they're an impressive bunch I love working with them on this John do you John see it you've been there to send that word back to you should be proud of them so yeah they're working currently on next year's salt order for what and that's of particular interest as we know now because of the rail potential strikes and all that salt comes from the west by rail salt stops we got a full shed right now for what we use we don't use I mean where we use salt tends to be on our the county road it's on pavement you really don't want it's a lot if any salt on a gravel road or you'll have fun season a little later so it's primarily sand in our aprons to come off of the pig roads in that short section of the elementary school that's where we use it but where we where we use it we need it but they're working on the contract for that now so let's let me catch up here we just had an expensive one of our dump trucks just we lost a we had to do an $18,000 repair for a one track part of the sensor for exhaust we had a lot of expensive repairs recently on equipment so but that is just the cost of doing business we have to continue to keep them operational and the guys right now that are really working on on getting cloud frames on anybody for the first nose they had ordered one of the things that we didn't have and we needed to replace the chains Eric ordered though they came in I think they sent the wrong chains to us so we have to return this and get them back but that their work on that actively right now too the rest let's see so the grading that we've been doing I've gotten feedback from some public members as road commissioner acting road commissioner we bliss road needed some work they got up and graded that and we have Foster Hill as well those are the primary interests because they're not gray Foster Hill really gray road and then there was also a that was feeling it had a rotted inverted which is the bottom of the pipe for this you don't know what that is and it actually built the hole in the top of the pipe the crew pulled that over it out switched it out got it back in packed it as well so that's great that happened last week they actually did a little roadside mowing on Muskell Woods this past week as well and there was a hazard tree removal on bliss on road and let's see yeah so that's that's very good when we talk about bridges challenge here we've got the muskell woods bridge failure right by the middle there and that question is we've had the bottom failure on one of the main beams on that bridge is currently open only one side of the bridge is really not load bearing we had the wolf engineering assess it and make a record of it actually that was the thing Alfred was supposed to do a diversion of the water probably a ditch failure along it that caused that failure on that apartment and there was supposed to be sand bag but it didn't happen so I have the wolf coming in we'll all be reading the crew down there we're all going to meet with the wolf engineering and we'll try and divert the water for the winter to stabilize that we just got a $90,000 grant from the state from their structures program to do a temporary repair that 90 probably won't cover it I'm guessing Chris Teppel's April estimate was 80 to 100,000 in this commodity's market and this materials market God knows we may have to raise another $30,000 possibly as a guess one but we'll have that as a new necessity otherwise we're not closing that bridge as that pocket gets worse that's only a temporary repair that's basically a foot what they call a soil nail system back into the sub base the horizontal pins are very long about 30 feet with anchors and then they would this is a temporary place and that would happen next summer they would then basically create like a shot create wall over that abutment those nails would hold that in place and then we have to replace that bridge that is a culvert replacement really basic with no aesthetic treatments about 600,000 within 30,000 of engineering if we have to do a bridge you're talking over a million and so we are going to be looking right now our priority is to get a contract out for engineering immediately for the temporary repair next year so that we can develop construction plans and bid those out this spring to have it ready for the construction season next summer so we can stabilize that thing we're looking at and I'm considering if the board will let me do a sole source you know it's probably an $8,000 design on that and just not going for a bid process just for the design because we will lose a month or two of precious time in getting those plans developed and I would just as soon as the old engineer can have them do it Rich how did we find out that the work we thought was done wasn't done by the former commission the sandbagging and diverting the water how did you find out that that was done well it was in the report and Chris he had talked to Alfred and and about that she'd done as soon as possible on the release of the report it's in the report through Chris I called Chris and I asked him I was getting up to speed on this particular project and he told me he was a good factor I'm trying to get the time for him to come out and make sure more damage is done after the rain we've had this summer fortunately it's been fairly dry that we've had a few big as soon as I'm trying to arrange that this week and I and Chris can kind of meet out there lay a plan for stabilizing that interrosion and get the sandbagging and probably Jersey barrier to back that up so that Plowish doesn't do damage to the temporary sandbagging and then you get that so we're not protecting the environment from deteriorating so that's the plan that's through the engineering so we'll go get that that's a top priority for us John we'll quickly I am going to put some kind of contingency if that bridge were to have to be closed if it gets deteriorates this way then we'll figure out a detour that's all we can do until and then at that point it becomes more difficult it fails on us before we do temporary repair you know we just have to go right through a full structure of replacement and that means getting the grant funding to help with that so that's another priority for this fall to begin the grant search for the for that money so anyway that's kind of the nuts and bolts on that for the killer project I have one quick question given for all of those who live where we live where we're using last time is there any scenario under which this bridge will stay open this winter at this point it probably will it's if I'm putting this in as a contingency what we're going to do I've talked to Peter one of our crew members this morning he's finding a lot of these materials and things that we need right now we're looking at one of the themes is unsupported it's only a piece of this alignment that is failed most of the bridges by 14 feet of it is fine and it's no matter so you're just under a lot of speed you got a job no no sorry so what we're going to do is right now there are cones on it on the unsupported part we don't want vehicles on that but we can't really just take those right out so at minimum we're going to probably have to put big fluorescent barrels that are loaded with cedar like a liquid chloride I mean like liquid antifreeze or sand or and Peter suggested this and it's a really great idea they make you've seen Jersey barrier big concrete well they're too heavy to put on there we'd lose but they make large plastic barriers that we can fill with a liquid that would be light enough and that will really ensure that nobody gets over there and protect that even from a lot of pile watch so we're looking at that as well so I say that with a detour it's a contingency we want to have a place and we'll I have a site on the website where we kind of do our own report we usually use it by the season and I'm