It's alright Sexy. Get upstairs now. What do you love? No, football's not the start.  I don't know who needs to hear this, but none of these female Twitch streamers actually like playing the games. Every single bit of it is acting. You do realize that the original Twitch community was all people who loved to play the games.   Literally. I'll take one for the team. I'll be this a**hole male that's calling out all these female Twitch streamers because you know what, at the end of the f***ing day, to have an only fans advertised on Twitch is for f***ing video games.  This is the only thing we had. The only thing we had.  You don't like these games. Sit the f*** down. Oh my gosh, Rachel, look how hot he is. Oh my god, he just noticed. Okay, this is so... Oh my gosh, Rachel, he's pulling up to the light. Here, add my phone on Snapchat.  What? What? Dana. Oh my gosh, I just embarrassed myself even more. This guy took me to a fancy as f*** steakhouse and we had filet mignon and terribly awkward conversation. When it comes time to pay the bill, he graciously offers to pay, takes out his wallet, pulls out a folded bill, unfolds it, puts it on the table and slides it towards me with two fingers like this. Without thinking, I grab it, put it on the check, slide it towards the edge of the table so our server can pick it up. He goes, oh no, no, no. That bill's for you. I'm confused. I glance over at the bill again quickly. I see a Ben Franklin and I'm like, okay, daddy. But I'm still really confused. So I very hesitantly pick up the bill and do you want to know how rich I became? I became this rich, which is basically filthy rich in bull s***. He handed me a gospel bill.  He looked at me dead in the eyes and said that's the only cash I carry, which meant he had no money and I had to pay. Wait a damn minute.  So a girl says to you, we're not having sex tonight. Now when I was younger and I heard that I would freak out. You know, I would start rationalizing like, oh, why? Was the date not good? Did you not have fun? Right? And that is the worst reaction because quite often, especially when it's said in a playful way, as maybe you're walking back to your workplace, it's a s***. The girl wants to see how you're going to respond. Are you going to start justifying yourself? Are you going to get angry and butthurt?   So the best way to respond to that is with a playful grin and said, who says I want to have sex with you? Or, don't worry, I'm a virgin. When you answer it like that, then quite often the girl will see, oh, okay, he doesn't really care and thus she's way more likely to sleep with you now. Of course, if she's serious and she actually doesn't want to do anything sexual with you, then you should of course respect that. Two best friends. My f***. Wait a minute. I wish I was single. Who are you talking to? What? Why are you recording this? Because I'm a little single.  You wish you were single? Yeah. Fine, be single. Oh, and I was playing. No, give me a ring. Be single. I was just playing. I was just playing. I was just playing. I was just... Babe, look. It's a TikTok prank. Come on. Give my ring back. Sometimes I have to remind my boyfriend that I'm actually cute. Like, this is home for you. Don't, don't you forget. Seriously, you can't. Like, don't find a girl out there. Okay. Okay. You're coming back home, right? I only got two girls. You and Bea. Oh, okay. Bye. Just remember, I'm here. I have good stuff for you. The goodies are home. Bye. Bye. So me and my boyfriend live together. I cook dinner almost every night, but I love to cook. And for dinner tonight, I am making chicken cutlets. So my dear friend actually reached out to me and she said, Izzy, please tell me all of that chicken is not just for you and Will. And I have to respond and tell her yes. Indeed it is for just me and Will. The thing is, when you're dating an offensive lineman who plays in the NFL, you can't cook for just the both of you. You have to prepare meals as if you're feeding a small village. So no, I can't make four chicken cutlets and call it a day. This kid eats three dinners a night. It just simply will not do. So if you ever come across the absurd amount of food that I cook on my Instagram story, just know it's for Tick. If you aren't picking up his dry cleaning, then what are you doing? Hey, Tick Talk. It's Cliff from Raleigh. Unfortunately, I'm not making the content that I want to make because some things have sort of changed in my life.  One thing you might want to do go to the savings deposit box. That's right, Brooke. I'm at Wells Fargo. Well, I had a nice little find in the safety deposit box. I had all of our emergency cash which right now I would say it's an emergency. I have my title to my wife's car which is in my name so I guess it'll be my wife's former car and all the diamonds, her earrings and her studs and her bracelets are here so they're going to the pawn shop. Usually, stepmoms have the reputation of being unpleasant and mean but that is not the case with Beth. She's the complete opposite and is the kindest, most genuine person ever. Beth is perfect in every way on the inside and outside. The idea of a stepmom was unsettling before Beth came into my life. But now that she's here I've never been happier and more excited for a stepmom as perfect as Beth. Public service announcement. If you're dating or married to a man who likes to go hunting don't make him feel bad about waking up at 4 a.m. on opening day to go hunting. That means it's really hard to hunt every season.  If that's not what you want to do then why are you with him? Have you ever been in love? I don't think so. Do you want me to describe it to you? Alright, let's pack my husband's lunch. We're gonna start off with some potatoes we're gonna dice those up add some olive oil salt, pepper and garlic and then toss those in the air fryer at 4.25 I did these for about 35 minutes because there was a lot of them and we're gonna chop the ends off of some asparagus add some olive oil add some salt, pop those in the oven at 4.25 for about 10 minutes after this we are going to grab some garlic bread get some cheese put some brisket on there and then we're just gonna make a brisket grilled cheese on the stovetop press that down really let it melt and get crispy and then we're gonna take the asparagus out of the oven add some chipotle chili pepper add the seasonings take the potatoes out of the air fryer pack up those asparagus I gave them some fruit this week it was raspberries and cherries and then I gave them a little extra side of cherries because he really likes them and then we're gonna pack those up and then move on to the potatoes and then we got these cute little meat and cheese things at Costco and then we just cover up the brisket and I made this for four days so there's a speed drop by our house and it's on a hill and my husband and I thought it would be fun to see how fast we could run I kept getting nine and it was driving me nuts so we went back the next night and I was determined to get ten my husband is good at everything and got fourteen without really even trying never videoed myself running so slow and awkward when we were watching it back we were dying laughing but it's so fun you have to try it it's amazing how one day someone walks into your life and suddenly you can't remember how you ever lived without them


Begin the meeting for column 80 to order for Monday, December 2nd, 2019, here at the steel community room. And the first thing that we'd like to do is approve the agenda. Everybody's looked at it. There's no more additions or subtractions. I'd entertain a motion to approve the agenda as is. I make a motion to approve the agenda as is. I second that motion. Okay. There's no further discussion or changes. Everyone who wishes to approve, say aye please. Aye. Consent agenda items, simply the minutes of November 4th meeting in November 12th, special town meeting. We dealt with the fire trucks in the roadside moor. Somebody wishes to make a motion to approve that. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda items. Okay, is there a second as well? I'll second that. Moving forward, those who wish to approve it, please say aye. Aye. And at this time, we have a slot here for the public. Does anybody wish to speak from the public at this point? Seeing none, let's jump right along here. Select Board items, consider the request for an article in the town meeting warning on climate change. Bill? I have a little request from a member of the public. All right. So it's on the agenda. I think Kathleen Day is here to speak to it. If you'd like to come up to the mic, Kathleen, and talk a little bit about your request. Or you can sit over there. Or you can sit, sure, you can sit there in the chair as well. You need to speak right into the microphone, Kathleen. The wording I came up for the proposed article. And if you'd like, I can talk more about the background here working after that. Whereas the climate crisis is real and affects us in Waterbury as in every part of the world, it resolved that we will do everything in our power to preserve the earth for future generations by carefully weighing the effect on the environment in all our decisions and actions. Okay. You'd like to speak to how you came about this idea and request? We certainly listened to you. Thank you. I know that town meetings have discussed various resolutions about the climate over the past couple of years. And after the recent climate strike, I was led by our young people. I was moved to respond to that by trying to bring it up here. So that we could discuss it at the Waterbury town meeting so that we can talk to our neighbors about it so it can encourage each other so we can do our part. Are you looking for certain goals in mind at the meeting? Are you just looking for an overall discussion about things that possibly can be done? Or a way we can change things to maybe make a difference? Yeah, the discussion. I think yet this early stage, just the discussion itself and then we'll see what goes from there. Yeah. You've picked a hard road to hoe. I can tell you that. Just recently I watched the thing on, I was away for a while. So I was able to sit and watch a little bit of what's going on in the rest of the world. And I saw this thing on the news about part of the ocean between Hawaii and United States where they're mining, preparing to start to mine the bottom of the ocean for these things called nodules. They're stones, I guess, that have, are loaded with many different types of minerals, valuable minerals that they can use to make electric batteries for hybrid vehicles and lots of high tech uses for these things. And they're naturally created on the ocean bottom. But I think the US, from what I understand, I kind of caught it in part, that the US has no part of any claim to any of this area that where the bulk of these nodules are located, but there's countries from around the world that have their fingers in the pie on this already and one of the biggest concerns, and I think it was a treaty that the United States may have signed that prevented them from participating in this process which would possibly disrupt the bottom of the ocean. If you think about it, we've already pretty much ruined the rest of the planet. Now we're possibly going to ruin a very small, delicate part of the earth, or I shouldn't say small, it's large, the bottom of the ocean where nobody has explored yet, but I suspect we'll mess that up just like we've messed everything else up. So that's just one of the issues that, but on the flip side, I saw this other issue where these kids established this company that's cleaning up a lot of the pollutants, plastics and stuff that are floating in the ocean and they're really making some headway. So you got two forces here working against each other to try to, one's trying to make things better. And I suppose if the nodules are extracted in a way that is not damaging to that aquatic life at the bottom of the ocean, which is probably pretty delicate stuff, we possibly might be able to benefit the planet from that as well, but I got my doubts. So it sounds like an interesting topic. Somebody else wants to