And first on the agenda is to approve the agenda. I think being that we have some individuals here that may or may not, is it agenda related or not agenda related, do you think? Not. The majority is not. I don't know about Josh. So it looks like we're waiting for some of the appointments anyways. So why don't we just, everybody's good with it. We'll just move the public comment to the first order of business. Move to approve as amended. Second. Any other favor? Aye. All right. So we'll open it up for public comment. So I guess we're all here. Could you just say your name just in case the sector doesn't know you? Thank you. Thank you very much. Both of us are from Crystal now. And there's some heavy heroin and crack being sold up there. No. Can't hear you, please. Are we waiting? No. So they're selling heroin and crack up on Christian Hill. They're parked on the side of the roads using needles, smoking it. By the time you call the state police, it's half hour, 45 minutes. So wait, Royalton won't respond. Oscar is short on time down in Royalton. So he has no time for us in Bethel. Oh yeah, Jordan, yeah. That's fine. And she right here took you guys.  And we're left, you know, taking care of it ourselves. And at this point, they're parking on my property. They're using on my property and I'm chasing them off my property because there's nobody to call. So with kids and no other choice, I'm chasing people down Christian Hill at 60 miles an hour, trying to catch up with them because what else is there to do? Just let them sit on my lawn and shoot heroin and take what they need. I don't know. But I've sat with Oscar, I've sat with the state police. We have the case on file and their hands are tied with what they're able to do and what we're willing to provide them to do it. So you said that one of your suggestions or that we had talked about was, one of your ideas you wanna present to the select board was hiring a full-time police officer and that you had, I had told you that now is a good time to bring that up because of budget discussion. So yeah, one or two or somebody around full-time, some part-time help, whether it be the sheriff's department or Royalton, but Royalton's under staff. So I don't see how you could hire them to help when Oscar can't. Oscar's offered to be full-time in Bethel. Yep, he has mentioned it. That he'd be willing to do that if he wanted to. Sounds like less than what the sheriff was asking for. But it seems like we gotta do something. They're cutting off catalytic converters right in town. There's people poaching up and down the hills, riding around with guns out of the windows, shooting animals and then leaving them there. And the skate park was vandalized on Thursday night, Wednesday or Thursday night. Broke into the town garage and stole a truck. The crime seems to be excelling. The speed the car was still bought. The speed of people. So the speed thing from months ago has been picked up that it's the drug addicts going up and visiting. I've been down to the house and gone in and watched a lady putting needles in her purse, trying to hide them as I confronted all of them with what's going on and the rate of speed they're traveling. But now they're parking on our lawns and... I've almost been driven off the road many times. I think we can all attest to that. I've been passed on the bridge that goes over the interstate with a 20-foot trailer behind my truck right there. And then watch the red RAV4 pull directly into the driveway or orange, sorry. I'm slightly colorblind. Ultimately, we just feel we need more policing in the town of Bethel. We need it to be under control because it's getting out of control. We did have a speeding issue too during the road construction of Christian Hill. There was a lot of speeding and so we moved sign up there and stuff. But no, no, I don't think it has, it's everywhere. It's camp road, it's everywhere. But so you would like to see at least one, if not two full-time officer or full-time and a part-time so that we can provide... We don't have a part-time, it's somebody around, somebody that can respond. Ultimately, it's a, we're here for Christian Hill. Christian Hill is not the only problem. Like you said, they speed on camp road, they speed on Gilead. This is just a, it's a low-class situation of a larger problem that we have in town. And ultimately, a police force that can respond, they can be there in a timely manner is. Well, we had, Chris and I had a conversation with the Windsor County Sheriff before, right after he was elected, before he'd made actually taken over, taken over. And we were kind of waiting to see what he was gonna do, how much staffing he was gonna have, what he was gonna have for, how many officers he was gonna put through the academy, that sort of thing to kind of see. Cause then once after the election, Windsor County was okay, but you guys probably saw that Orange County, that Sheriff left and then all this people left. So we were trying to wait to kind of see there was rumor Windsor County might take over parts of Orange. And so we certainly been kind of keeping, you know, an eye on it. And, but it's absolutely something I'm happy to look into for budget season and to see what's, you know, what's available. What would the cost be? That sort of thing. And presented to the select board when we do budgets. I think our first budget discussion meeting will be December 13th. So I'm happy to. A little bit, is there under the influence maybe if we did that everywhere? Absolutely. So is it gonna take one of our kids being killed? Right. Yeah. It's a legitimate concern.  That's an issue for some people while driving.  I'm sure all residents of Christian Hill agree that speeding and issues are a problem up there. So, and like you said, it's not just there. I had someone in here today talking to me about Dark Hill, just saying how it's crazy, especially with the whole Camp Brook Road, people doing the detour. He said, boy, if it was summertime, I'd be out there with my checkered flag because they're flying in and then they realize the crest of the hill and there's a car coming. So it's everywhere. And it's not a new problem. I went to high school here. I've driven fast on the roads, I'll be perfectly honest. But it is something that maybe I just realize it more as I get older that seems to be getting a little bit more out of control. Well, it's a different kind. And it's a different kind. What we're experiencing anyway up there is a different kind than just speeding cars going by. It's different when it's a bunch of kids going into a parking lot and learning how to drive in the snow. Yeah, so. But like, I don't want my kids to walk on Christian Hill at all because I can't. I don't like to walk on Christian Hill. We've stopped. It's not safe anymore. The kids don't ride bikes. Everyone's, I won't let them ride to town. Can you put that tube on? Yes. I think the cars were trying to go even faster to watch it go faster. That's obviously true. Just sit right in our door. We actually heard that. Someone said that on Church Street too. So we finally said it so that over a certain speed it won't recognize the number so that people would stop doing that. But I raised my kids on the dirt road in a different county. And but it was the same thing, you know, there's high speed traffic and they didn't ride their bikes. We had to put their bikes in the car and take them to the school for heaven's sake. So it's, you're right. It's not a, you know, it's not a new problem but it's gotten worse. But I mean, I'm happy to look into it for the select board if they want. And I think some of the challenges that we started to dabble in in this last budget season. And I think the challenges that we have in town is as we started looking into it last year is there's a piece of the town that doesn't want to see a full-time police force but does want a presence, right? So, and then there's a piece of town that would like to see more police presence but maybe not want to pay for police presence as we, so we started looking at this last budget season was, you know, we were always used to, if you go back like, you know, a half a dozen years ago we had about a $20,000 budget for a part-time constable, right? And in those years, we used to share a constable with other towns. So it was not only beneficial but cost-effective for our town to share with Rochester and Hancock most of the time. But that was kind of a perfect world. It worked really well, but you know, it just had the right person. But now we don't have that ability to share resources. The cost, well, everybody's short on certified officers. And again, that's the next layer of the cake is it used to be almost anybody could be a constable, you know? And now, but now you have to not only go to a letter of accreditation, but now you're basically to the officer grade of schooling and the responsibilities of that the municipality takes under is a lot more now. So like we were talking about the kind of the joke at the board used to be, you know, people in town wanted to see 20 hours worth of work being done in the community, right?  