going to be updating that probably daily and certainly every other day on the website as we get into the season anytime there's a particular problem I'll note it there so you can and I try to I kind of communicate directly with I was doing it with Alfred before I'll be working right with the group the things you need to know it'll always be in there you know contingency detour plan down at the bottom and stay there as a you know as a permanent piece of pellets no longer needed so let's see what we have next here we've got we just received all the radar speeds on it which we've ordered so we're going if I can right now we're up to our ears and some winter crap but I've already talked to Peter John and to a few of you know we have a concrete basis for the more permanent and I'm going to try to get a few at least one or two of those in on Lightning Road on Lightning Ridge Road and then on County Road above Maple Corner and then hopefully you know on the eastbound side of so out of West County we're coming into Maple Corner from the other end but I just have to get out with them to position them on my plan long range these traffic speed signs also record vehicle speed and it records the time that they're passing so you know we'll probably download and I can download that right to a cell phone and so we'll know how fast vehicles are going and we'll know when they're going and so and we'll be starting to monitor the speed on these roads we only have several we also have two portable sides very portable sides that we're going to be able to move around easily even these permanent sides we've got they are removable from the concrete base I bought them with special adapters so that once every four months or something if the road crew and they have time they can actually relocate them to another concrete plug which will so we can move to use these greater sides are very frequently moved around the town you know with frequency and the residual effect I used to use these a lot when I did plan transportation and we the residual effect of this can go months or more people get in the habit of slowing down some people just permanently stay that way so we can cycle these to different places and we'll add plugs necessary I got some so we'll get installed this fall with any if we get there before the ground freezes we have to get the plows all set up some very important things before we do it we're going to really try to do that once I have the plugs in the ground it's really easy to drop the sign in set it and go they're going to be pretty useful for us too in construction zones because there are also a variety of messaging packages it's not just speed the guys if they're doing culverts or if they're doing some bridge work somewhere they can actually use these for traffic safety a little bit they get people's attention yeah, let's see we're also I'm kind of working I was talking to Peter about this today and we're going to bridge my attention here what we're going to do come May after the snow that's always a time to really review infrastructure on roads because all of it there's no grass, everything's been pressurized to the ground on snow load so we're going to do we'll do an inventory of all the bridges we're going to look at all the ditching I'm guessing I've got to look carefully at this yet at the Moscow Road bridge is possible probably that kind of was preventable if had we had good drainage it didn't get into that arrangement and so we're going to make sure that that is I think we'll set that up as a standard operating procedure every May we go and we take a stand on the bridges and we have to make sure that our drainage is good and that we don't have any small problems that can turn into very big problems like this so we're also going to take a look at all of the culverts and there are a lot more culverts and bridges in this town as John will tell you but I think we've there was an old inventory done here and I'm not sure when it was done in Addison County I used to actually pay for these for all 30 minutes probably as we did them every five years we did a full town-wide inventory and the road form in every year as they replaced culverts they would update that it was a digital inventory the V-trans company helped actually write that original database I was on that team so that we knew that every five years we'd come back we'd actually hire a consultant to come in and inspect all of it I'm sorry to interrupt but I want to make sure there was one hand I wanted to have a chance for people to ask questions if they just if they repeat something or clarify it and if there is if anyone has a question like that then as I said earlier in the meeting please come forward and join us at the table so we can hear you clearly and Lisa can capture your name clearly and if not on-road not seeing anything finish up you know the the point is on this where it's the beginning of kind of a more strategic so we don't like this bridge failure this is a very expensive mistake if it was expensive I mean if that bridge would have lasted another 40 years that's a lot of money we wouldn't have spent and there are many cases in this around the state it's not just it's not just a state for a lot so we'll have some discipline about how we look at these in the future and I think we'll that's only the beginning of that there's some other things on the roadway surfaces and everything like ditching which you know what offered was doing that the crew was doing that with building up sub-base and getting certain drainage in certain places that were very soupy you know so that's all we'll continue to look at these places and try to improve that to reduce cost and then to kind of increase so Rick I thought I saw a hand up over here questions on the roads I asked I didn't want to see any hands oh I thought I saw a hand up over here I had my hand up but Rick answered it okay great there's Rick's timer is there well since Susan's hand keeps coming up we run the camera there's not too many so Rick thank you so bottom line there's a lot going on I want to just underscore a point where it's made at the very beginning of his report the road crew is now fully stopped with with more people with a recent hire for a part-time and a part-time person and they are doing an amazing job with the whole yeah okay okay so we're going to go into our half-hour and tell them to comment I'm going to repeat some things I said earlier for folks who work here the select board works some of you know this but we realize not everybody knows this we know it very thoroughly we work under rules and procedure that we adopted in April of this year it's on the website you can find them there I didn't bring copies tonight because I want to mention it tonight in the future we're going to have a few paper copies here so that if folks come in and they want to address the board I'm going to ask you is that you become familiar with how we work I have a copy too please familiarize yourselves with how we work and how we invite public comments so that the way that we're organizing ourselves and conduct our meeting doesn't let the surprise be this is what we work we work really hard on this actually it was a fair amount of negotiation just among the board to put this in place and so it helps us a lot and it will reduce surprises as you come to speak to us we have half an hour I am going to ask again as I have before for a show not so that I can cut you off but so that I can have a sense of how many people want to speak and we can do our very best to make it fair so that you can trust that if you're not the first one the first person hasn't been used up the whole half hour and leave nothing for you to say what's on your mind and I feel like that's our job as a board to kind of keep things moving and make you aware of how much time you've used so that you have