speak to it. You're more than welcome. I see we got some people here from the public that may be interested in it as well. I would like to say that it is. Can you speak at the mic, please? This is Beulah, come up to the mic, please. Determination of the climate and all the effects it's having on the world and certainly us in Waterbury is the responsibility of each of us. And I just think that bringing it up at a town meeting and making it real, it's not just scientists out there in the UN conference that's happening now that's talking about it. It's something we have to do and there will be people at the town meeting and they can hopefully take it personally and they can then talk to people who aren't there at the town meeting, but we all have a responsibility to do something. To do something, so that's what I want to know. Yeah, go ahead, Bill. Couple things. So I think one of the first questions the select board should have to decide is are you going to allow this article or something like it to be on the morning just at this request or are you gonna require a petition? Now they're not asking for money and I'm not here to say you need to make them get a petition typically that's how articles get on the morning. This one is not requesting money. If you're going to allow it on without a petition, I would, you know, when is it that the warning has to be signed at the end of January? So there's time and if you're not gonna require a petition I wonder if you would allow staff to work with Kathleen and others about what the language is. And then the bigger question, can you just read it again for these kicks? Whereas the climate crisis is real and affects us in Waterbury as in every part of the world, it is all that we will do everything in our power to preserve the earth for future generations by carefully weighing the effect on the environment in all our decisions and actions. Okay, so I'm in support of that philosophy. I agree with what was just said that it's all of our responsibility but the way that this resolution is speaking to is the way the town of Waterbury. So my question is if it passes in this form especially, who gets to decide whether we're doing everything we can do to save the planet? When it comes time to buy a vehicle, if there's a plug-in electric dump truck that costs $200,000, do we have to buy that because we passed this resolution? So I'm just a little concerned about who gets to make the decision about what we do as a collective town. When the vehicle that I drive was purchased the last time back in 2009, the select board pushed for a hybrid that there was no good alternative for a straight electric vehicle. So the select board suggested a hybrid and I did a lot of research, I came back to the board and said this is how much it's gonna cost, this is the premium that we're paying, this is the gasoline that I expect that we'll save. I didn't pretend to be able to tell how much carbon wouldn't be put in the air. Somebody could make that calculation but not me but that was something that was good and we did exactly what the resolution is asking. We carefully considered it and ultimately the board decided to spend some more money upfront to do something that they felt was the right thing. But I'm a little concerned about a broad statement that says we're gonna do everything that we can and where does that put the town? Who makes that decision? What the everything is? Bill, you took some of the words out of my mouth. I'm somewhat against this proposal as much as I do believe in climate change. I do believe a discussion of town meetings is appropriate. I think it's more appropriate under other reasons versus a binding resolution. I think climate change affects our state, our nation in a lot broader ways versus we as in the town of Waterbury if we would do everything we could for climate change we would have such a negligible effect if our state, our country and the rest of the world did nothing. I do think this is where I agree with Bill. We voted on a fire truck. If I think what your resolution kind of states that if we were doing everything, if there was a million dollar electric or hydrogen fire truck available, that would bind us to purchase something like that at a great expense to the taxpayer which I don't know if everyone is for. I think there are a lot of unintended consequences. So I do think a lot of the quote, referendum type requests that are before many towns, to be honest, I don't think they have a lot of credence. It's not town, it is town business but it's not town business. And I would be against, I'd be for a discussion but I'd be for any kind of binding resolution that binds this board and the town manager to do things that might be not in the best interest of all. Yeah, to Mike's point, there is a provision and it's been held up by the Supreme Court that says that the select board may reject a petition for a warning if it does not have to do with town business. A number of years ago, somebody presented an article to the select board and had to do with abortion. And I can't remember if it was to pro-wife or not, you know, or pro-choice. But the fact was that the select board consulted an attorney and the attorney said, well, this isn't an issue that the town can do anything about, it's not town business. Therefore, you should not put it on the warning and you should not vote on it because the town couldn't bind itself to do anything. We don't have the authority to do it. In this instance, however, I think the resolution or the, you know, the whereas is something the town can do if they wanted to. So I think it is town business. I think the way it's written right now, it's too broad for my personal sensibilities and not because I don't agree with the, that the issue is serious. It's just I'm concerned that it's too broadly stated and somebody could come in to a meeting and say, hey, you're not doing everything and we voted at our meeting that you need to do everything. So I would like to suggest to the folks who feel this is important, you know, I'd be happy to try to work with you to get a resolution or an article and emotion that makes sense, but this one, I'm just concerned it's too broad. So that goes back to the beginning. If this one is what needs to be proposed from Kathleen's perspective and other people, then you have to decide whether you're gonna just accept it and put it on the warning or if you're gonna make them get a petition. But anyway. So I just wrote something to get the discussion started. It's not written in stone or anything in my mind at all. I don't think it should be just left for somebody to bring up at the town meeting under other business because that doesn't seem to work. I think it needs to say something about the climate in an article so that the discussion will take place without any procedural problems at the end. And so I made it strong so that we could modify it back to what's reasonable. So I'm happy to do that. Yeah, so if you're willing to work and the folks in the room. Can I go ahead and try to get through? I wasn't going to go ahead. Come on up, Duncan. Duncan McKeon. And I am in support of having some article. I take Bill's point that the way it is currently written where the town would need to do everything it can makes it difficult for the town to decide exactly what that might be. It may force it to do things that are not in the town's interest. On the other hand, I think it is absolutely town business. I think the actions that we take as a town affect our world. I think climate change is the most important issue facing our society, facing our world right now. And I've served with Mike on the Conservation Commission. I know how much he cares about the natural environment. But when I hear folks say this issue is too big, other countries aren't doing enough, other people aren't doing enough. So if we do anything, it's a drop in the bucket. To me, that's almost like a group of people in the boat that's sinking and looking around and saying, well, other people aren't bailing, so I'm not going to start bailing. The boat's going to sink. And I think all of us need to start bailing. And if not everyone does, hopefully when they see the rest of us bailing, they will start as well. And I think every little bit counts. We really don't know what's going to tip it one way or the other. And it may be that we've gone past the tipping point and our actions at least reduce the impact that's going to take place on our children and our grandchildren. This is a huge, huge issue. It needs to be dealt with at the local level and perhaps a wording of, our town needs to take into account or it needs to consider issues related to climate change or something along those lines as opposed to it must do everything it can, something along those lines. I think all of us need to keep climate change in mind. I was involved in helping to craft the energy plan for the library town plan. I truly believe that we have a lot of great steps that we could take when I reiterate something I've said before and that is that we really need a group of people in town to drive that forward. There are a lot of great action items and really very few of them are going to take place unless we have individuals from different parts of the town, from municipality, from water break leave, from revitalizing water, very sitting, getting together once a quarter and saying, all right, here are the 30 or 40 action items we've listed, which ones are we going to move forward on? And to a certain extent the kind of thing that the select board and the planning commission also need to bear in mind is everyone's in a while thinking about what can we do because there are lots of things our town can do and we're just, everyone's busy. You are flat out busy, everyone else is busy and if you don't have it in front of mind it's just going to pass by. So this needs to be something that's thought about every time significant issues are considered at the select board level, at the planning commission level and other leadership level. So it doesn't need to be everything you have to do because again that could lead you down the path of, well we need to invest $2 million to do something but it should be considered. It should be a serious consideration for all the major issues that are taking place. Yeah. I'd be much more for this if when we saw a recrafted resolution that didn't, wasn't so all-encompassing because that seemed to be like everything or nothing. So I don't know if I could vote in the affirmative for the resolution as presented. Could I, could I revise it? How about this? I think we should continue to talk about the idea of whether we move forward with, I don't think we should get specific tonight. I think that's the mistake we can make tonight. I guess, sorry, I don't mean to jump in but I think it's a great idea but I think that we should let Bill and the staff work on re-wording it outside of this meeting and re-present it to the board. I fully support everything you said. So I think it's, I think every decision we make there should be consideration on what impact the decisions we're making as a town on climate change are. So I think that something along those lines is where I'd like to see it go. And then whatever Bill comes up with and the staff. So I support it. I just think that we shouldn't try to get specific to what the article will be tonight. I think that's something we shouldn't try to do tonight. I just wanted to mention that our young people are the leaders in inspiring the adults and the old generation to step up to the play around the world. And if you have an opportunity to look at the article in the bridge, October 12th through 15th of this year where they had the climate crisis action strike in Montpelier and around the world. And everybody stepped up and attempted to make some kind of pledge to themselves or information to the community. And one of the things that the young people here in Vermont asked is if we could put something on the town meeting agendas about climate change. The climate crisis and some type of activity that everyone could think about. And I really appreciate and support that opportunity. I