So what we started talking about as a board was, you know, how could we still get that 20 hours but make it more of a realistic 20 hours? So we, you know, we moved the budget up to 70,000, I think is what we have it at. We also looked at some other options which was the Sheriff's Department. We met with the Sheriff's Department to go over what, you know, there was a new sheriff that was elected. What might that look like if we were to either maybe somehow split a sheriff with another community which that wasn't an option. That was something that we asked for but it wasn't an option at that time or a full-time officer which at that time we were, you know, told that that would be in a $125,000 a year type area. So we- And that wasn't buying us full-time coverage. And that wasn't even necessarily finding a person. Like that's like budget you have it in there but these departments are so short, like they're still trying to staff themselves before they wanna have somebody be in Bethel or, you know, just like Royalton, we've talked to Royalton about the possibility of them helping out but they've been consistently short on one of their three officers that they like to have on board. So let's just assume that we were able to take care of the having somebody in the town, right? Then the next level that we have is what can that individual do? So like in your case, so I think if we did have, again, my opinion, if we did have somebody more full-time in the town, I think that you have the ability to go after the speed and maybe some of the non-recreational type habits that people have, maybe like, you know, graffiti and things like that, you can police that better but the challenge you still have is when it comes into like the issue that you guys have up in Christian Hill and it's starting to spread everywhere in Vermont is when you get into the drugs and private property and things like that, you know, the ability to control that is kind of out of our control. Yeah. And it doesn't give you full time. Like, nobody's on 24-7. So when we get into like the drug-related issues, it's way bigger than us. It's, you know, no, and trust me, I'd like to go bang down doors and kick everybody out of town for that but the challenge we have, like not just in Buffalo but the challenge we have in Vermont is the judicial system has put us in such a position that one, the officers can't go and do that but even if they did, they were gonna be back out on the street tomorrow in, you know, it's just a vicious circle that we have right now and you're starting to see that come into all the communities of you're seeing more homelessness if you go anywhere up by the Burlington area is a show. I mean, you would think that it was Halloween up there every day.  I mean, if you ever went to church street back in the old days, church street was this nice little boutiques and people outside eating and shopping and now it's just people doing drugs and alcohol right in broad daylight, no police presence, you know, people don't even go shop on that street anymore and that's the way it's getting and it's starting to leech into all this. Burlington is open to the safe space. That's right. So what I'm saying is- So I think I heard something about that, yeah. So the layers that we have, the challenges we have here in Buffalo is one, I think the challenges put budget aside is finding a person, because everybody is competing for the same people. Well, it's not the reason that the Oscars offered us to come over. He mentioned that, but as I said to them, Oscars two, you'd still have to put it out and see for an applicants and see who else. You got an A also has a, it'd be hard for him to leave probably Loretta while she was shorthanded, but it's still something we can look at. We can also talk to the Windsor County Sheriff and see what his situation is as far as doing contract work and how many more hours we could get. But it's just gonna take us a little time to look into it to see who has what available. But certainly you're right. There's safe space in Burlington, with opening up different places for people to safely use drugs, also addressing homeless and maybe even you see more health workers and working in Burlington and different things to try and do it. I mean, I think that all the, obviously all of people can get in our can for free, also all the ambulances have in our can. We don't have policing and why are our fire department having to save these people? I'm not sure that our fire department actually has an our cans. They do. I didn't know I'd have to ask Ron. I didn't, huh? I was not aware that they had an our can. Okay, so you know. Oh yeah, I didn't know that. I didn't know that they did. But I mean residents, any person I could carry in our can, you could carry, we all could carry in our can. I know in some places they give it away, but so it's certainly a conversation we're not going to solve tonight, but we could look into. To Chris's point of view, I understand we're limited by what they can do. It's not a full time. Just lock them up. They're going to continue to do it until a large investigation, something happens. They're going to put them in for a night, they're going to let them out. But maybe this is naive with me to think because I'm old school, but if you're constantly singled out and repeatedly cocked up, locked up for a night back in, eventually you're going to become a pariah in the town. And it's going to be known not just to those living on the hill and experience on a daily basis, but the entire town as a whole is going to understand more of what they're driving around, not necessarily by their house. So even if it is just here and there, but constantly having that single arrest there out the next day or repeating that action is going to educate people in a way that even us being here tonight may not because there's not the turnout. So just we understand that it's not snap of the finger if problems solve, but opening the eyes, getting it out there, having somebody that can do that stuff to put it out there people. I mean, I'm not about driving people away, but if that's the type of stuff you're doing, I'm totally about making you a pariah, singling you out and go, we don't need it. And I'm about to kill. It's not fair. It's tough. They can't do anything. So that's a way to go. Two things. One, just an FYI to have 24 hour coverage takes four people, four employees, just an FYI. So if we were to have a force or a police department that provided 24 hour coverage, we're talking about at least four, right? So when we start thinking of dollars to ask the town, that's something to keep in mind. About speeding. I know that there are stoplight cameras. Probably, yeah. Sure, in bigger places. Yeah, absolutely. We have speed signs. And it seems to me that electronically it's not hard to say if you are speeding or going over x speed. And we've got a camera on that puppy. It can take your picture. Now we've got the license number and that doesn't require a police officer to file the speeding. Just for them to issue the ticket, I guess. I don't know, I've never seen it in small. So yeah, I don't know. I know we have the right. Well, we can find out. I don't know. But I think it's, I'm suggesting that that's something that could be looked into. Mm-hmm. Sure, well, out of town. I mean, like, even if you put it here in town once we already have that out. I mean, I'll be honest. I don't always do 25. I'm not a perfect little saint here. But first time I get a speeding ticket it came from that that's attached to a post. You're not gonna speed pass anymore. What do you do when you're by it? You're by it. The thing with a police officer and having representation is that you don't know where they're gonna be and you don't know when they're gonna be there. So that is something that those electronics will not offer to us that, yeah, you may put it up there for a little while, but how many of them do you need for throughout the town? You know, if you have a 40 hour police department, we're not 24 hour, it's not every day, but sometimes they work Saturdays and have Tuesdays off or you don't know when they're gonna be where they're gonna be, random sketch of it is, you can't plan on it. I appreciate that. And that's, I just think it's, it's something that we might want to look into as a stop gap. Have something that goes around town because we have several of these spaces that we know about. So. Well, it takes a rear license plate because I have a Vermont strong on the front. So if it's only gonna get my front, it's not gonna get me. That's a good point. We can look into it. We could look into it. Yeah. The other thing too is to, you would have to look into is that Bethel's always had constables. So, I, you know, I don't know what it would take to actually form a police department if we had to do something special or have a vote or I don't know, but something to look into. So even like you said, you know, a formative police department is gonna be quite extensive and expensive and you're probably not gonna have a lot of support from the town for it. But even a, having a constable more, I did, I did a constable, a deputy constable, somebody that is, there was, I don't know, a couple of years ago, I used to see Oscar sitting here by the town hall and you would, and I have not seen the constable car that we purchased. When he first started, he was, he was working part-time somewhere else in part-time here. And