make your point quickly so that you don't have to make your turn to speak as well also I want to point out that well we have only a half hour tonight on November 14 we will devote largely the entire as much of the meeting as we can it will be more than half an hour to allow for expanded public comment what else did I want to say about this and I guess I'm going to ask you to show your hands now and then Jon's going to help me with timekeeping and I think Denise has some broad comments she wants to make we're not eating up your time as we do this housekeeping and then I am going to invite you to come forward to speak to us from the seat at the table with us so Marilyn I see your hand Jan Barbara Dexter do you live in Calis now no Mary Alice how many can you leave your hands up if you're a Calis resident and you want to speak one, two, three, four four Mary Alice okay so we have four people four, okay well that's a lot of time divided by 30 minutes right so why don't we assume you're out we don't need five minutes it's a lot of time if five minutes is up and other people want to come in or if you weren't finished you can come back and make some more comments I don't want to cut you short in the half hour we'll promise you Denise you want to make listening to comments at previous meetings I wanted to get a takeaway and an understanding of what the themes are and from what I heard it is explained by detective sessions Rick did a fine job giving you an update on roads that were all staff for winter we have four and a half people some of the equipment was left in disrepair it is now being fixed and then the status of our hiring process for the transfer of business manager and DPW did I miss any significant themes or is that pretty much accurate no Jean's got one other I'm going to tell you what it is I was going to do that you can do it you've got two things that are not on your agenda that I want to bring up but I know what one of them is but Denise was talking about it was kind of raw so if we could add to the hiring of open positions a constable and animal control officer yeah that's on we actually approved on our consent agenda we approved the 3 for a level 1 constable so it's there yep and if all these people have been talking to me they'll recall I well I see okay okay so we have Mary there's Marilyn Marilyn, Jim and Barbara and Barbara okay Marilyn why don't you join us I just have a couple things I want to I want to say Marilyn, Bush, no relation no relation no relation she says that every time she produces something hysterical no relation to so I just have a couple of things the first one is I assume that during this public comments time the select board will not respond does not take up anybody's time by responding to what they said not unless asked and we'll count okay so comments from the Kina gallery here unless asked okay you agree well I don't know no we have half an hour for the whole thing so not so but that half an hour belongs to us but if people are asking us questions it would be hard for us to respond without I do have one question and that is when you say the bulk of the meeting on the 14th of November will be used for public comment and conversation what does bulk mean how many minutes are we going to get out there I don't know for sure yet it will be more than half an hour and how much more depends on what other items of business we have to conduct within what is generally we try to keep to a two hour meeting it's going to probably depend on what we hear tonight too Marilyn yeah I mean I don't think it's happening and I made the suggestion that we have an entire meeting devoted to public comment a special meeting if you like is fine a meeting where people are not pampered by comments so we would like to hear Denise what you need to hear from us I'm sorry I think I depend on reading the lips so it's really hard I understand we're depending on you folks to tell us what it is you would like to know from us and that we're going to do it in November 14 tonight we want to know oh wait a minute so you have plenty of time to conform amongst yourselves some of it might be to gather information Marilyn from the desk okay so we have a suggestion before I say we devote most of the meeting we'll take that under advice I think you're right yeah I mean we might decide we need two hours we might decide we need three hours so who's next we'll go next I think she can't wait yeah I can okay I'm Jan Olson and first off I want to thank you for allowing the public comment I know sometimes that it may feel like you're being bombarded with negativism but I think all of us are here out of concern for a lot of the issues and so tonight I am not available on November 14 so I'm going to take my liberty at this meeting to make public comment that I cannot make on November 14 and I do have written comments I'm going to ask that it be reflected to the recording secretary and be put in with the minutes please okay I want to address specifically two items that are not on the agenda and then some general comments the first item I want to bring up is about reappraisal for the town now I thought that was going to be on the agenda tonight and it is not and I see on the agenda tonight it's been moved to November 28 and I find this totally unacceptable we have a ready to sign agreement with NEMRIC New England Municipal Resource Center for the completion of a reappraisal of all property in the town of Callis now I forwarded this to Mark who is my liaison and I don't know if you've all seen it or not seen it but anyway we realize that it is important even though that this reappraisal is not going to start until 2024 you are signing an agreement for an advancement thing we have to sign it to get in the queue Ed's Cloud Proucher sent me this email just a couple days ago I have Callis penciled in for a 2026 completion I can understand that it can be difficult for a town to contract for something that is three years out it's also difficult for me to know what costs will be that far out quite honestly I doubt if any other company would even bid on Callis that is what's happening now rival companies are booked so far out they don't even bid on under 1,000 parcel projects and we are around 980 parcels for what it's worth I currently have bids on six projects for 2026 only I went out to bid, only one went out to bid and it's going to be a crazy next few years he happened to tell me in another conversation that he's booked for 10 towns in 2025 so in order to get your reappraisal for this town and we're going to need it sooner than later because I mark my words our sales equalization is probably going to go below 0.85 you're going to want to get in the queue sooner rather than later so I really hope that this can get signed soon what's important about this is once that sign there is a document that has to go to the PVR property valuation reporting division of Vermont tax department each year the town we get as a town about $8.50 per parcel every year that is segmented to go to the reappraisal and it goes into a special fund and that fund currently at the end of June of 2021 had $86,000 in it by the time the reappraisal starts there'll probably be a little over $100,000 now there's going to have to be extra budgeting because if you're going to have listers working with the company and doing the things that are expected of them as outlined in that agreement they're going to have extra work to do we are going to have extra mail costs and extra printing costs so there's going to have to be an increase in the listers budget the other factor I want to mention in that is that this lister is not going to re-up for election I don't know if you're going to find another lister but you may want to look into the fact that there is the possibility of hiring a professional assessor to work with the two remaining