do believe that not to box the town into buying something that is extravagant but to evaluate the criteria based on what is available to do what you can, not what you, is some step beyond like the young boy or girl, I think it's the young boy who took the steps to do away with plastic straws. So now we have paper straws and they're recyclable. And Vermont has a small little state, has done a lot of groundbreaking things through their generations. And I think this is a really a good big leap that can be done in small portions. And I would really have a lot of support in many ways that we could do in our little community. So we appreciate any efforts that way, whether they be little or big. It's whatever little thing we can do with some people can't do as much as others. Some people use a paper bag compared to a plastic bag. Unfortunately, in my eyes and being in the business that I'm in, I'm very cognizant of what's going on on the planet every day, even though it may not seem like it because I'm in the type of business that I'm in. But that makes me more aware of actually what's going on and it's to some degree frightening. It seems like the acceleration rate of the problem in a lot of people's eyes, there is no problem is the acceleration rate of the problem is faster than our efforts to curb it. And I see it all the time. So it's worth having, certainly having a good discussion about it. Yes, sir. I don't have a microphone for one person and I want to speak up and support the statement, but unfortunately we want to rewrite the statement so it makes more economic sense for this board and for future boys. But we want to make a point of back in the 90s, it was a woman down on Brattleboro who started out with a petition on the town agenda and it was about land mines. And it was Jody, I can't think of her last name, but she ended up getting the Nobel Peace Prize, okay? So no step is too small. And I want to just make that point that no step is too small. A statement is a statement, it should be a goal of this town to do what we can. We have read the energy report that we put together, it's a fine report, got a lot of work in it and it's got a lot of potential for it. We want to use that as a key piece of town effort and keep it on the forefront of all the actions we do. Anyone else? So Kathleen, yes. Could I make one final attempt to propose something that maybe we could just pass and then the real discussion will take place at town meeting. So the beginning is the same whereas the climate crisis is real and affects us in Waterbury as in every part of the world. Be it resolved that we will carefully write the effect on the environment in all our decisions and actions. I guess I'd have to refer to Bill for that. I am with Mark on taking a little bit more time to just make sure that we're not handcuffing the municipality in a liable way. We've got time, okay? We've got time to get this on the agenda for town meeting and so I would suggest putting it off as well. Sounds like they're committing not to making you get a petition. So that's the- Should we just make a motion that this- I guess you will be on the agenda. Right. In the morning. Right. And then we'll discuss wording in the near future. Yeah. That would be fine. I'll make that motion. Don't make me repeat it though. I'll second that. Second the motion. Okay. Any further discussion? Kathleen? No. Thank you very much. Okay. All those in favor? Say aye please. Aye. Aye. Thank you all for coming. Yes, Duncan. Can we just ask what the timing might be? Are there any particular deadlines for making sure the wording is finalized so we can get on the warning? Well, it's- The warning is posted at the end of January. Okay. It's been a couple of months. So I think a reasonable goal would be that maybe by the second week of January we would have a language that would go to the select board. If we get it done earlier than that, it's fine. But no later than the second week of January. We meet every Monday in January. Okay. And would the next step be you and the select board brainstorming about wording? Well, I think they're leaving it to, I mean, I work with any of you that are interested. I'm not here to say that I'm the, you know, Thomas Jefferson of this, of this article. So if anybody is interested, I'll be certainly willing to have that input. But ultimately, I think we just wanna make sure that we're not handcuffing us and binding us to something that we can't feel like. And you know, I don't think anybody's suggesting that we want it really watered down. We just want it workable.  So it may end up being that. And much like Duncan said, you know, wind up with something that's going to create action items instead of just a broad statement. Kind of love action items and the energy climate. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks again for coming. Thank you so much. Thanks, Kathy. Thank you very much. No, I want your original wording. Oh, that's here too. Yeah. You could have that. This is fine. This is your original wording, right? Yeah, that's all I need. Oh, okay. I wanna give you the other wording so you can go. Excuse me. It's okay. I just need the original wording for the next. I just can't. Okay. That's that. We're actually on time. Yep. That's a good thing. Manager's items are next. And starting with considering a contract to with Red Star natural resource management for preparation for preparation for Emerald dashboard preparedness. That's where you're dying fast. Right. So we put some money into the budget this year. $2,200 to be exact to do an inventory map and then develop a plan for ash trees along the municipal rights of way, particularly on streets in the center of the village area and streets around the park in Waterbury Center. Steve's not here tonight, but I think we have about 8% ash trees in our forests around here. And there's no way that we can protect all of those trees, even a landowner who has several acres is would not be able to afford to inoculate all the ash trees. So we had hoped that this project would be well on its way to completion now. And our goal with this plan is to, the trees have been identified in the areas that I've just talked about. And the Regional Planning Commission is in the process of mapping those trees so future folks will know where they are. And the plan is intended to give us some direction as to what we should do. And the plan could be that, well, there's 15 really healthy ash trees right now. They should be inoculated and continue that inoculation every other year and try to save those trees. There might be a number of ash trees that are already in a state of unhealthiness, not because of the emerald ash bore, but maybe just because they've got compacted roots or they've got some other disease. And it might be those trees should be taken down in advance of the emerald ash bore getting in there and giving them a place to stay. So the plan is still to be written. We had hoped, excuse me, we had hoped that Tom and Dan Sweet, local folks who have Hunger Mountain Forestry would do this plan. But we do have a $2,000 grant from the state and its path through money really originates as federal money. And in order to use that federal money, we have to have conflict of interest policies and the select board adopts one of those every year. And when we sent out the request to Tom Sweet about doing this plan for us, which earlier in the year he had expected to do, but when he saw the contract language and read about the conflict of interest, he and Dan, who is employed by the town as our assessor talked about it and he felt that they could not get around the conflict of interest issue that it's a small contract, but they felt that it could be something that would raise a red flag with some of the regulators. So they've told us that they're not willing to do the work because they don't believe that they can meet the conflict of interest policy that the town has adopted. So Tom recommended Red Star Natural Resource Management. They're out of Bradford, Vermont. They did the work that we're talking about for the town of Randolph. We sent them the same information that we had given to the suites and they've proposed doing an EAB Ashbor, Emerald Ashbor Preparedness Proposal, but their quote is $3,900 to do the plan. So we've got 2,200 in the budget, 2,000 of that is grant money. The Regional Planning Commission worked with the local tree committee and have already inventoryed the trees. The Regional Planning Commission is going to do the mapping for no charge to the town. That would leave the town to pay for the $3,900 that we need to do to get this plan in place. So my proposal to you is, or my recommendation to you is that you would authorize this contract for $3,900. They will start soon and we'll draw down the $2,000 grant money and in the end, we'll have to budget another $1,700 in next year's budget for this. It doesn't seem likely that the grant will be increased. So I think it's important that we get this work done. We're gonna get two thirds of it or so paid for through this grant. But I think given what is likely to happen with these ash trees, it will be good to have a plan in place that can be implemented in the coming years. Bill, is there any redundancy between what the Regional Planning Commission's doing and what Red Star would be doing? Because it seems like the inventory and stuff would be part of what they would be doing. Yeah, the inventory's been done. Red Star will not have to do the inventory. They're assuming that. They won't have to do the mapping.  Thanks. So there's probably no way that one of the representatives could meet with us and explain a little bit more about what they may or may not suggest that we do or what parts of this plan would consist of. You know, I have seen some towns vote to basically eradicate any ash that's in their town, which to me seems a little ridiculous. I try to fight this problem. You know, there's a scope of work, six points to the scope of work. Meet with the tree committee to establish goals and objectives. Analyze the roadside ash inventory and data. So it's already been collected. Review two other emerald dashboard preparedness plans that have been developed in other municipalities. Draft the plan. Meet with the Y retreat committee with the select board and general public to present the draft plan. After those comments finalize the plan and then incorporate final edits and comments and then submit the plan to the municipality. So I think that there's, it's a collaborative effort. We're not asking them to do this planning process without any input from us. There will be a time that the select board can have a give and take with them. I think it's also should be remembered that while I hope this isn't the case, they can submit the plan and they can say, this is our best recommendation for a plan. This is what you should do. If the select board says, well, we can't afford that or it doesn't make sense to us. You don't have to implement the plan. There's nothing in the law that says that you have to implement this. But this is an issue that we're gonna deal with. These trees, without any kind of intervention, it's likely that a number of these trees will be dying. They'll be in the highway right away and we'll have to deal with them and eventually take them down. And the Cemetery Commission this past fall, there's a giant ash tree in the cemetery and it probably costs three or $4,000 to take that tree down if it dies. So they agreed to spend a couple of $100 to inoculate the tree and they'll do that. You have to do that inoculation every two years for it to be effective. And they felt that it's worth taking that risk to spend a couple hundred dollars to see if you can keep the tree healthy as opposed to have to spend a whole lot of money to take a dead tree down. So it's a small amount of money. We've already agreed to do this. When the budget was put together, we thought that Hungamount Forestry was gonna do it and the $2,200, there was $200 of in-kind expenses that we were gonna be bearing and then we thought that the plan could be written for $2,000. And I think we were kind of getting a hometown