then once he took a full-time job, which made sense. He'd like the rest of us needed benefits in the full-time, you know, Jack. So, but yeah, so it's certainly something to look at. And that's the problem has is we have part-time constables. So, and we only get their hours when they're available. And what happens is both of them work for other identities that never give them any free time. So like Oscar's always busy in Royalton and Justin's always busy with the Sheriff's Department in Rutland because they can't find enough people. We have put it out to try and find other individuals that want to be constables. And we have not had any other takers. And then- You have to go through the part-time academy at, you have to go through the part-time police academy. So I think what we did last year is we, we've kind of increased our budget about as high as you can go for a part-time person to try to attract somebody to come in. And because the next thing was we weren't paying enough. So we, basically in our last budget last year is we kept the 20 hours a week, but we increased the pay so that we could attract somebody, you know, $30 an hour type deal to come in and do some work. But we haven't seen this year any extra time. We have, we haven't budgeted it's there, but we're not using it because nobody will come and do the work. So I think that at this point, the next, the next piece, at least the way I see it, the next piece is either to go to the sheriffs and get a full-time person to come in and do the sheriff's department piece or to do the police department ourselves. Now, you get into the whole police department yourselves. It just comes with a whole, you know, it's like Jean was saying, it's not just, you know, multiple individuals, but it just comes with the whole liability of the town that has to take on for everything, you know. A building and cruisers. Yeah, I mean, there's insurance and requirements and there's all kinds of stuff that comes with it, but. And offer the sheriff's office, then they come over. I mean, sometimes what we do, well, we're getting ready to kick off the budget season. So we'll start like we always do. We'll start playing around with the numbers of the budget. We start kicking around other ideas of like just last year we talked about the same exact thing, you know, and we did increase that. So there's the opportunity of maybe looking at increasing it again to make some sort of deal with the sheriff's department or something, or if we, just to give you your options, if let's say the select board agreed not to go with a full-time individual, you still as taxpayers of the town, you have the ability to petition to put something on the budget. So I'm just making this up. So let's say we decided not to do anything different than we're always doing. And I don't know for. They could petition vote, they could also stand up a town meeting and add money to the budget. For 20 signatures, you could get signatures and get something added to the budget. So let's say you just wanted a full-time deputy from Windsor County at $125,000 a year, you could get that added to the. They could also just stand up at town meeting when we talk about the general fund budget. They could say they, they could make an amendment to the budget and put, but we can certainly keep in the loop. But like I said, we're going to have the first budget meeting on December 13th and we have them, you know, I think we meet the 13th and, no, excuse me, the 18th and the following Monday right in a row, right? Because of Christmas. So we actually meet back to back. And so we. So 125 for one sheriff from Windsor County? Yeah. And it wasn't even full-time. It wasn't guaranteed the same person, but it was going to give us X amount of hours. That would give you one person each, well, each day. So it doesn't, it's not 24-hour service. It would give you one person in town each day. I thought the truth is that Oscar has volunteered to run the show for a hundred. Yeah. Oh, a hundred. I didn't know what his number was. I just knew he had one in mind. But yeah. But yeah.  Yeah. Let's also talk to the sheriff. Whatever budget it takes to put a cop on our troops. Yeah. You would just have to. It's only half a million dollars all about guests to it. And you just need to come to the meetings and be sure you're there at town meetings. But we can keep you in the loop or read the minutes, attend the select board meetings as we go through budget season. And you know, we have an agenda. We meet every other Monday, but we'll meet back to back in December and just follow that. We post them on front porch forum when we're going to meet, call the town office, email me, email Kelly, email anybody. And you could keep an eye on where the, you know, when we're talking about budgets and come in and see where we're at. We'll have more information then. Certainly I'm going to be away for a week and but I can reach out to some people when I get back and see what we got for numbers and to awesome in the budget. A lot of times we start with a bigger budget and then kind of look at it under a microscope. But so it's certainly a bigger number. We can toss in there and see where we end up. Additional. Yeah. That's what I was going to say, sir. Yeah. Or the runs for us. Oh, boy, hang around for a bit. Hang around. Some of them are pretty good. Yeah. You know what? It's some, this, it changed because before you just stood up at town meeting and you got it pointed from the floor but they changed it last year. So now you have to get a petition with signatures and have a consent of candidate. But if you talk to Pam, she could tell you, I can't remember the exact number of signatures that you need, but then you just come in and you can run for whatever term is open, whether generally we have a two year and a three year term available and talk to Pam. She'll tell you what the petition needs to look like and then you fill out a consent of candidate which tells you how you want your name on the ballot and then use front porch forum base, whatever to get people to let them know you're running. Two people are running. Jean's term is up, whether he's running or not and Lindley's seat is up. She's as a two year. So there's a two year and a three year seat that people can run for this year. Just a quick thing on the bigger drug scope of things. I mean, I think we can all acknowledge we're not gonna solve this problem here or even really ever in this room. But I think what you all are doing is exactly what needs to happen, which is being vocal, bringing these things up, not just to us, but asking, pooling the resources. I think if we're existing with this problem here in Bethel, it's not unique to Bethel. It's happening all over Vermont and all of what Chris outlined. Like I've heard this same thing. I believe that it is our reality right now. And I also believe that in Vermont of anywhere, we have the ability as citizens to make change happen. And the way that we make that happen is by showing up doing exactly what you're doing tonight. And so I think that the solutions aren't here in this room and frankly, unfortunately, they're not even really in our state yet, but the way they're gonna get here and the way that we're gonna create them is by doing this.  But it is also like stick with this, don't give up on this because this is how change is gonna happen. I, through this whole conversation, all I could think is I wonder what else is already happening? What conversations are prompting creative thinking in other towns similar to Bethel that we could resource, that we could pull in? And the reality is we have a small town office, we're essentially volunteers on the board and Teresa's maxed out and goes above and beyond, beyond what she should do. And so the more we have that community pooling of resources and hey, I looked into some things and I found this passing that on to Teresa, passing that onto the board, that gives us a leg up to say, okay, that was something creative, we didn't know existed, let's give that a try. So by all means keep helping us, keep having these conversations, keep kind of putting those feelers out beyond just here and then bring what you learn back to here because this is the only way we're gonna solve it is if we keep working together on it, right? So. Can I invite you to our community dinner? Friday night at the middle school, it's about getting people involved in the community, learning about town meeting and all that we do, all that is done, it's gonna be a dinner at 5.30 and a discussion and at six presentation and it's a wonderful invitation to everybody to come and know how to get involved. Yeah. And the other thing too is, we have two legislators that live in this town. So I mean, one on Christian, one on Christian.  