listers or you may have to find an assessor who will be hired with a contract to do the full work it's whatever you all choose to do but you're going to have to look into that for sure and I cannot speak for Wilson or John who are my lister partners what they're going to do all I know is okay that takes care of the appraisal I don't know if you have any questions I do want to say one thing I do count on her time but it's on my time I think between now and the 14th I'm going to work with whoever I need to work with to try to see if we can get this contract into shape and we feel comfortable approving it as a possibly a consent agenda item or as a quick agenda item I have to admit it's okay with everybody with our town attorney the reason is other towns have managed to do this so we need to be able to it's hard for us to enter into a contract without knowing the amount that was my question you are guessing at the moment I thought he says it's somewhere there it's about $100 to $150 per parcel we could maybe do it not to exceed but how do we know I mean you just said it would be you're going to have $950 to $1000 parcels who knows we're not going to increase by a whole lot because we certainly aren't creating new parcels unless there's a lot of subdivision I'm sorry that I don't fully understand all this but that's why we have Lister's and I will work with Dan in the town attorney and try to get this into shape and we also I also want to say that we have a purchasing policy that we adopted that anything over $5000 to go out for an RFP but if there's nobody really else available it's not actually it's our money but it's segregated and only for one person so you have the purchasing policy so I'm actually I don't unless we can capture well we'll have to decide we cannot the policies are that we adopted finding on us it's about us keeping the ship of the town we can make a job of that we can waste under the policy I don't know how you want to deal with the fact that she used up the system so Jan did you have I think you have I think you have it finished my second item that's not on the agenda relative to the select board public hearing for land use and development amendments I'm going to ask you to put a permanent placeholder on your calendar that you will know that there is to be a select board public hearing to hear about the zoning changes at this point in time planning commission expects to have a second version of changes made as a result of our public hearing in late November at the earliest or early December at the latest the select board has to hold their public hearing 120 days from the date that the public the PC submit these changes to you so in this regard I want to state my observation that I've been less than pleased with the response when I send out my emails about this topic and in my view a few that the lack of response on these emails are somewhat disrespectful those emails I have asked whether the select board wanted a special presentation of what the changes were all about to the regulations what transpired in the planning commission's public hearing and answer any questions select board members might have only one of the select board members have responded that they would like a special presentation to the select board by the planning commission you were the only respondent I guess that if the planning commission can assume that the select board will simply approve whatever the public the planning commission has written and approved these amendments carte blanche I wouldn't worry but knowing you guys it ain't going to happen so the statute specifically states this and this is what I want to be critical of that you know the statute specifically states that if the legislative body opposes any changes to these amendments they must be made not less than 14 days prior to the final legislative public hearing is that the select board's hearing yeah the legislative body is the select board so my experience of what's happened in the past is the select board made changes at their public hearing and did never gave a chance back to the to the planning commission and I do not want that to happen this time I want that if you're going to make changes you let us know and it's got to be within the 14 days before your public hearing not less than right okay is that fair so you're going to have your I definitely have seen your email stand and I apologize if I have responded it's very and what I remember is the feeling of the timing is very complicated and you're still in when you're going to have your the plan official have its final hearing we've had our hearing we only need one hearing but what is the when will it get to which is going to be either in the late November or early December that's when you're going to get the final draft and you're negotiating with the conservation commission or something we are so we can't we have to hold our hearing within three months 120 days from the date that you give them to us four months that's four months so probably no we're not we made a decision a long time ago in the planning commission we scrapped yes I only wanted to have the vote have it voted on because those two the public for both and I really wanted it in the March timeframe we're not going to make it so then the decision has to be made are you going to hold a special Australian ballot during the middle of the year are you going to wait until next November when there's the next election and I have to look at the process and the protocol and the procedures to see once you've had your meeting and have approved it what's the time lag before the vote has to occur so but we have four months from when we get it from you yes the bottom line so four months is not nothing for us but you're going to be in budget I was going to say we're going to have all of this stuff and you're going to have town meeting you're going to have preparation and I know what that's been like I experienced working here with this and you're under the gun and so that's why I really wanted it on your calendar so that you're aware of it I know you're aware of it when I don't see it I think it's gone down the tubes I thought we did have it and I don't know if it fell off after the meeting I thought we did have it I thought we had it on here too we'll put it under future you're not going to do something we never but we have zero awareness at all what you're saying is number one number two number two I think you'd prefer wouldn't you that we schedule a time to hear a presentation about the plan and what the changes are that's what I want you probably don't want to do that until you're done negotiating with this conservation we're not along there are some changes and they're not major Larry or how well are we on our negotiations let me say this out loud that if you're right we're heading into budget but we go to press if you will on town meeting material by the middle of January so if we don't if we get something from you the first week of December we are we have until 45 days 120 days 120 months March so there's still time after everything goes to press because that's when we can say okay yeah I understand that but I want clarity we'll put it back on under future items and we'll rely on you to give us an update when you think you're going to get to us and Jen is town plan and zoning no it is not it is only land use development we have done the town plan I just want to be clear but since you've mentioned the town plan I'm going to bring this out because it's future as well as the town's future 2024 is the time that the town plan has to be redone I really encourage you to put in an important request for for a grant to have somebody come in I'm sorry Jen because we still want to keep ourselves in half an hour but that's what I'm trying to do if you want me to quit I will but I have general concerns that