discount from the Swedes. They don't feel they can do the job because of the conflict of interest policy. It's not a whole killing amount of money. It's just, you know, if we're gonna have the plan done, it's gonna cost a little bit more than we thought out of our own pocket. So if we get this plan done with Red Start and then we do assume some issues that need action with these asterisks, would they be a management company for other contractors that would do the action and work of the remediation or would they be doing this all in-house? No, I think, I don't believe that Red Start is going to do any of their work. They would develop the plan. I think that their natural resources, management consultant, they're not at risk. They're not gonna be taking the trees down. They're not gonna be inoculating. They would be simply giving us a plan and then we would implement it. We could use Potter, we could use Fire, we could use Michael Roche, we could use Joe Smith from North, if we wanted to, you know, to do the work. I guess my concern is, and again, it's not so much the money, but again, every penny counts. In the past, you know, this state has lost the elm tree, I mean, it's starting to see some come back. Butternut trees have been pretty much devastated in the state and the beech nut has got a fungus on it that is killing most of the beech. I know where there's a few big, big beech that are still in great shape. I guess my thought is, there was no sense of urgency back then when those trees were being affected, but now, for some reason, the emerald ash borer is coming in and we've gotta jump through hoops to try to stop it or set it back and control it. I don't think that we're being asked to jump through hoops to stop the emerald ash borer. I think what we're doing is kind of like we talked about on the climate change issue, trying to get some information and education and nobody's suggesting that we're gonna try to save every one of, I don't even know how many trees are in the inventory, I didn't look at it, but nobody's gonna say that we have to spend all kinds of money to save every ash tree. It's a matter of, we're gonna be responsible. I don't know who took the elm trees that were on Main Street and in the village down 50 years ago, but somebody paid a lot of money to take those dead trees down. And if we can do some work and do some relatively inexpensive things to prolong their life or to save a few of them, and avoid that expense, that's what the issue is, is avoidance of expense, not to save every ash in town. Yeah, I'll agree, that makes good sense.  No, I mean, I think I understand what Bill's saying and yeah, I think we should go ahead with the contract. Then you'll make a motion for that, huh? Sure. So moved. Okay, second. All right, any further discussion? And authorize me to sign. Yep, yes. As well. Okay, all those who wish to approve it, say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, any pilot post, posting of excess payment? But payment, I can't remember how much we budgeted. I didn't think to make a copy of that. I can get it if you need to. We get a pilot payment from the state somewhere in the vicinity of, you know, $280,000. I think we budgeted $200,000 was deposited into the general fund. And we planned to deposit the remaining $82,000. So let's just say the total budget was 282 that we thought we were gonna get from pilot. And, you know, I knew going into the budget that the pilot payment would likely be somewhat higher than that. I just didn't know how much higher. So we budgeted with, you know, conservatively and hoped that we would get some additional money. And we did. So for right now, we had a deposit into the general fund that's been made. I think it was 204,000 is ringing a bell, but I can look later if you need it. And then we had planned to put $82,000 into the paving fund. You can see that right now, 98,378 has been deposited into the paving fund. So it's $16,378 more than we budgeted. And I chose to deposit it into the paving fund as opposed to the general fund because we've talked a lot about paving here and trying to boost what we have. So the deposit has been made.  When you say paving fund, do you mean the CIP? Yeah, the paving CIP. So the recreation CIP, and I told you that, you know, we budgeted for $50,000 state grant, which we did not receive. And then when we started to get into, you know, changing the lights on the softball field, we ended up running into some significant expenses because the system was so out of code that we had to upgrade the electrical feed into the park as well as fix the lights. So you can see down on the expenses that we had budgeted 35,000 for field improvements. We've spent 43,947, and the bulk of that, not all of it, but the bulk of that was for those lights on the softball field. The transfer from the general fund will be 30,000 to date through last month. We had transferred 22,5 from the general fund. The 30 will be transferred in. So the total revenues, if we leave it just as it is right now, will be 52,985. Actually, that's not right. It's only 7,500 more than that. So that's, so what I wrote in the memo to you is actually correct. I was thinking today, I said this looks too good to be true, and it is. 30,000 to 400. The total revenues are gonna be about 30,515 in that fund. And you can see that we have spent about $62,000. So we're gonna be about $36,000 negative in terms of revenues over expenses in that fund. And we budgeted to be $4,000 over. So as much as I think the paving fund should have some additional money, I think this excess 16,378 should be reapportioned and put it into the recreation CIP. We'll still be underwater in that fund for this year and next year we'll have to make it up somehow, either make it up with a bigger transfer or do less projects. But I just wanted to talk to you folks first about it. The paving fund, even if we revert back to the $82,000 that we had proposed to go into that fund will still be better off than what we thought it was gonna be. It's still considerably underwater, as I told you before. We look at the CIPs kind of as a whole when we end up deciding how much we should spend. But even if we only deposit 82,000 into the paving fund, it will have a lower negative fund balance than we had budgeted for. So it's your choice. In some senses, it really doesn't make much difference because in the aggregate, the funds are gonna end up where they are. It's just where it looks like on paper. But the recreation fund is a much smaller fund and gets a much smaller annual transfer. And if we end up with a $30,000 deficit there, that's difficult to make up because there's really no other options except tax money for that one. So I could have done this and just did it. And you folks wouldn't have really noticed a difference because the paving fund would have said $82,000 just like it had been budgeted for. It's just a matter of where on paper do you wanna put this additional $16,000. So I hope we don't have to spend all evening debating it. It's a paper exercise, I'm all for you, Bill. It really is. I think you're doing the right thing. I agree. Yeah, for me, the frustrating part is every time we turn around, we've got something else that's digging under our pocket and taking the funds that. Well, I mean, you should look at it that we've got $16,000, $378 more than we expected. It's just which pocket we're gonna put it in as opposed to. Do you motion? No. Can you remind me, is the pilot money from, what's the, is it the 1% and then 30% of the 1% local option tax, is that so? So the pilot money is generated by the towns that have local option taxes. So Williston, for example, has a local option, sales tax, probably has a sales tax, maybe an alcohol tax, Sturro has a rooms and yields tax. A pillar, I think. A number of towns do. So anyway, 70% of the revenues generated in those towns that have local option taxes stay in those towns. It really, it all goes to the state first, but the state sends them back 70% minus a little bit of an administration fee. And then 30% of what's generated in those towns gets put into the state budget and the state uses that 30% to fund the pilot program. In the pilot program, the state does not, their tax exempt, the buildings are tax exempt, the land is tax exempt. They don't give us anything for the land where buildings were located. Forced, we get forced in parks money for the state forest lands. But so the state complex, the state makes their pilot payment based on the insured value of the properties. And then they take that insured value and then they apply last year's tax rate in every town to that. And that comes up with a number and then that's discounted. We're still getting probably about 60% of what we would get if the state was actually paying taxes on those buildings. But it's significantly higher for Waterway because the state complex is almost brand new still. So the insured values of those properties are much higher than it was before Irene happened in 2001. Do you know how many municipalities benefit from pilot? Every municipality that has a building in it. Okay, any that has like a state building. So if there's a state highway garage, you get a pilot payment. If you got a lean to in the state park, you get a payment for that. So I don't know, it's not all 251 towns that have state buildings in it, but every town that has a building gets some pilot payment. I'm sure that we're second only to Montpelier in the size of the pilot payment. Maybe Burlington, but their buildings that they have in Burlington are a lot. They don't get anything for UVM. Yeah. So. But for that big state complex that they have on Earl Street. Yeah. So are you suggesting that as the properties to age and deteriorate that the pilot may go down? Well, it could, if they lower the insured values on it, sure, it could go down, but that won't be anytime soon. But that happens with your property too. If you don't maintain your property and it loses value, then our tax goes down. You gotta think that it's a percentage of pricing and so inflation potentially pushes up revenues there. And you know, the other side of the equation is that there are more towns that have local option taxes. And despite what everybody says, the revenue that they generated the year, the sales go up, the tax revenue goes up. You're still not saying that it's an easy decision to do it. I think that there's, the challenges for the local option tax are on the business people who run the businesses. I don't think there's a big dampening effect about people shopping. It's just, it's one more thing that a small business person has to juggle at the end of the quarter, they've gotta make their, they gotta pay in addition to their mortgage and their suppliers, they gotta pay their payroll taxes and potentially this. So it's not, we're not here discussing whether we should have one. But that's how the pilot payment is made. So if everybody's okay with understanding that, I will move that and we'll move it to the budget next meeting or next month. We'll talk about it. Sounds good. Thank you. Next on the agenda item is considering a resolution allowing municipal regulation of cannabis. Yeah, so the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, an organization of which we are a dues paying member has a legislative policy every year and they have two staff people that work very closely in the legislature and act as lobbyists for municipalities. So we all know from the news and from history of the last year or so that commercial retail cannabis is on the horizon, on the near horizon. Right now, every individual can grow their own, have a certain number of plants and possess a certain amount of the marijuana and they can do it for their own use. They're not allowed right now to sell that except for medicinal purposes and there's a whole separate set of regulations for that. But it appears from the discussions going on in the administration now, the Scott administration and with the legislative leadership that the legislature is likely to take this issue up in 2020 and you can see if you have the resolution, I'll have the resolution in front of you. And we'll