You know, again, like Linley was saying, I don't wanna say our hands are completely, you know, tough to this point, but there are some things that we can do on the towns and the things and, but there are some things that we can't really do. And I think some of those things that we can't or that are very hard for the town to do might be better poll if you talk to some legislators about some of the policies that they've created at the Montpere level because that are hampering small town policing. So, yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right, well thank you for coming out and definitely we do take this seriously and it's a very challenging topic for us to we've been working on this for a couple of years and it's not an easy topic to fix. Yeah, that's good. I mean, and if people are in support of it, you know, we're happy, you know, the select board can put forward any size budget. It's just a matter of whether or not there's people there in the audience to support it. And also to seeing what else, you know, there's other needs out there. As far as, you know, I've seen the food shelf has an uptick and there's a lot going on in the community right now. A lot of people needing help and things. I mean, we have, currently we just have, you know, Wi-Fi. I've used cameras in another town, but not really in a policing thing, just we had a big green and on the green that was somebody busted out the gazebo for some reason. So we did put cameras up like just, but just on that because there had been an increase in people finding needles there as well as someone that just vandalized the heck out of the thing. And so we did put a camera there, but they also had a police department. So they kind of monitored it. Yeah. But it's who's going to monitor it. That's the key. There's kind of cart versus car before the horse. Yeah. I work at the Vermont Veteran Center in the remote center. And we have in the past had a lot of issues with people coming in and doing various things that they should not be. One of the options that we looked at was to get a ring camera. Now, every single one of the shops in this town have access to the free internet. Why not offer the people who own these shops some kind of a rebate or something if they get a ring camera, they'll be able to catch anything that goes down that strip. The other thing is just to get game cameras or satellite cameras, it's much cuter than a security camera. We have used game cameras in places where we have vandalism, where people have dump in trash, that sort of thing. But it's something to look at. But again, for me personally, I can say, that's great, we could have all the cameras in the world, but who's going to look at them? You know, I don't want to meet them. Yeah, nobody would have to look at them. Oh, they're ranked camera rebate. I get why. You're putting the responsibility of viewing it on a shop owner. Yeah. Well, there is a process we're going through currently about the downtown. So that's something that I'll definitely make a note of and keep in mind because we have been talking about, we had a big Bethel for all grand and there was some stuff in there. So, but I'll make a note about ring cameras because we did talk a little bit about what we, some aspects of what you could do for business owners about making businesses more accessible and things like that. And that might be an issue too. So that if somebody had an incident on Main Street or needed medical assistance or something, there might be something on the camera that could help somebody too. So, okay. Is somebody who's an injured? Yeah. All I gotta do is go up and hit that button and the shop owner gets a text message immediately. Well, that's nice. That's a good thing to know because if someone was having an event, a health event on Main Street, you certainly want to help as many people as possible. Shop owner can call 911 or if something happens on Main Street and there's an allegation, they go, oh, hey, look, there's a camera. They can go to that business owner and then that police department, say police can access and it takes the whole responsibility off the town and puts it on to the business owner if they're interested in doing that. Well, like I said. There was a shop owner that had a camera during the water project. So if I wanted to drive down Main Street and then it was all torn out, and then we've asked that shop owner a couple of times because people that park in front of the laundromat oftentimes get their whole driver's side swipe because it's so narrow in there and people just keep going, you know? And, but they called that shop owner and they no longer have that camera up. They just did it during, for convenience, for residents at the time, but they don't have it up anymore. But that would- I don't know if that shop owner is willing to do that very easily. I don't- At the time, the town actually sponsored that. We received a USDA grant of about $7,500 to do advertisement for business and we put up and we had a couple of, we had one here. So people could see if traffic was backed up and it was actually quite funny. People were actually watching his camera up. A lady from Florida called to pay money to keep it going for a year because she found it so entertaining. So- She must have been under the whole thing. Like- So, but I will write it down. I think it's a good idea. And we'll talk about, but like I said, there's some development issue with a grant going on Main Street. I'm certainly happy to talk that into it to see if there's the ability to do that. So, that's a good idea. Thank you. Suggest promoting your concern more broadly. One of the best ways is to literally run for office on the select board and then, you know, do the campaigning that is necessary to let people know who you are and what your concern is. The other thing is you can write letters to the editor. You can do those, write, put postings on front page form. Those are kinds of things that you can do to make, to bring the rest of the community up to speed on what you're experiencing because they may not be experiencing it in their neighborhood or you may find out, oh my goodness, somebody else just wrote in and they're experiencing it in their neighborhood. So it would be, the more publicity there is, the better for everybody. Yeah, thank you so much for coming. Yep. Thank you. We appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for your time. Yeah. Yeah, see you later. Thanks. This guy's got a lot of trouble right now. I don't know what he's talking about. I don't know if he's going to be able to speak. Yeah, we go with the corporate part of the $500. And my name is... You make a call? Make a call? I assume that's going to deal with it. Well, that's why I wondered. What do you want to do with your phone? Do you have my call right now? No, I don't mind. But we all just... Okay, so you want to get a call? I'm just asking you to take something. No, I'm going to get a call. I haven't called the parents. I mean, if you want, please hear now. So I'm going to get a call. So are you sure? Mm-hmm. But it's not, you know, on the time. But I like to take your bicycles. Did we have anybody else with public comment while we had that going? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Because I didn't comment last time. Just make sure you state your name. Just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Josh Wardell. I live up on Campbell Road. And I actually joined the Zoom. A couple of weeks ago. And so the main reason I really joined was to kind of sit and listen to see how things work here. But I applied to join the energy committee. So today I'm on the agenda.  But my wife's actually on the agenda as well for the planning committee. And what it comes down to is we've been here for two years, although I've worked in Boston, I just moved up here. Or lived here, but I've been working in Boston. I just got a job up here. And we wanted to get more involved now, especially that I'm here more full time. And so. I think that's my way to get involved with the energy committee. That's more my background, but also to start kind of attending the meetings or at least listening in, see how things go. It's actually great to hear things like this. If anything, there are concerns have more been with, with.  That was before the flooding. And then after the flooding, it seemed like nothing happened forever. So there wasn't really much communication. And so I had no comment last time because I really was. One of the note was going on and then you guys discussed everything and I listened live as we heard that. Can't work road was going to get closed for four weeks. And you heard, I was on mute, but you couldn't hear a screaming in the background. And so here we are now with, with the road closed and it's, it's really not done right. You know, there's no detour signage. The, the VMS signs are now dead and off already. There's no marks on Google maps or ways or anything like that to detour people. So what we end up having is a ton of traffic coming up and down our little dirt roads that, you know, you don't really have space to pass. They didn't really fix them in vector original widths after the flooding. So it's a compounding of issues, but I wish that I wish the repairs were done in, you know, two months ago when it was warmer at this point, it's too late to do anything about it. So we're hoping that they get done quickly. Yeah. What road do you live on? Cambell road, which is off the, towards the top of camper. Hit pretty hard in 2019. I believe I know where I heard stories. Yes. Yes. Patrick had a lot of the road in his yard. That's my yard. So I have Patrick's old house. Yeah. You guys want to take some of that stuff back. Yeah. We've actually had to move some of that back because that, that's not