are listed here and it's going to go in the record and whether or not you want me to read these now or not I realize it's time I don't want to take anybody else's time leave them leave them for the record and that's fine they're going to be in the record well we could have Jen back we should ask you to sign them if you want to read it Jen we can be willing to come back at November 28 14 you can't be on the 14 on the 28 if you continue this conversation yes by that time some things will change because obviously my concerns would substantiate a little bit what Wendy said it was relative to the treasurer it's relative to why why some of us feel very disappointed with the performance of the select board and I think it's important to understand that I mean I know that you all work hard I know that there's that and I know that you maybe feel harassed but I think there's a huge room for improvement and I don't know what it is that can bring the improvement out of communication but I work in that town office when I'm in the Lister Cube and I hear the phones ring and I hear what goes on the town office is the public face for what you guys do or do not do and that phone rings off the hook on certain days so the communication I think it's been missing I think they mentioned Sharon one time you need a public person I think but I also believe it should not be the treasurer who's your business administrator after he listened to what Wendy said I think that treasurer position needs to be strictly a treasurer and I I have any and I spoke with the ones outside and we continue but I think it's important this whole grant thing I'm going to mention grants and then I'll shut up and give this to Lisa but grants are extremely important it's not just road grants what you have in that job description is only roads we have CLG grants and we have a $325,000 CDBG grant which is ECCT is a sub recipient where this stuff is going to go when it goes to it's actually not our intended no the DPW grant piece is to do well I understood that but whatever you do you need a grants administrator because we just got dinged admonished by somebody in the state that we didn't have a very good grant administration protocol and so it needs to be done that's why we need a position that's one of the main functions of what they do I don't care exactly who does it but there should be a grant administrator a bookkeeper or a payroll are you going to do that? that was in the July 25th minutes I don't see any resolve of that who's going to be road commissioner an animal control officer the constable which is already and if you need an administrative assistant then get one and if you're going to get one the assistant I go next and I will give 90% of my time back to you because I'm going to be three minutes we're after a little bit of time Mary Alice, Mary Alice please go first three quick bits Barbara Barbara Butler can I just say right here why don't you drive to the military okay Barbara Butler I wanted to comment on a couple of things that you guys have already discussed first in response to John's concern about excuse me, I'm sorry about how much time a treasurer is needed and you indicated half time maybe is what you guys had decided from research one thing that we is in the job description is that there are a few times when you talk about the treasurer will do such and such with or in conjunction with the bookkeeper we don't have a bookkeeper so that's one thing that there's a misfit with the job description and the time that you guys feel like we need a treasurer secondly I agree that the town does provide really good benefits package it's really good but I also want to be sure that our guests know that not everybody gets benefits I've worked for the town for many years but the town doesn't get benefits JN doesn't get benefits the Listerstone, the Zoning Administrator doesn't get benefits so it is generous but only for a few people for full-time employees and then I also want to respectfully request that the select board put on a soon agenda the process for your approval of minutes and the reason I'm asking this several times over this past year that either Jeremy or I have sent you guys corrections or more often additions to be put into your minutes of things that happen at a select board meeting that were omitted in the minutes and then the next thing we know the minutes have been approved and our corrections or our additions were overlooked and not included so I think it would be fair for you guys to give us an explanation as to the process for approving minutes and when anybody not just the five of you because I know the five of you corrections and edits but if anybody else submits additions or things that were omitted or corrections how do you address those and why are they not put into the approved minutes there was one thing that I saw in the minutes and I thought we did it nope, it's not in the approved minutes so I just wanted to request that maybe on an upcoming select board agenda you explained to us the process for approving minutes because all we see from the website is draft minutes and then approved minutes and we don't know and then it's too late because you guys approve the minutes without any well we can go back and we can revise our the other thing is other folks who is on with us yes we receive emails and we don't not always responsive we can, I can show you my inbox we are inundated this technology has turned the select board into a wholly different animal than it was 25 years ago right so so you know we don't get the phone calls and so it's sometimes hard to drop balls and we're probably going to continue by our best that's all I had, thank you I think that's what she's saying it's not just that we tell her what our process is but that we find a way to integrate their comments well, I mean I do remember the last time we did that I thought we did it I remember twice well I actually would like to Mary Alice in Florida it's not that hard but she said it takes her minutes when she's present and able to do so if the meeting is recorded and she's able to pick it up from the recording then she captures minutes from the recording the minutes are I'm actually a part of the research that Denise and I have been doing I've been looking at minutes for other towns I find most towns have one page of minutes that's the chart meeting most towns have one page and our minutes are comprehensive to the point of if any little detail gets left out that somebody thinks should have been there it feels like a miss whereas it's actually seven pages very thoroughly two hours of discussion and we go back and forth about whether that's really the way to go it down to the motions and the motions and the decisions but the process is mangled Lisa completes the they land in an email that comes to me to Denise to Jeremy Barber so that they because they asked for more time to communication and so rather than coming to select boards meetings they wanted us to just give them information so we said well why don't you get the minutes I'll be caught off the press what went on at the select board and then they go into a folder where all of our stuff goes but that's manual has to come out of an email and get put in a meeting folder somebody has to do that and with the dozens and dozens of emails we get certainly things proud to crash and that's what we as a board that's one of the things we are trying to do it's manage all the comings and goings for our meetings and keep track of everything to put on the website and she's, don't forget she's a volunteer she has a very busy life and schedule so then we go through and read the minutes and we all, you know, try to know whether they're generally accurate do they say the things that do they reflect the things that needed to be said that will feel important certainly do they capture the