make copies like we did in a couple of minutes. Just take a second. Yeah, I did read through what VLCT sent us. Yeah, they sent back an email that probably wasn't very well received but I'll take it anyway. Well, I don't think VLCT is... I wasn't aiming at them. I don't think VLCT is taking a stand one way or the other. What they're trying to educate their membership about is that this is legislation that's likely to pass and there will be some impacts on local governments. And what they're trying to do is put municipalities in a position where they have some choices and acting on this resolution is not taking a stand one way or the other as to whether marijuana should be sold or in this town or not. But as you can see, now that Carla has passed that out, the 2019, 2020 VLCT municipal policy calls for any legislation legalizing commercial cannabis to address the impacts on municipalities, school populations, first responders, municipal regulations and budgets. What this resolution is asking for in a nutshell is for the legislature to write the law in a fashion that allows municipalities to choose whether or not commercial establishments will be allowed in their own town. Again, making no value judgment about whether this should happen or not, that ship seems to have sailed. And what they're asking for is for the cities and towns in the state to have the ability to decide for themselves whether or not they want these retail establishments in their own communities. As I've said many times before, Vermont is a Dylan's rule state. We only have the authority to regulate when the state gives us that authority. So if the state writes a law and allows retail sales of cannabis and doesn't enable municipalities to regulate it or to vote not to have it, then municipalities won't have that right. They will not have the right to say you can't do it in our town. So the league is asking that as many municipalities as possible. I'm sure they're hoping for a full unanimous vote from municipalities, but they're asking municipalities to approve this resolution. And if you go to the resolved part that the town supports legislation legalizing a taxed and regulated cannabis market, only if that legislation adequately addresses all of the aforementioned local considerations and concerns, the town supports the cannabis tax. And these are the numbers evidently that are being talked about. And derived from local cannabis tax retained by the host community where the retail establishment is and that 30% pooled and redistributed to municipalities that do not host retail establishments. And then allowing the municipalities to have an opt in if they choose to allow these establishments in their town. So right now, towns in Vermont can vote at town meeting whether they wanna be a dry town or wet town. If they don't wanna sell alcohol in their communities they can vote no to having alcohol sold in their communities. You can't say you can't drink here because people can buy it and bring it to their own home, but there are a number of towns that do not allow stores or restaurants to sell alcohol. And that's really what this resolution is asking for. The reason why that they're suggesting number two in the resolved part at the bottom that the town supports a local cannabis tax of 5% with 70% of the revenues just derived from the local cannabis tax retained by the host community where the retail establishment is and 30% pooled and redistributed to municipalities that do not host retail establishments. What they're saying is that's the same formula as the pilot payment. It's not for pilot, it would be that 30% would be distributed to communities that don't allow the sales. If every community allowed the sales then they'd all just retain their 100%, I guess. But the 30% is a nod to communities that don't sell it, understanding that they're gonna have to deal with some of the issues that retail marijuana brings. So if it's police that the police have to be on the lookout and trained to deal with that or if it's concerned about that they wanna educate school children about what the impacts of cannabis is. So I'm not the one who wrote the resolution. I'm not on the board of VLCT anymore and I didn't say about this at all but it's simply asking towns to ask the state to allow them to have a say in their own communities as to whether or not that this will be allowed a retail establishment will be allowing if they're called. So I don't know if you know this but why do they go to 5%? Why don't they just say it matches the state sales tax seems dumb because that's just another thing local establishes still have to sell it we'll have to have another calculation on their cash registers to calculate a 5% tax versus a six plus six and a half percent. And if you don't like that part you can take that out if you want but you could just say the town supports local sales tax, you know that. It's sales tax. You know it may be subject to the sales tax already Mike so is this really? Yeah I was gonna ask that, this is in addition to whatever the state would define it right? I believe so because that's how the, yeah. Okay so you're saying the sales tax plus 5% on top of that. I believe that's what it probably means yes. I got you. That tax of 5% maybe they should have been clear above the state sales tax or in addition to the state sales tax. Kind of like cigarette taxing. Yeah. So with the municipality choosing possibly choosing to allow retail sales what kind of liability is bestowed on the town for or I guess making that ruling? Is there, if there is a liability issue that comes about from them saying yes we're gonna allow this to happen here? Well I'm not a lawyer Chris but I think the liability to the town would be almost nothing in that regard. I mean we shall. Towns that allow alcohol to be sold in their towns aren't subject to being sued. Maybe you'll give somebody a good idea maybe somebody will sue the town for not being a dry town if they get a DUI from after buying some booze down at crossroads but I don't think liability is an issue for the town. What the resolution is asking for is that cities and towns must be granted the right to opt in as opposed to opt out that they want people making a conscious decision that they want this allowed in their community as opposed to it's allowed unless you say no. And that's the difference between opt in and opt out. And that vote would be taken at town meeting? Yeah if the legislature writes the not necessarily at the next town meeting but if the legislature- No but I'm saying that's where the decision will be made. The legislature writes the legislation as this resolution requests it would be an opt in so if somebody wanted to have a business in town or if the select board just wanted to encourage that sort of business in town it could be put on the town warning at town meeting and ask the voters to agree to allow it. Do we have a tax like this on anything else you can think of? We don't want to break no. In other towns they have the 1% local option tax. I know in some states that the taxes become so horrendous that the black market is sliding very well. Right. My concern is like any drug and this is probably if you were to put it on a scale one to 10 as far as harmful it'd probably be down at the lower level now but as time goes on everybody's goal is gonna be to like any drug to increase its potency so they get more business. And before you know it I guess my concern is before you know it they'll be put in synthetics which they already are I guess in some cases creating just a bigger problem. I think you know we never have the that's the right word the tolerance or the capability of managing anything and keeping it under reasonable control. For some people and I can tell you just another friend die of alcoholism you know that's two high school friends that I can think of off the top of my head and I know three others that are on their way out. Yeah but I mean that's not because we allow alcohol to be sold alcohol is a substance that people can make and for whatever reason people like what it does and some people aren't able to handle it. I think to your point though one of the reasons why that the state is gonna be regulating and this has nothing to do with whether we have this opt-in or opt-out issue or whether we can control it or not but and I'm no expert but people are suggesting that the best way to have some ability to control the potency is to allow regulation of it because the way it is I mean people are you know they're out there and you know they say that it's what you buy on the street now is much more potent than it was back in the 60s and 70s. We all hear of things you know is that x being added to it and everything else so the regulating of it is a little bit of a nod anyway to controlling and giving people some comfort about the quality of what they're getting just like it is with alcohol you know. You can't buy grain alcohol. Because exactly in the depression and people were making alcohol and it was wood grain alcohol and people were going blind or dying or whatever so anyway I'm not here to speak for marijuana sales or not I don't use it, skin off my nose one way or the other it's just does the town want to take the advice of VLCT and ask the legislature to allow municipalities to have some say in whether it happens in their community or not. That's really the crux of the issue. The taxes are concerned and again if you don't support the 5% if you want to get rid of that section too we can take that out. To me it's more the issue of deciding whether we want to have this as a retail establishment opportunity in our community or not. Is this a town meeting type article? I think there's something with this resolution isn't it? This is right, this resolution is right. Well down the road if the legislature if this resolution gets supported by enough cities and towns and the VLCT is able to bring it before the legislature and say look this is what the towns are saying and if the legislature writes the law kind of in accord with this then yes at some point there would be an article out town meeting to see whether we, I mean there doesn't have to be but I would assume that somebody's going to want to be have a retail business and if they do they would come to the select board and say can we have an article on the town meeting warning and see what the voters say. Because I don't think the four of us can represent totally what the real, I would like to hear from the citizens what they feel like if they want our town to be dry or if they want to be, you know encouraged, you know, retail participation. Right. So if there's no more great concern. I mean the one thing I don't like number two personally I just think if we decided down the road that we might want to put a local tax on it that's a separate discussion but I just don't like I don't like establishing a tax that we don't really do in any other market for any other products and then also on top of it the split I just don't, I don't, I personally don't think that we should support that part of this resolution but other than that I think to get ahead of this and try to get some power within the local municipality and try to state that to the state ahead of whatever they're gonna decide to do I think is a pretty important thing. I totally agree, I find that that tax part is the sticking point for me. I do totally agree that, you know now is our time to be heard and if we, if we want to be heard in the future rather than just having the state say you will allow the end of a sales. Could I ask you your concern about, what's driving your concern about the 5%? Just the fact that we're setting a precedent on a substance or the sale of a substance when we don't have anything else in our town that is controlled in that way. We're not doing that with alcohol, we're not doing that with cars, we're not doing it with. Are you afraid that it might impact the business or it's asking for too much back to my point there about other states that are overtaxing it and therefore the black market surviving very well and is that part of my concern? That's part of my concern. We don't even know what, I mean the stake but a 90% tax on that. So how would you word it if you wanted it? I would just eliminate it. Eliminate to a high group. Wouldn't have it part of the resolution for now. Right. I mean that is something obviously that could come up later. Right. You know, but truth in the matter is we don't have a cannabis dispensary in Waterbury right now. So how would you word it to change it? I think that's. Eliminate number two. Take two out. The whole thing completely out. Yeah. Yeah. Just keep the rest. So if somebody wants to make a motion with that change if there's, must there's anything else? So if that's a change you want what I would offer is that I can, I can take this out and then you can sign it at the next meeting as opposed to me trying to go and do this now. So no motion now. Well, I think you can make a motion to. Yeah. With the change. To approve this with the change. I'm just suggesting that the signing of it will happen at the next meeting unless you want to hang around for me to do it now. So moved. I'll second. No further discussion. Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Who made the motion? Yeah. And who seconded? I did. All right. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I'll pass this now. I'll pass this now. Mike, could you be sure to turn the camera to the computer? Tom? Yeah. You gotta like talk right. Okay. Closer. Okay. Pull that way. Okay. I'll get you on it, Mike. Pull the microphone right so it's just a. Bogart the mic as I said back in the 60s. Okay. Next item. I need my copy. Okay. You have a copy of proposed amendment to the town's purchasing policy which was initially adopted in April of 2009. I told you in the memo that I sent out that I was recommending changing the $500 that you have to have a purchase order. If your department had, you have to have a purchase order at $500. I told you I was recommending a thousand today when I actually wrote this. I thought about it. I said, well, 1200 seems to be a reasonable number to me. The issue really is that the bookkeepers both Leigh Ann and now Michelle are real sticklers for the purchase orders and when department heads come in and you know, there's a bill and it's $503 gets sent back. You need to get a purchase order for it. $500 in 2009 is not worth, you know, it's not the same dollar that it is now. So that's really the big change here. I changed the little language in the middle section in section three to amplify on that where I said it's understood that the budget in each fund is a spending plan. Overspending and underspending will occur in one more line items of the budget. The manager will have a 30 to approve purchases even if the purchases cause the particular line item to be overspent as opposed to me having to come to you and say, well, we had $5,000 for new equipment and now it's, you know, can you please let me make it $5,200? I mean, I think it goes on to say if it's significantly higher or if it's there's a particular item that's way higher that I would come back to the board and talk and receive permission for those expenditures. But, you know, I think that it just, the way it's written now in the blue font is more like we actually operate now. You're not micromanaging me. You're not looking over my shoulder. Just makes the current practice in line with the policy if you adopt it this way. I make a motion to approve the amended purchase order requirement policy. Second. I'll second. Any further discussion? All those in favor of saying aye, please do so, please. Aye. Yeah, you're right. Everything costs hundreds today. This one is the, if you could sign that one. $500 saying would it be used to do it. Thank you. Yeah. And to be clear, it says it at the bottom that you're adopting this today, but it will be effective January 1st. So the $500 limit still applies until the end of the year. Eliminary discussion on the 2020 budget. Yeah, I don't have anything to distribute tonight. I don't have a budget to look at. I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts right now. Do you have goals? And I have, you know, if you say for instance that you want the tax rate not to go up at all next year or you want it to go up by 3%, I'll do my best to do what you're asking for. It will not eliminate the need for us to have budget meetings and we'll see how close we can get to your goal. But I'm just wondering at the moment, we've talked a little bit about paving, we're trying to up our game on that. We may have to borrow next year again in order to do what we want to do. All those kind of things will come out in the details, but I just was wondering if you had any thoughts and you don't have to have them tonight. We're going to meet again in December. I may, I'm not promising, but I may be able to have a good jump on filling in the in effect non-negotiable line items, the items that are going to be what they're going to be that we don't have any say over to give you a sense as to where things are going. But it's time to start thinking about it now and you can discuss it or make comments now or save them until the meeting round and whatever it is that we do is the 16th, I guess, so. Put your sense bill on keeping a zero increase in our budget or the possibility of that. The budget or the tax rate? There's a big difference between the budget and the tax rate. I understand that. Level-filling the budget is never an easy thing to do. Right. We've got health insurance. We talked about a couple of meetings ago. Equipment and materials go up in costs. There's some expectation that wages probably will go up a little bit. So keeping a budget level funded is a tough task. If that's what the board wants, then I'll do my best to figure out a way to do it and then we can argue about which cuts are appropriate and which are unacceptable. But I think keeping a budget that is completely level-funded like will result in, I won't say a loss of cuts and service necessary, but there will be some cuts necessary. And I think that I haven't talked to Dan sweet at all. I don't think we should expect more than a percent increase in the grand list. If we get more than a percent, that's great. The last couple of years, we've been plus or minus that a little bit.  There may be a couple of those that got finished off this year, but most of that has been built out. We've still got some lots in Warwick Commons over on Perry Hill. They continue to sell lots there and I expect there'll be some development, but, you know, we didn't get a new hotel. We didn't have another, you know, building built in Pilgrim Park or anything like that. And of course, Curd Green Mountain is in the process of trying to sell off properties.  So I would be comfortable with saying one percent and hopefully get it. And if it's more than that, that's gravy. Any sense of what kind of deficit we're gonna be shortfall on the budget there for this year, if any? I don't think there's gonna be a deficit. I think that we're gonna be pretty close to where we expect it to be. You know, I haven't, when I did the last analysis, we were still showing that we were looking like that we were gonna have a little bit more on the revenue side than we budgeted and our spending was gonna come in close to what we budgeted. So if that's the case, we may have a small surplus. I don't think we're gonna be in a big deficit position in our operating budget. And how does the Main Street Reconstruction Project impact us? I know we've got a certain percentage there, we gotta put it out. Is that gonna be new on the tax rate this year or does that just stay on the state current or state, you know what I mean? Relative, I guess. Yeah, so we're paying for our share of the Main Street Reconstruction Project out of our infrastructure CIP and we fund the, all the CIPs get their funding from us from transfers from the General Fund or the Highway Fund. Those transfers, we have tried to incrementally raise the transfers every year, understanding that inflation costs of vehicles go up, costs of painting goes up, costs of paying contractors for bridges go up. So, but I, the Main Street Project will not require a huge investment such that we'll have a big impact on the tax rate. Even if we have to pay everything in one year and we don't, we're spending it over the course of at least two years and probably into three, the local share is in the vicinity of $400,000 and about 25 to 30% of that is gonna be paid by the utility district in terms of water and sewer.  So I guess my question is more clarified here. If we increased our budget last year to cover that expenditure last year, won't that just stay in the tax rate and also do the same for this year? Or will that? Yeah, I don't think so. Let's just say the transfer to the infrastructure CIP was $250,000. I don't remember what it is, but let's say it was $250,000 last year. I think we might decide to increase the transfer by whatever, the rate of inflation, two percent, two and a half percent just to keep up with inflation, but it won't require more than that. Understand what I'm saying? I was just wondering if in the course, I don't remember it, but if the increase, if we had put in an increase to cover that without stealing from the original CIP, if we had put an additional half a penny or a penny and a half or whatever it would have taken to accumulate the 100,000-ish, 100,000. The transfer we had last year was enough to do what we needed to do last year globally. So Main Street, Bridges, Culver, it's the whole thing. I don't think, so I think we'll have to increase the transfer or at least all things being equal just to keep up with the rate of inflation and understanding things are gonna cost more over time. We should probably increase it a little bit, but it won't take more than that. And if we decide that we really wanna hold a line, we'll transfer what we transferred last year and we may have to trim off some other things that we would have otherwise done because we know we gotta pay for Main Street. Yeah, but I think back to your question on what we'd like to see. I think personally, I think we should always try to not increase the tax rate. So I think that would be my first request is to see if you can put together a budget that doesn't increase the rate and see where we land. I think it's specific to paving. I think the one thing that I, maybe now we're a little late in the game this year, but seeing, I don't know if we have a true game plan when it comes to a five-year plan, 10-year plan, inventory of roads, conditions, expectations on upcoming investments where we can spend now to save later where we are in that. So. So Alec and Bill Woodruff, the public, well, the municipal engineer and the public works director respectively have been working on that plan. And I think probably at the next meeting on the 16th, we can review that. Yeah, that'd be great. And see what their recommendations are, see where they feel we should go. And then the board will either like that plan or not like that plan and ask for it to be amended. But I think at the next meeting, we can look at that. Yeah, I think I just really want to understand just driving around the summer. I got on roads that I'm like, is this that like tipping point where you spend a little now to save a lot later? And I'd like to just understand how we as municipality have a game plan when it comes to those kind of investments that someone might say, well, why are you spending money on this road right now? It doesn't look that bad. And it's like, we're doing it because we don't want to go the other way and end up having to dig it up and start from scratch. Where are we on costs on the Main Street project?  