quite right. How about you? Yeah. So I had a comment last time about charging property owners for the drainage going in. Coming from their yards. And I was in the background saying, what about the town draining into our yards? Right. Which is that problem? Sure. So it goes both ways, but it does the, the. Anyway, the reason I'm really here is to kind of introduce myself in person. I signed in last time because I had submitted that letter before the last meeting. So I figured out, right. If I'm on agenda, I better be here. I'm not going to be here today. I'm not going to be here today. I'm not going to be here today. I'm not going to be here today. Another meeting tonight. So she couldn't be here. But she would like to join the planning committee. So hopefully you'll get to know us and hear from us more. Thank you for volunteering. Yeah. And yeah, cause it's, it's. In my opinion, it's better to try to fix things than to sit there complaining. All my other neighbors are also complaining about the roads, but it's like, Oh, who's going down and trying to do something about it. So here I am. It was very informative to even to sign in. Actually, just to say props, the audio and video quality were impressive. They do a good job. So, so maybe I'll sign in some more. I won't be here. You know, to sit here for a while. Thank you. All right. So Kevin is here, Geiger from two rivers and made it. Did you come from Granville? Yeah. Do we have any other public comment? I don't see anybody really online. Just Kyle's online, but he's waiting for wreck. Yeah. At some point, I would like to hear what's happening with windows version. But you want to do that in any other business? Sure. Perfect. You mind if I just make a comment before we move on from the, the issue these folks were here for, which is I wonder if doing something like a public forum. I mean, I don't know, I don't know what committee or what entity would be best, but it's not unique to Christian Hill. And I've gotten this complaint about North Main Street. House on North Main Street. I've heard it about other places that are escaping my mind. And I wonder if. In the idea of sort of pooling resources and having that solidarity of like, Hey, you're not alone. And let's come up with some creative solutions. I think it would garner more support in the long run. For anything that town can actually help with and do and push budget towards. So I don't know. I'm just putting that out there as like, who would be the right entity to. Do you think anybody at the SP would be willing to, I don't know.  Kevin talking about policing. And it's a big issue for speeding drug use. And that's sort of, do you know of any. Towns or any. You know, who would come in and do a public form on that? Are you aware of anybody? Kevin knows everybody. I mean, I mean, it's a lot like the conversation. I've been to Heartland recently and I've been. The other night. And similar issues. I just cut again to this. But they are having similar discussions. There I would say. Heartland did a kind of a policing report because they don't have police. And they're trying to, they have both the sheriff and state police and their contract. And trying to figure out doing these more. We get our own person there. Windsor's right next door. And so they're like, well, we could, we could have Windsor. And so they called me down to just moderate a meeting about their study and just to get public comment. And that was a thing we can do is we can just. We're not in the town. And we can just run meetings. Right. But certainly the state police. Do they have like an outreach branch to the state police? That kind of does that sort of they have a public information folks. That are largely used more in instance. Right. But we can reach out to them. I'm just curious if they do, you know, I. incense. Right. But we can reach out to them. I'm just curious if they do, you know, I certainly in another town had neighborhoods that actually had an active neighborhood watch. And they were lucky it was run by a retired police officer from New Jersey. Mr. He was on and not that happened in his neighborhood. But I don't really see much of that anymore. Neighborhood watches. And I wondered if who forms those now years ago. I don't know. I say a few but probably a half a dozen at least years ago. We did have something in this town where it was. It was yeah, it was at the school and they went to what like four different communities in our area to talk about it was when the drug when the drug epidemic was really firing. I mean, it's getting worse, but they had gone around. They did remember because I attended at the school. Was it the state police that did it? It was some gentleman out of the headquarters up in Williston, if I remember right. So maybe maybe you could reach out to your contact at Yeah. Here in Royalton, if they have somebody that could, like you said, facilitate the conversation. I'm sure they have some community people. Your job is to do right. Yeah. Or help you put in the right. Yeah. Yeah. Remember doing that by people who actually know more about what can or can't be done. I feel like we're we're not this is in this realm. Yeah. Not the best people to facilitate this conversation. Right. If we can get it going. It's a good idea. All right. So we will move forward. We have our appointment. So we will go to Kevin. You want to introduce this topic? Yeah. So Kevin Geiger is to Riversautic Region Regional Planning Commission. And I I read this and I was like, we need an explanation from Kevin because yeah, I read the I read your town of the sample letter. And then I read the printed out the highlighted portions that you had done in that like 30 page document. I'm like, I, I'm unsure. I'm like, Kevin will tell us. Notice the finding opportunity. So when the feds put out some money, they do it. No foe or no fly we call us. And they're they're verbose. Yeah. Usually we just go, okay, let's try that. The the important nuggets on this are it's called thriving communities is through the U.S. Department of Transportation. And they are basically getting in the ballgame that a lot of other folks have gotten in the ballgame before they're like, wait a minute, we you know, we should talk about plug resigns. Because they're talking about plug resigns. And we should talk about housing and we should instead of kind of glommed all these things together. So if you're reading that, you've probably got the correct impression. Like, this is kind of a color that it's a mess Christmas tree. A glomeration. I'm like, slump resilience and equitable transportation. I'm like, what? I'm like, focus. Yeah, good. And then you're reading it right as the and the goal there is to fund capacity, regional capacity bills. So this is a little like what we call our mtap funding. So our initial transportation alternatives. No, mtap is technical assistance. And we can't do transportation under that. And so we have some special money for a couple years from the administration to work on that. But this is more like the transportation side of this. So how and it would sort of fund a position with us and in our partner agency across the river for three years to basically do footwork around trying to find projects and shepherd projects manage projects. It doesn't have much project money at all. But it's mostly that it does not require any match from the town. It's more for towns to go, yes, we'd like some of that help. And they have this bizarre tool that says some of our towns are transportation disadvantage. Bethel is one of those. And how the black box does that? I have no idea. It's like, okay, you're red on the map. That's why we pick Bethel, Randall, Rochester, Hancock, a couple of the towns that are in the mix there. So we're seeking a letter of support because that's part of the, you know, it's going to make the grant work if it works. There are only probably five of these nationwide. So it's a pretty good stretch that we would get it. But if we did, it would definitely fund us to be able to help you more. Kind of, I would imagine, like Rita does from her office, but spread across other things that are peripheral to transportation a bit more. So they want us to look at, for example, potentially how zoning and transportation go together. And there are connections there, but they're not. So basically, if you get it, it would be funding you to either to undertake some more studies and assist us in other ways. It wouldn't be a project where I need to give you manpower answering a bunch of questions or doing that sort of thing. Okay, good. But more Rita, we want more Rita. More Gina. Barbara, she's awesome. Come on, everybody. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's much for us. 20% of the money. So if we got the full batch, that's about 60,000 plus, 20% of that money has to flow through two tabs. And that would be, again, it's not to build things and you can imagine $60,000 to build your whole lot of stuff, but maybe help with some engineering to get things ready towards the end. Okay. And with that, along with that engineering, the money that flowed through would also pay someone like I'm paying Rita right now to be the municipal project manager on a project. That would already be in the, in the mix of the money that they have. Well, then I'm inspired. Yeah, we have Harry over here. Yeah, he's doing great. We can help towns replace their furnaces or whatever. Right. We have Sydney on M-Tab and so the towns that fall to that bucket are largely anything sewer and water related and somewhat recreational. And then this would be more transportation. Yeah. So, so in this case, that you would, you know, if you weren't able to get the grant funding for this and you would look into those towns that you had just talked about and you would study potential projects for that town or recommendations for problem areas or something that needs attention, you would do the behind the scene work. Right. I imagine like we're going to go back in time a few years to the sidewalk project in South Wilson's block. Well, they've done a lot of work to get that to where it is now, but we could have been in there earlier on with more technical capacity to get that. Rita's managing the project now. Yeah. But it took a lot of time to get that up. There's, you know, transportation projects, long rocks. Yeah. And then how are, I mean, obviously you're going to do your best to try to align. If you did a project for Bethel, you try to align that with some grant money to try to move that forward. But is there part of that? Is there any money behind the scenes? Like that they're looking at investing some more money towards this project or just things that we'd have to go through the normal grant writing? So are they making it shelf kind of shelf ready? Well, it sounds like what he's going to do is get it shelf ready, right? Yeah. But then how do we get it off the shelf? I guess it was my question at that point. Is there going to be money is tagged to this? Or is this something that at that point then we would have to get in touch with? There's no transportation to try and get some grant money. So you're going to do that? Well, no, that's that would be on the position's task is to get everything up to like here's my grant of work. The the theory is that there is more money coming down the pipe through various the infrastructure act and other things. Whether that theory plays out and you know, given the federal government these days, who knows whether even they're working next week. So, but directly there's more money in the pipe for certain parts of it. Yeah. Nice. Well, it's hard to do. Crystal ball is just as cloudy as everybody else's. But so if they if you're awarded the money, are you going to award it per town or capita? Is that how it goes through for if it has to flow through? Well, right now, it's like maybe eight towns of our region would qualify. So we'd be working just with those eight times. Okay. Yeah. The money would have to unlike other programs. It would have to be town specific. So once the money, once you're awarded the grant, then we'll be able to sit down to figure out what projects we want to work on. Yeah. All right. Make sense. I imagine, you know, Granville Hancock, you guys have more progress in there. Yeah. But still, but it'd be nice. Yeah. Once we could sit down and figure out what our next Friday's obviously we've finished up better connections. That's left some stuff open. I was on the phone with Rita and Peter, he tells the other day kind of hammering out another grant, whether we're going to go for it or not and what it was going to do for us. But so yeah, that'd be good. I'm all for grant money with no match. Yeah. If it works, it'd be good. Yeah. No, no. And basically it would fund a person for three years. Nice. Full time. Full time. Nice. Yeah. It's trying to change if it happens. Yeah. Absolutely. I did see on my letter that I sent you my grandfather said rock just. Yeah, I saw. That's all right. I can fix it. I'll fix it. I think so. If you want to make a motion to send a letter of support, move to allow trees to send a letter of support for two readers out of which you to pursue this U.S. grant opportunity. Second. Any other favor? All right. Yeah. And I'll try to fix this with you on the on the least thing. Yeah. You know, well done. I've seen some paper. Yeah. Whatever's happening. It's something we've gone on correct just recently too. Yeah. The paper, Chelsea, all areas. Versions. It's Tumbridge. Tumbridge. Yeah. It is. I don't know. I think there's perception and then there's obviously.  I already came in, but thank you for coming. Yeah. Thank you. I'll get this to you tomorrow, Kevin, because I'm going on vacation for a week on Wednesday. So I'll get this to you tomorrow. Oh, great. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Let me add Ellie. Yeah. I'll let Kyle speak to our request. Kyle, you're on. Hi, everybody. We just wanted to check in with the select board and see about having a small sort of ceremony to kick off the skate park being complete and just get people out for what's totally a warmish November day of skateboarding. And then probably try to follow that up in the late spring, early summer with maybe a larger scale thing, but just wanted to kind of acknowledge all the hard work that went into it and celebrate that a little bit. So yeah, that's what we're asking permission to do on Saturday. Yeah. This, this Saturday, this Saturday, the 18th from two to four and just have something positive that's going on in the community. Well, I think, I think the challenge that we have right now with the skate park is it's not finished. So and, you know, we have connectivity issues from the recreational side of it to the skate park that wasn't done, changed or whatever through the, through the construction sequence that happened. I think, I think we all would like to have a ceremony. I guess I'm just, you know, are we rushing this in November because November is probably not always the greenest opportunity with things. But if you go over there right now, we still have the sidewalk that's not connected to to the skate park that was supposed to be connected to the skate park. That's not that now we have to and there's some other remedial work that hasn't been done there.  I mean, to me, it's an active work site. And I think it's a liability for the town.  So if you said, hey, we've followed this up and I'll make it up, you know, the week of the 21st, all the work's going to be completed. We'd like to do something on the 27th, you know, just throwing dates out there. But yeah, you know, with the work being done, I can't say why anybody would say not to. But I think the caution that I would have is that it's not finished. And we would open ourselves up to some liabilities there if, you know, either accessibility pieces or, you know, the sidewalk is not connected to some of the drinks. There's a whole there's a lot of obstacles there still to. And we're hoping to have it done in the next couple of weeks. So once REM comes in and finishes and then they'll, then they're still gonna, I'm assuming they're gonna seed and, and mulch if it's too late for that we'll seed mulch in the spring, but at least there won't be a hole, you know, where that's been dug in a pile of aggregate and everything that's just right now it's, somebody gets tangled up in it or trips and, you know, twists or ankle or something it's. Yeah, I didn't know I think I think those are all valid points when you bring them up and in that sense I mean my eagerness to celebrate maybe. Yeah, I looked beyond that but that all that all makes sense especially like the liability thing with just sort of uneven ground around there and and all of that stuff going on.  But I think all your points about safety and not being quite all that welcoming as of right now are well taken. One question I have is, do we want to leave that fence, you know, I think we basically hit the point where the concrete's cured, like, you know, we can, people can skate it, do we leave the fencing up for the time being because of the stuff going on around it or is it okay to just sort of like open up a section so people can do it, you know, as they so choose. I'd leave the fence up until it's done done because it's still an active construction site until it's finished. I noticed I was over there Saturday at noon taking pictures of the vandalism and so I think there's yeah which is terrible and the sign is over has fallen over that's over there about I think it talked about you know what was going on maybe. But yeah, I would say leave the fence up, make sure and when I was there, fence was still up and I had to walk over it which was good and I think leave it up until it's done just you know what at least it shows it's letting people know it's not open yet if they choose to go past it and somebody gets hurt I'm gonna stand a better chance with the insurance company than I'm gonna if it's down. So at this point, Therese, who would be because it you know we have the we have a couple different ideas we have the construction associated with the skate park itself. Yep. And then we have the connectivity pieces to the skate park. Yep. So and then and there's kind of two separate people overseeing those. Yeah. So who would make the determination like hey everything's all good to go and let's take down the snow fence today and do something and and and advertise it to be open tomorrow. I think it would be that person to I think at this point well they're gonna advertise to be open I'm not sure