motions and the approvals that we do that we authorize and then as you know, they come on the consent agenda with those edits if there were any to be approved but it's all a very manual process that we generally are the ones doing so I hope that that addresses the questions rather than having enough because we can have the conversation again but I would say all the same thing it doesn't solve the problem it doesn't solve I get it but that is the positive and you know, I'm sorry you feel like these excuses were being clear and descriptive about what we're trying to juggle with on our side how would you do it better, Marilyn? about that? is it okay if I say that since if you want to follow rules that's what you're gonna do so calling her after a new meeting is not following thanks, I'm Mary Alice Prophet hi to everybody I'm really honored to be here Barbara is someone who I'm so happy to be sitting next to you right now and I'm so happy with all that you've been through in the last year I just wondered if we could give her a round of applause being in the hospital in Boston and going through all that you've been through and also like coming right back into the town of Calis and having her for everybody is huge and I know that everybody feels the way I do that I'm just thrilled that you're here right now and I also just wanted to take the time to introduce my son, Tennessee Tennessee can you raise your hand who some of you know he was at the ball concert with his friends playing with others recently for ball foliage he's taking a democratic roots class at U32 last year took that when they attended U32 and I had a great time at parents night speaking with this teacher and just learning about how much emphasis there is in the district teaching our high schoolers the democratic process and taking a lot of pride in being in Vermont raising children in Vermont and the fact that we still have a sense of conversation I was actually flying through DC on the way back from a trip recently and one of the men who worked in African American who worked for American Airlines he stopped me and said where are you flying to and I said Vermont and he goes oh I've always wanted to visit Vermont you still have town meeting don't you? and he said that's such a strange concept to all of us who live in DC because we're so polarized we don't know how to talk to each other anymore and so I gave him my phone number you know and I said come and visit me I live in Calis you're welcome to come and we had a really good connection so I wasn't planning to speak tonight but coming in and listening to the meeting I just wanted to share a couple reflections from spending time with some of the folks in the room in recent days I've had some really great conversations with people who have been sort of you know seen different sides of the issues that are going on in town lately around the roads and you know Alfie and his 25 years of service to the community and also this lot more members and you know a lot of the burden of trying to do this voluntary job and having it be more than a full-time job and I've been just noticing I think from my perspective that it feels like this small town is just full of a lot of people who care about each other so much and give so much to each other on a day-to-day basis but we're actually experiencing the same issues that as a nation and as a world globally we're experiencing so we see it on the news we see like people talking about polarization and the ability to listen and be in conflict with each other and we think of that as a foreign concept you know like oh isn't that too bad there's a war going on in Ukraine or whatever and the truth is it's like it can even creep into our own lives obviously and I've felt that before I feel that on a regular basis because I'm a very passionate person and so I'm just the first person to admit that you know it's super hard being involved in things is super hard but I think that if you're in the room right now what that's a sign of is that you're someone who is in a way outside the norm because you're taking a step to participate and because you're doing that it shows that you care about your community and so regardless of whether or not you're on the same side of the issue we're the same kind of people does that make sense given up on the process and said I'm not going to participate because all politics is a waste of time or volunteering is a waste of time those people for better or worse they don't think that there's a way to get through conflict anymore so I just want to point out that people in this room have a lot in common and without going on too long I just finished a really interesting course with a woman that many of you know she lives right over the hill in Worcester and her name is Polly Young-Eyes and Draft and some of you may know her from the community she's a very famous author and a Jungian psychoanalyst and she's also a Buddhist she's involved with Shoshan and Polly was saying how important it is right now she just finished negotiating between the Dean and Assistant helping them negotiate how to have a conversation with each other they did this over the restructuring of UVM's budget that they've been given and they did it in front of their staff so it was a room full of people and what Polly's essentially been doing is helping people with dialogue training learning how to actually have a conversation where you're speaking from the first person where you're listening actively and where you're remaining curious about someone's perspective she volunteered to come no charge and do some of this training here with people in town in Calis and it's a great offer she made that offer yesterday at the Trap Family Lodge to many people traveling from around the country to do this training and I think considering that she lives so close it's a great offer for our group to know about she lives right over the hill in Worcester and I just want to throw that out as an example of one idea and I think people in this room have a lot of great ideas about how we can communicate better as a community and I would say the first thing to do is that we stop blaming each other because blaming the select board or the select board blaming the people who speak in the meeting doesn't actually increase our ability to communicate together but at the same time we have a personal responsibility for not answering emails when someone asks you to respond to their presentation and you're the liaison for this issue instead of laughing it off or joking or acting like oh I had a lot going on saying you know what that was my responsibility I dropped the ball I'm sorry and that's the adult thing to do and I think what we want to do for our next generation coming along people like my son Tency and the others in the community who are watching us and say how do we resolve this issue in conversation even if it takes a long time and a respectful life the last thing I want to say is that I don't know the truth of anything that's going on in the community because I only have my perspective okay but I do know the truth that as a former employer who had 30 employees when I owned my restaurant a month later down home kitchen when an employee stays with you especially someone who stayed with you for 25 years it doesn't matter if you like them or not the dignified thing to do is to honor that person publicly and to perceive and expect conflict and to figure out a way to do that so that you're taking care of your employees and I think what we want to think about in callous is do our ethics that we're stating in terms of politics match up with the realities of how we're treating our employees because we can't ascribe to high ideals as a community if we don't actually care deeply about the nuts and bolts of how our employees are paid how they're treated the time we give them to