Sorry, is that better? Okay. He said their head of schedule, which is something that we've all kind of recognized are costs kind of on track with what they were budgeted for. We could maybe save a little bit on the whole project? Well, it's too early to say that. Okay. So the town has been, the way that I've worked it with my staff just for ease of lots of bookkeeping machinations is the, so every month or so, it's supposed to be every month, the state sends us a bill and they basically say McDonald did this much work and it cost this much, this is what they were paid and your share is 2% and it equals X. The town has paid that X to the state and we're keeping track of all that and then within the next couple of weeks before the end of the year, we've already figured out what the water and sewer need to pay in terms of the plans and specifications. So what we've done is identify, there are certain elements that you can point to and say that's a sewer expense. If there's a manhole being put in at the corner of Elman Main Street and that manhole structure itself is $12,000 and then the installation of that manhole is another $5,000, well that's a $17,000 expense that's all the sewer and the 2% share of that $17,000 will be paid for by the sewer. So what we've done is identified all of the direct costs for sewer, water, and highway and then the costs that are shared costs. So when we got the bid tabs from the state, they said, and again, I'm just making numbers up now, $21 million and it's $18,000, $18 million highway and it's $2 million water and it's $1 million sewer. Well I looked at that and I said, well that's great that they've put their bid tabs that way but that's not right, it's not fair because all they did was add up the price per linear foot of the water main and the sewer main and then the structures and the valves and that was their cost. I said they haven't attributed any of the excavation to water and sewer. So I worked with Alec and Bill Woodworth and said, we've gotta determine how much of this, what the state has allocated to highway really should be paid for by water and sewer because they can't put their water and sewer mains in without excavating the road and frankly they're gonna excavate deeper than we would have had to if they weren't there. So we've worked all that out. So at the end of this year, the water and sewer will reimburse the town. Now I don't know, I didn't bring a budget with me. I can go in Italian 10 minutes if you wanna know or on the 16th, I can give you the full information. It's fine, it's okay, it's fine. I appreciate that. That's very helpful. I appreciate the fact that you said that. Yeah, I mean clearly I understood what they did from a good tab point of view but they were just assuming that while the excavation is gonna be done anyway so that's how we'll split it up. We didn't accept that. Anyway, so is there a general consensus that you'd like to try to keep a flat tax rate if possible? And I don't know if that's gonna be possible. To Mark's point, that's always our first and foremost goal obviously. Is it realistic? Probably not. We'll see. You could present this with options. I think based on the fire trucks in the Roadside Moor that we've kinda... Well, the Roadside Moor... Well, we haven't committed to the second truck yet. But there's... The Roadside Moor is a new item and there'll be some small impact for that.  Well, I'm just suggesting that it's pushed us closer to a point of from there up is... Starts to create an increase. We had other debt services that came off. The timing on these payments changed and will depend on what fiscal year they'll hit and then turning that into another type of loan. All make it very low impact on the potential. Yeah, and we were going to have that impact anyway because the fire trucks have been on the plan. They were scheduled to be replaced in 2020 and we had to do it a few months earlier but in the grand scheme of things their impact is gonna be no different than it was if we bought them in 2020 except we bought the trucks for probably less than we would have been able to buy them had we... If they hadn't broken down we would have been paying $535,000 for them next year as opposed to 465 or whatever, 461. Okay. I just saw the new truck on the interstate on the fire. Oh, yeah. Is there any other items? Let's take a motion to adjourn then. So moved. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Thanks, and just put it on the website with the other policies. I think it should be read out.


Hi, I'm Dr. Mayfield and you're watching James Madison University Computer Science 101. Our topic for this week is artificial intelligence. Now my goal for the video today is to give you the background information you need to understand section 11.3 of our textbook. We'll talk a little bit about graphs and trees and how algorithms will search through these data structures to find useful information that we can use in AI programs. We'll also talk about heuristics and algorithms and the relationship between these two concepts. Let's get started. One of the most common data structures in computer science is called a graph. Now this is not to be confused with an XY plot or a bar graph like you've learned to draw in different math classes. This is a discrete data structure that allows you to model relationships between different items. In this chapter we're going to talk about the relationship of one state to the next state in a production machine. But let's take a step back here and talk about other uses of graphs so you can understand them at a conceptual level. Let's say you're trying to book a flight and you're trying to get from, I don't know, Washington D.C. to San Francisco. So I'm going to draw some of the airports between here and there. We've got D.C.A. is Washington D.C. Perhaps you can fly through Chicago, which is O.R.D. or Indianapolis, Denver, Salt Lake City, and finally San Francisco. And we know, for example, there are flights between these different airports. So I can go ahead and draw lines between them. There's also a direct flight from San Francisco to Washington D.C. And maybe there's other flights as well, like San Francisco to Denver and so forth. This is called a graph. What we have here at each one of these airports is called a node. Now a node is basically an element in your data set, sorry, in your data structure. So in section 9.3, the nodes are all different states of a production system. And we also have between pairs of nodes and edge. So that's basically what a graph is in terms of a data structure. It's a collection of nodes and edges. Often with graphs, one of the problems to solve is how do I find a path from one node to another node? Now a path basically means a sequence of edges. So for example, there's a path from Washington D.C. directly to San Francisco. There's another path that goes from Indianapolis to Chicago to Denver to Salt Lake to San Francisco. Or you could go from D.C. to Chicago to Salt Lake to San Francisco and so forth. Basically in this particular problem, when you're booking flights or trying to find driving directions, you want to find the path with the shortest length. And it's the same thing when making AI for video games or other puzzle games. You want to find the path that takes you to the goal as quickly as possible. The previous example with the airports is called an undirected graph because there's basically, across D.C. edge, you can go either way. But there's also a version of graphs called directed graphs. So let me draw several people here. I've got Alex, Brian, Fred, Dana, and Casey. Now these are all people in this example of a directed graph. And maybe what we want to model is who is following who on Twitter, for example. So perhaps I have Alex following Brian and Brian is following Dana and Fred. Casey is following Alex and Brian is following Casey and so forth. Now you'll notice the difference between the undirected graph and the directed graph is that I have arrow heads on the directed graph to show the direction of the edge. And the path in a directed graph has to follow the direction of those arrows. So for example, if I want to know the path from Alex to Fred, well, the only way to do that is through Brian and then to Fred. If I want to find the path from Fred to Alex, you'll notice there is no such path because there's no edge coming out of Fred that takes me back to Alex. If I were to add an edge like this and have this direction, then there would be a path through Casey to get to Alex. So again the difference between an undirected graph and a directed graph is merely the presence of these arrow heads. Now notice with both this directed graph and the previous example with the undirected graph is there are multiple paths to get from one place to another. For example, I could have gone this direct route or this indirect route through other vertices. Same thing in this example. I can go from Fred to Casey to Alex to Brian all the way back to Fred. That's called a loop. Now loops make graphs complicated in terms of designing algorithms because if you're trying to take a walk through this graph you have to keep track of where you've been in case you come back there again. There's a special version of graphs called trees and if a graph does not have any loops, we will call that a tree instead. So here's an example of a tree. You might think of this as a single elimination tournament say in basketball or something like that. And notice how in this example I'm writing the names of the nodes outside of the circles. That's perfectly fine. This is all at a conceptual level as long as you have vertices and nodes labeled appropriately. So for example, maybe we have a game between JMU and William & Mary and JMU wins and maybe between Virginia Tech and JMU and Virginia Tech wins and then for the championship, JMU beats Tech again and we have our tree. So trees are very common in athletic tournaments, family trees, anything to do with pedigrees or hierarchy and it's just a nicer data structure than a graph because of this requirement that there is only one path from any node to any other node. And typically the entire set of nodes is connected into one structure. So I know if I'm at this node right here, there is one path to get to any other node in the tree. There's no like two options that I have to consider like I would in the directed graph or undirected graph. So the reason why it's so important to understand data structures like graphs and trees is so that you can solve problems in artificial intelligence. We use these data structures to model the problem space or in other words, every situation you might find yourself when making some decisions about solving a problem or beating a game. Let's take a look at the problem space for the game of Tic Tac Toe. I assume all of you have played this game before and if not, well, you'll have to come to Office Hours and I'll show you how it works. So in yesterday's class, we talked a little bit about production systems which is a part of artificial intelligence that helps control the solution to a problem using a set of states and a set of productions. Let's look at a production system for the game of Tic Tac Toe and I'm going to use a tree data structure to show the problem space of this particular game. So when the game begins, we basically have a grid, this 3 by 3 and if Player X goes first, they can end up playing an X here or they can play an X here or they can play an X here and so forth. Now you can imagine if this were a tree data structure each node of the tree would be a state of the problem and each edge of the tree would be a production. This production right here is put X in slot number 1 let's say if I were to number these slots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and each one of these edges corresponds to an action or a production of playing the game. Now furthermore I would have descendants of each one of these nodes for example a proper state after this state here would be X and then the player O could play there or the player O could play here or the player O could play say in the middle and so forth. There's going to be at this level of the tree there's only 8 spots remaining where the O can play their next turn. So the nice thing about the tree is it helps encode possible states of the game you'll never go from this state with an X to some other state with lots of X's and O's you can only produce one more move of the game through this edge of the tree. Now you can imagine me building a tree data structure for the entire game of Tic Tac Toe that represents every possibility of the X's and O's in this game and then it's just a matter of trying to decide