but Chris fours will oversee the last of it because we're using vorac money I have 38 I think 3808 and land water conservation money to use but towards that vorac will pay for the rest to finish that sidewalk and so Chris is the one who got the estimate and is going to oversee the work for REM and once the work is done Chris will let me know and then I can email Ellie and Kyle and they can you know blast it out there to let people know it's open. So I mean would it be safe to say like they can in some ways like Kyle and Chris to kind of work together and when they have before they they get yeah you guys they could talk together and say they do feel that this is all the construction's done that says we're good you and you and Chris text right or yeah we yeah yeah yeah so he's gonna oversee it so once it's done you know you can reach out to him and just have him keep you in the loop so that once REM comes and finishes up he can tell you when it's done and I don't know who snow fence it is if it's ours or if it was Michael Parker's or who's it is um but between you and Chris I'm sure you can figure that out. Sure that sounds good. Yeah just let him know he's we're hoping he's in and out in the next couple of weeks and it'll be done and ready to go. Cool. Once it's open you can choose the best date that fits you to have the celebration. Thank you. I mean I definitely would be looking for like a spring celebration you know but at the same time if you wanted to say hey you know next week at this date we're gonna officially open the park yeah you know because we want to use our toy before it goes away for the wintertime then I mean I can jump right on that yeah but but we just have to make sure that both you Kyle and Chris have agreed that all the construction's good it's safe and and we can and we can go on it and I think that'd be exciting hopefully the weather holds out a little bit longer so that maybe you have the chance to enjoy it for a weekend or a week or something. Hey Kyle what's your opinion on the on the um vandalism? Michael Parker emailed us back and said that there's such a material called elephant snot that he thinks might work to get the paint off uh Dave Aldragetti messaged me today and said that cow pollen has a dustless sand blaster I mean do you think it's better to just leave it and just we'll wear it off over time because of course we had just had the dang thing sealed oh that's old and new so what's your thought about that yeah that's a um Dave's suggestion of talking with cow that seems like a uh a decent uh idea I don't I have no idea what the elephant snot stuff is um you know I'm happy to to put some elbow grease into if that you know if we determine that that's a good thing to try in other in other spots I've seen stuff like that get painted over with a you know gray paint that's similar to the skate park color I don't know how I'd have to ask Michael how that affects sort of sealing and resealing and all that um that's what I was gonna ask because we just paid to have the new park sealed and then the old section we also had sealed at the same time but right if we could paint over it without it affecting the sealing then maybe that's an option or or if he says to just leave it and let it get worn off maybe so that I'm just afraid I don't want to have to pay to reseal the thing again yeah right I reach out to Michael and ask him what his you know maybe we just leave it and it wears off with skateboards and bikes and I'm saying blasted enough to know a deskless or not it's going to take the seal right out of right yes I should have said we have a sandblasting expert over here that's right I should have thought of you that's right 33 years she had in the business and I also visited the site there and I you know I could be naive with some of the tags that were done over there but it didn't appear to me that anything that was done there was offensive or in a in a manner that we would have to like cover it immediately type deal is that kind of your conclusion as well Kyle yeah that I would agree with that it's just so ugly yeah but yeah right and again I don't know everything but nothing appeared vulgar to in my in my eyes either so I did hear from um our state you know the transportation local and it was title is from VTrans but Ryan Slack he checks the roads you know he works for the state he does uh Rochester and Bethel Royalton and for the state he said he saw a vehicle out there he was out checking roads at 3 a.m. when we had that storm and he said I saw headlights and I said did you swing hand and get a plate number he's like no I wasn't doing my job I was out doing something and now he was checking roads and the interstate and obviously higher priorities but he said I did see lights over there and thought it was kind of suspicious he said if someone was out skate park and you know skateboarding at 3 a.m. but we did report it to the constable and um I was going to call around to a couple local um hardware stores to see if somebody bought a bunch of purple paint recently just if that would help I was actually I was actually pretty surprised that the paint held on the surface as well as it did I when I talked to you I figured that's you know it's cold it's wet it's you know that time of year that it probably but it held like really well I don't know what the use for paint but that was probably the right paint to use but it was it was on there pretty good and it was a pressure wash right to make sure and it went nowhere wow so yeah so if you want to talk to Michael Parker I'm going to be away for a week but if you want to talk to Michael and get his opinion you know maybe he says leave it maybe he says paint over it but I'm not certainly in favor of messing up the brand new sealant either so if you don't like getting his opinion that would be great yeah I'll give him a shout this week and just um yeah see what he has to say sure yeah he's certainly the expert so he'd know well definitely if you are able to get everything done at the park feel free to let us know so you know we'd be more or somebody from the board be more willing to go out here you know when you open it on some weekend day or or whatever that is so just great in touch with us yeah thanks all right thank you Kyle sure thanks Ellie thank you great so we have a couple of appointments here to planning and energy committee do you um did you want to do the planning one means your sure I actually was not at that meeting but the planning commission she did attend a meeting and the planning commission already approved her that's the way it works it's different for the planning commission but they approve her and then um to join and then you guys kind of bless that appointment okay all right and again it's good to see people wanting to get involved yes it was a it was a banner week we had you know he had Samantha and Joshua like this is it's rare we get two people at once I mean it's good to have people yeah proactively wanting to be a part because usually as we see like nothing gets about we're mostly reactionary people where we're always like oh my god we got to get involved because this is going on and it's nice to be out in front and keep our committees strong yeah and we have been lacking on both of those so it was good to we have see some new faces so just need a motion and Samantha would be a three-year appointment too okay I make the motion to uh appoint Samantha Gardens that's how you pronounce her last name to the planning commission for a three-year term second okay all in favor all right all right no backing out now I don't know about this next guy I have real concerns he shows up he's not on screen he shows up he's in person he's in person today so uh energy committee I don't know Jean or no I was not at the last meeting okay but at least you were that's good didn't scare him off so I didn't I didn't scare him off right yeah well not being there well not not being there right right so I just need a motion for Josh I move to approve Josh Wardell to the energy committee second hey all in favor all right so 10 10-year terms always yeah 10 years that's what you're willing unlimited it's like the energizer bunny that's right all right all right thank you again yes thank you it's great uh pull fee updates so this is what D tree had given you and she did the nice little spreadsheet here for you um I wrote a couple notes on here just so you'd know what the current pricing was and then she gave you some Randolph rates Rutland rates and and um those are closest pools I was just wondering I mean it must be Randolph Rutland there's no other people that have like Northfield used to have a pool do they still have a pool that's right Woodstock Woodstock has one does Northfield still have a pool I don't know I've been in house yeah yeah do we know what I have no idea thinking of like rates and stuff and I didn't know if you only be more of them around she looked at obviously at Randolph being the closest we actually pick up a lot of Randolph people generally especially around time about taking lessons we have a lot of people that come to Bethel pool to take lessons um even though Randolph offers them it's not a pool but it's a swimming pool the ground we have a pond the tumbling it gets your own pond oh nice yep well