communicate being good employers good bosses and that's the responsibility of the whole community and we need the select work to communicate out to us what do we need to do as a community to be good employers to take good care of our people and that might require you guys considering asking for help you don't have to do everything yourself you don't have to have the burden of being everything to everybody but you do have to let people know when there's an issue and a problem that you can't resolve that you need help you have to let us know so I really appreciate your time I appreciate being here with everybody and I'm really grateful to live here it's a beautiful place and I'm very grateful to be raising my kids here so thank you thank you very much does anyone else does anybody feel most are you here for yes I'd say so I can keep my presentation for 30 seconds my next bill of favor I live in Middlesex but I'm running for Washington County Senate and the district includes the town of Calis so I'm here in a process of going to all 23 towns in the district which also includes Braintree, Orange and Stowe outside of Washington County that's it I'm a civil engineer I live in Middlesex Mary Alice identified me as Chrissy's dad I'm also Nate's dad and also Hans Luzi's dad that's how I find you that's the purpose of my being here I appreciate I'm not sure if I took it 30 seconds do you do yoga I do yoga I do not do enough yoga I'll be honest is it hot yoga no I appreciate I appreciate the hot seat it was fun anybody else want to anybody feel moved as anything what's been already said okay great thank you very much just one thought which would take 30 seconds because of concern concern for the people who are coming to talk about her respond I think it's great that we're going to have a meeting on the 14 to talk about this more I think we should talk about it more and I urge you to come again so we can talk about it in a relaxed way and help us think about ways that we can do what we do better the more concrete the better it's our responsibility to change ourselves we sure like that thank you I would love to hear from anybody that has suggestions yes okay so we have the first one yes I am getting up because I have a camp on cruise fun so whenever cruise fun comes up and I'm on board of the cruise fun you can use me thank you I think one thing I want to add is that there was a one thing that the folks were here the select board is involved in the group and every year at least one seat is available for election and so that's another way to think about how you would change what happens here is to actually bring yourself forward and become a member of the select board so you can make the change on the inside welcome to the page and everybody except for Dr. hello we have a person now I don't know he's pretty cute oh right sorry he's with us okay so okay so we are on cruise fun and who is who is carrying the flag for the cruise fun group is that anyone who is going to do it well now the flag is presented here update down to this and this is a list of the things that we put to the rest of the folks Mark Sweeney part of the cruise fun association executive board and we put together a list of points that we'd like to bring to the select board just give them an update on where we are so and I don't know how many more copies you have whether some people want to look at them if somebody wants to look at them so the first thing we wanted to do was give us do you understand the set whatever you want the first thing we wanted to go through was just kind of a quick update of the what's going on with the Du Bois and King contract and I did bring copies of the there was a presentation done on September 27th by Jeff Tucker from Du Bois and King and he provided a presentation I brought a few copies now hold on but there are a number of permits that Du Bois and King are working on shepherding through the various groups and they're listed here there's also they're working on the engineering drawings the big plan 70% is expected at draft and they expect 100% in November 22 so far no concerns have been identified by Jeff so we're on track to get that that contract the stuff done in the contract he'll also be providing an updated construction estimate so he can be a lot more confident in what we think the construction is going to cost one of the things that we wanted to talk with the sweat lord was we had added a couple of ideas after the contract was written that we wanted to follow up on and the Curtis Conn association executive board made two motions and I was concerning beaver mitigation and we have voted the Curtis Conn association voted to table until the dam was completed we got information that we shouldn't look into the for various reasons that doing beavers should be done after the dam was done we also this Curtis Conn association executive board after the search we looked at the hydro power and what we found was it's almost impossible to get it approved and it costs a lot of money and we wouldn't be getting enough power to make a difference and we do have a detailed research on some of that so if anybody's really interested but we pretty much didn't know if you guys needed us partners in the contract whether you need to just say you're okay with that so Jeff Tucker doesn't have to I think it sounds to me we can tell Jeff I had the option we discussed that I didn't know what you need to do anything official I don't think there's an additional cost or it's not sizable and one of the things I would like to know is for you guys to let us know what you think completed looks like so I know if you want a presentation toward the game do you just want to complete it in the sense of the drawings well just the whole contract yes drawings we have an idea of what that is so you can send me so we can just let Jeff know that this is what we expect from him when he's completed so during completed would be the performance of all of them received the financing is all set what else John in terms of the engineering I think Jeff's done this like a hundred times we're learning from him okay I just know from afar that Du Bois and King folks here and Michael's pond I know Doug does that dam was a real high hazard high risk dam and actually that we impound a lot of mud that had a lot of water and that would have blown out Macville and the trailer park and that was a major undertaking and Du Bois and King did the design for the build of the dam but I think they can do that, they can do this as much simpler project than that one and that provided hydro they maintained a hydro capacity if there's anything that you guys want special I want to just make sure Jeff's aware of it so he can do you know when the updated construction estimate is going to be completed we're going to be talking about the draft to be done like in November it's going to and I'm thinking I this I got from Jeff I could be more I might you know this up to the board but we might want Jeff to come and talk to the full board so the dollars and cents that I talked to Mark on the phone today Jeff estimated like around 600K now with all the inflationary costs and the last time we and Mark was advising even though I got a cushion of another 100 I know concrete's doubled and tripled in quite a bit we rely on Saudi Arabia not only for our oil but they're the number one manufacturer of concrete the product that goes into concrete just so you know they really have us there there so we just have one thing Mark and Holly I'm on the board of the correspondence association so completion for Jeff means number one as you know we've already submitted permit application to DNR and I think that what's happening is now Jeff is completing the drawings and when they are 100% then A&R moves ahead to process which will take months but his contract is to produce 100% drawings