which branch should I take that's more likely to lead me to a solution. So speaking of trees I have here the textbook that we use in CS 227 and 228 by Kenneth Rosen it's a discrete math textbook and in Chapter 11 it even has this very Tic Tac Toe example. So here's how you would like to use this data structure in deciding how to play the game. If I look at the bottom of the tree that's what these dot dot dots mean right here I might be in this particular state of the game. Now if X plays in this corner that means there's two possibilities for O to play in. O can either play in this remaining space or this remaining space and you'll see that if O plays there X is going to win if O plays in the other place it will be a draw. Now on this other path of the tree if I decide to play somewhere else O is going to win in either case. So the decision making progress of this production system if I'm in this state right here I know I want to apply this production because that's the only path that will lead to a possible win. If I apply these other two productions then I'm going to lose for sure. And that's basically the idea is if I can somehow build up this tree I can start at the bottom to see how I'm going to win and trace my way back up through the system looking for the decisions I need to make at each branch of the game. Incidentally this is typically done with the stack data structure. If I start at the bottom and know okay I need to play X in that position I push that production onto a stack and then I push the next production onto the stack until I reach the very top of the tree where nothing happened. And as we talked about a couple weeks ago stacks are really useful for reversing a set of instructions. So if I want to play the game I just have to pop those decisions off the stack in the order that I need to play. So tic-tac-toe is a little bit easier than the atile game because every time I make a move I can't go back. I'm moving forward towards the goal of that game or towards the loss of that game. In contrast look at the atile game from chapter 11 of our textbook I could make a dumb decision like this. I could decide let's take the 7 and slide it over that way. And then I could make an even dumber decision by saying oh if I'm in this state let's take the 7 and slide it back that way. This would be a loop. I could be stuck forever if I programmed the control of my production system wrong it could be looping between these two different states of the system rather than applying the rule take the 8 and slide it to the final position. So this would be winning the game this would be forever stuck never winning or losing the game well I guess that would be considered a loss in that case. So the reason why this problem is more complex is that this is now a graph. Remember graphs allow you to have these loops or cycles whereas a tree does not have any loops or cycles. So how do we make sure that we if we have a graph for our problem space of a problem how can we set that up so that we always have a tree so that we know that we're making progress to get towards some solution. So to keep things simpler I'm going to draw a graph that just have letters that alphabetically tell you A is the smallest, I is the greatest and I'm trying to work my way from A over to I if this is my abstract problem I'm solving. Now this is a graph data structure you can see there's multiple paths to get from A to I I can either go through B or not I always have to go through D but then I can decide to go through E or F before I get to G and either I go to I or I go all around the long way and you might imagine that each one of these different paths have a different length this graph is not drawn to scale so it might be more expensive to take one path versus another. Let me show you two different ways of working your way through this graph to convert it to a tree one of them is called breath first search or we can call this BFS for short breath first search basically means at each point in the graph you want to visit all of the next points so for example I'm going to visit from A I'm going to go to B and C but I'm never going to visit the same place twice so if I then go down to B I'm not going to draw an edge to C I've already been to C before there's already an edge between A and C and now from C I'm going to branch out to D from D I'll go to E and F and the way I build this data structure is in alphabetical order so from D I go to E and F the next thing I'm going to visit is E I'm going to go to G and I'm following all of these same edges that I had originally from G I'll go to H and I when I go to H there's already an edge I and so forth so this is an example of a tree generated by breath first search from this graph breath first search is exactly what we were doing to build this kind of tree in the tic-tac-toe game I start at some state and I look at every possible next state before moving on to the next level and building every possible next state it's actually very expensive to build up this tree one level at a time exhausting every possible state and every possible production to get from one to the next and typically what happens with real games that aren't these little tic-tac-toe games is it's absolutely impossible to build a data structure in any reasonable amount of computer memory that could represent the entire collection of every state and every production that I would need to control so I need to come up with a different solution than breath first search if I want to create a strategy for winning games so let's try that graph again this time using a technique called depth first search or DFS for short now depth first search is trying to get from A to I without exploring every possible state that this game can be in so for example if I start at A I might go down to B and then go to C and then go to D and then I need to decide between E and F so I'll pick the one with the least alphabetical value let's go to E and then G and then H and then I so notice how I didn't branch out to every possible neighbor as I was searching through this graph but eventually I found a path focusing on depth from A to I now this isn't necessarily going to be optimal for example I could have gotten to C just by going from A to C in the beginning rather than going through B and let's see I could have gone from G directly to I rather than going through H if I consider the edges in the original graph so it's not to say that depth first search is going to be optimal but let me write that down it's not necessarily optimal but what you do have is a way to turn this graph into a tree without exploring every possible branching of outcomes at every decision point or every node of the graph so now the question is how can I use depth first search in a way that gets rid of these situations I want to go directly from A to C and I want to go directly from G to I without going around the long way well that is where a heuristic comes into play let's take a look at figure 11.12 on page 481 of the textbook where we again have this 8 tile game now if I'm in this situation I've been playing the game for a while and I see the board looks like this there's a couple options I can do I can either move the 2 which would slide this over to there or I can move the 5 which would slide this over to there now I probably also have the move where I move the 6 up but maybe that's where I came from so I don't want to repeat the move that I just previously did I want to move forward in terms of my progress for the game so let's just say I have these 2 alternatives and I try to decide which one of these is more likely to lead to a solution I could use a heuristic which is basically an educated guess now the educated guess I'm going to make is I'm going to take a look at all of these tiles and decide how far away they are from the solution let's say if you are 1 space away you get 1 point and if you're 2 spaces away you get 2 points and whichever one of these solutions have fewer points I'm going to go ahead and pick that solution so looking over here 1 is in the correct position 3 needs to move over 1 to get to this position this 5 needs to move 1, 2 to get to that position so I'll underline that twice this 2 on the other hand needs to move 1, 2 to get up 4 is in the right position 7 and 8 are in the right position 6 needs to move just up 1 to get to the right position so the heuristic value here is 1, 2, 3 4, 5 2 needs to move up and over that should have been a 2 pointer I was just trying to figure out why the book said 6 and I got 5 but it looks like I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 total points for that one now let's analyze this one over here 1 is in the correct position 3 needs to move over just 1 space 2 needs to move up just 1 space 5 needs to move to the left 1 space 8 are correct 6 needs to move up 1 space so the heuristic value on the right here is 1, 2, 3, 4 right this is a score of 4 this is a score of 6 and if I want to minimize the number of moves to get to the end I'm going to make the decision to slide the 5 because that puts me in a better situation now just a word about heuristics themselves they basically have 2 desired properties 1 is that a heuristic should be designed to estimate the cost or benefit of applying some kind of production so in this particular example we just had the heuristic was estimating how many moves will be left if I make this production versus this production well this one is 4 so it's going to be least expensive or have a higher benefit than this one that gives you 6 the other requirement is that it should be easy to compute or efficient or fast to compute if you design a heuristic that takes a computer like 3 seconds to decide the answer it might be faster just to go ahead and build up the entire state tree using depth first search or breadth first search rather than this simple heuristic so the idea is that if there's a cheap computation that can be done such as just counting how many tiles a solution is off then that's going to be faster to get an educated guess building my way to the solution across this tree than building the entire graph using breadth first search so in a nutshell that's what heuristics are useful for I would definitely take a look at the algorithm this is figure 11.10 on page 480 and this is where we then use the heuristic to construct an algorithm to solve the game basically the idea is build up the tree but instead of using breadth first search I'm going to use depth first search and at each point rather than just saying I'm going to go to the least alphabetical number I'm going to decide which one of these paths has a better looking heuristic and I'm going to take that path to get all my way to the goal of the problem I'm solving and so now if I combine a heuristic to actually write code that solves this problem using some sort of intelligence and that's basically the way we make decisions on a daily basis well sort of I guess I should end by saying that this is only the beginning of what you'll learn about in an artificial intelligence class how to design an agent that makes intelligent decisions not only based on heuristics but how can it actually learn how to do better sorts of educated guesses than these basic mathematical tricks that we've looked at today but anyway that's a taste of what we'll be doing this week and also you might be thinking about what kind of heuristics are you going to use to guide your finch robot through the obstacle course on Friday's lab so I hope you've had fun watching this little video and we'll see you in class tomorrow


Remember Breaking Bad when they teamed up with the pest control company? Yes. That was f***ing genius by the way. It was. So when he went into those houses did you see how he set up containment in the house? Yeah. That was him actually being conscientious because that cook would have f***ed that house. By him containing it the way he did, it's only in that area. You deal with... Decontaminating all the walls. Got it. Everything. Because the fumes. And those, that can't be that hard to get caught if you're doing that. To get caught? Yeah, because like the fumes are going everywhere.