and to answer questions his contract is also to see if we need other permits like wetlands, permits, etc too many permits, corporate etc and I think it would be great when he has 100% drawings done get them in here because after all it's your contract or our contract so get them in here the hydro stuff all that is a sweet sport should we add that to the contract and recommend to you that we add it like do drawings for power do drawings for a better pathway we just thought by the time we were done no it's just the power cost factor so it's a question you said Jeff's role is to provide the drawings my understanding is and the conversation and the explanation and the dialogue between A&R and the damn safety program on our collective behalf that's correct well stated just a quick note on the money side of things as you said between 6 and 700 thousand is what we're looking at we had an initial goal of raising 100,000 this summer and we just this week hit 200,000 since April when we started fundraising and when you hit 700 just keep going right, exactly we're going to continue fundraising look back we're going to see how much we can get the goal is to get at least to 250 hopefully 3 by town meeting day and the hope is that we can have a dialogue to find out to move the process along to have a bond vote at town meeting day in March to cover the remaining expenses so if we raise 300 it might be a bond of up to 400 not to exceed yeah John and I are working on that with the town attorney great and if we can get that then on town meeting day then theoretically we could get this done next fall that's what we are told is that the time for building the damn is just at the end of the summer it's beautiful can I ask a question is now a good time to ask the question sure go ahead we'd rather ask them so the if the town votes to do a bond for what 300,000 when 450 where is the time where we we adjust the tax basis or the assessment because that would relate to the bond right we're looking at probably not doing an assessment but doing a bond and we wouldn't the tax wouldn't change until well a bond is independent of the assessment but we wouldn't involve property taxes until we take out the bond and have to start paying back so that's what I'm asking is if I'm going to vote for the bond then what years are going to get your property taxes well I want to know how much I'm going to pay and how much Mark's going to pay it's my understanding is that my understanding and maybe Jen you can help here say we approve the bond in March then what we need to do is enter into a construction contract right and we don't let it arts and other construction contract and enter into it and then there'll be a payment schedule and before the construction contract is signed you never want to sign a contract obligating to pay someone unless you have the money so the bonds have to be issued so the bonds would have to be issued I think if we were going to commence construction let's say at the end of August we'd have to issue the bonds in the early summer and if we issue the bonds in the early summer it's not going to end there's a payment schedule and it starts what I don't know is when the payment is scheduled it would be probably the year I don't know we did this with a firehouse and the difference was we had exact numbers and I know it was a different environment economically in terms of the availability of materials and resources but we had a fixed number and the bond went down it went down once and then the second time it passed it did pass the second time and it went down and that was constructive and I will say our select board was recent with a number of I think maybe a mature held up we let it go, we said it's up to the public to decide but we weren't happy with the cost and by that bond being defeated we started with the pencil and made adjustments and did things that were not possible and that they came down how much they came down? half a million? and so it was on a firehouse bond again and it was overwhelmingly approved so I think the public embraced that they were willing to make adjustments and to this day at firehouses it's adequate for what we need and better than that the dam is different the dam is a dam you're not building a restaurant and a cafe inside of it it's not like the Hoover Dam where you go inside this is a little infrastructure project it's like a bridge so it's what you get is what you get and the public's not to decide whether it's something in the broad public interest and how you can decide that at the bond boat so you're going to have to do some major marbles so what we do for town meeting is we put the budget together what's the bottom line and what if this and this passes this is what it will do to your tax rate so that's what we usually do and there will be, let's say John is following what you said let's say there's a not to exceed then there ought to be a statement which says and your taxes will be X cents per hundred bucks I don't know we'll know it when I break this stuff we still need to figure out what we need to figure out I'm not sure we had a fixed number just to say in my it is limited experience I've been here a long time but it's still limited experience one project in my resume but we had a fixed cost and then we our percentage of that and so we had an actual target number and we knew to the penny what we were obligating the town to do if we have a maximum say it's a maximum of 400,000 then you can figure it but I don't know how you set the tax rate you can't set the tax rate so you know what the bond interest is you don't know what the bond interest is so they're sold we don't set the tax rate at town meeting anyways town meeting is the budget and all the different items and if all these things pass and we put it in the report every year so people can see if you pass this 400,000 not to exceed amount from the dam it's going to increase your taxes by a point however many cents it is so I want to go back to my original question because what I'm hearing is that we've departed from the idea of an assessment or whatever you want to call it that would have affected the Curtis Pond neighborhood in a way reflective of the value of the dam to that community versus the rest of town so Marge I think you were the one who had done some beautiful work laying out various models for that approach but the bond approach would be bonds but that's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of is how does the bond is where the money comes from and they could cover the assessment but now we're talking about it coming from a bond either and that has to be paid back there's a number of ways to pay it back so I'm still I'm going to guess Jamie understands my question so early in the process we had lengthy discussions about how to pay for the bond and one of the options was all Calis tax payers pay equal towards the bond based on their property value say $17 per hundred thousand or whatever the math comes up to and then another idea that we bounced around was having separate assessment districts that's right so pond front owners pay you know 40% and walking distance people pay whatever percent and everyone else pays whatever percent through many many conversations with many people it has become apparent that that's really complicated even the attorney said if you want to have any chance of getting this done next year and getting this on Margetown meeting day you can't do it that way okay that's news to me so I just want to say that out that ship I'm hearing that and you guys are the ones with your sleeves rolled up and your pencil sharpened but that is a different message that we've had here at the board that's for the reason for it so we'll make sure we'll make sure the minutes capture it really clear but we decided what we proposed and we we met with Denise and John