if we don't fix the pool liner we could it's done that's it's all done oh it's all done yeah all done it is done um so cheap he came back and finished so yeah he's yeah thank goodness the rain stopped so I know yeah we were waiting on that and then putting the ladders in and it's been a thing so you can see she gave you the 2018-2019 and what she's suggesting for 2024 um so I think the only thing I saw on that was you know Randolph rates for like the swim lessons is considerably higher than and remember that I don't know how theirs work but our swim lessons are on top of a season pass purchase okay so you have my question I don't know if that came with like did you have to be a pass member in Randolph or not or yeah how that came with my guess is that's why their rates are that to me that's not our money it's not no it's not and it's access to really good you know Dietrich is very diligent she she ran an open swim at the at a lake where she was a director there so she's been done a really great job for your program Greg hired her and really you know was being run by teenagers and now it's you know really stepped up my comment is for me it's not a lot of money right but if there are people in the community for whom it is a lot of money yep uh do we have any scholarship scholarship or I don't know I'd have to I'm not I'm not aware of any um and could that be something maybe offered that this may be not the best partnership but um like the food shelf would know what families are in need and if they had something that said hey interested in a pool membership but need help with the funding come talk to us and then they get you know they help funnel it to whomever and they help pay for the fee yeah because I mean you know the pool is obviously not a money maker it's never going to be a money maker for you yeah just don't want it somebody I'm not sure I'm not a kid not to be able to come of course and I'm going to know what families of activity and I think that most and without Dietrich here she may have already run into that and I'm not aware but I could certainly find out for people okay so there's something already happening um and I could ask yeah I would probably ask I'll have to work with some of the local groups like one planet yeah yeah she's really on top of knowing families and knowing very good yeah but you know school and I don't know if there are there are others anyway yeah I just it's just uh I would like to make it possible with we right I can ask Dietrich um I can ask her because I don't know so I just wrote Dietrich scholarships I don't know if you guys Chris has come in so they already do partner with one planet through the school yep so I wonder if expanding it beyond and there's really a couple of camps that happen in the summertime too right yeah and it's not necessarily they're paying the full amount it might be a portion of it I just I know like you see those advertisements that come for for my children and it'll be like you know making up the camp is $50 for the week and you know they go swimming too which yeah that's usually they go swimming like each day or every other day or something yeah so but that's like an all-day thing yeah I'm just yeah we'll find out I don't know James but I can ask the only thing I was starting to think about is you know we we've been talking about you know a year-round facility right and again I don't know how we would do it but you know we are we are adding pieces to that facility to try and shape it a year around the skate park at the pool we have the ice skating that goes on in the winter time and you know I just wonder at what point do we expand upon these things I mean they cost money obviously to do so you know do you have a make it up once a year do you have a skate pass or once a year do you have a you know or can you say hey this includes swimming skating and or both sorry there's two skating yeah what you're skating and summer skating yeah but like I know it's like the policing end of it is really difficult because we're not going to have somebody there like check your passes just like you do but because that's you have the gate to the but it'd be more so it's easier but sometimes when you have like that where individuals let's say you know if I have a pass and I'm over there skating and there are people that don't have you kind of tend to take a little more ownership into like this is my place you know yeah take care of it and watch out for others and yeah I mean I know you can't really police it but at some point we have to kind of maybe think about that because you know I'm sure that we're going to want to do more things to skate park or install that because we did talk about the school during better connections I don't think it came out in vorac but we had talked about not sure that part made it through maybe you remember ellie but about the sharing the equipment we're talking about doing an equipment share at the school where people could go and check out skis and and different and snowshoes but I didn't make it through did it right and and um and also I know that last year they did get ice skates that's right they did have the money and they got ice skates for the kids the thing is that we're we're we're wondering about what the weather is going to be for the ice rink this year sure and um we're having a major discussion on do we skip it this year or is there a chance that we can get that ice cold is it going to be cold oh good I just want to guarantee that yeah of yeah it was nice in my my water left in my vehicle right because this um yeah because maybe we're not having skates or celebration because the cold weather is going to come and we're going to get the ice rink up yeah this might be a little more complicating this but just something to think about maybe just put out to detreat to see how she feels about it but like you could do instead of having one singular price you know do is sort of like tiered tiered pricing and so there's your your lowest cost but then there's you know the this is what it costs us and then there's the sort of what are you know sustaining members of if you're able to you pay a little extra knowing that you're helping somebody who can't pay that oh I see what you're saying so you have those tiers of so if someone this is the what it costs period if you want to pay extra you could donate towards a scholarship program yeah I don't see it working because it didn't work they tried to do that in a hot lunch program too many proud people didn't want to say they couldn't afford it but they're not doing that's the only way you're going to make someone's got to come forward and say I can't afford it sure and you're I don't believe you're going to get very many people who are willing to be willing to that people get some first yeah so well I can ask her um you know that's my experience yeah I think that she's just trying to wrap it up because Dietre is not going to be your pool director anymore so I think that she's trying to just get this in place for somebody else you all right thank you when did these speeds come in they started July you know they'd start with the pool opened yeah yeah oh they'd start you know when the pool opened the only the only other thing I was going to add to this is um now that the school system is the way it is so we have members from other towns that come to our school here just like our people go to you know their towns sure is if you get the scenario of making up but if you have a middle schooler that's over here and they're going to go to the pool for they well they're technically a non-resident you know so you know would they're you know maybe they fall under here because if they're in that one planet if that's why they're here yeah group rate if they're if they're in one plan and then they get this rate no matter where they're from kids that have aged out of one planet like middle schoolers are kind of a perfect example their school is here they're maybe over here hanging out with their friends but now they're considered a non-resident for going for the summer time if they want to go for the summer yeah but if it's it just maybe something to think about that if they're with their friend for the day they both pay five bucks if they want a or if they want a day pass no matter whether you're resident non-resident it's five bucks and the pass i think people can bring a guest with their pass so if if you know johnny's visiting susie and they go to the pool you know we're not singling them out well it's just something to think about because we're not just residents we're also you know school residents of you know the towns now but i'll ask her about scholarships for family possible tiered pricing if people want to pay this is the price do you want to donate to the scholarship program i don't i like it ask chris he seems to know this well in trees maybe you simplify there is a lower tier there's the this is what it costs us and if you're willing to pay a little more it helps subsidize exactly other things and keep these costs down for all bethel families right you know you can you can do it in a way that doesn't single people out or make them feel that's right yeah yeah you were i was gathering that you were thinking more of the higher end and not the lower end right saying i can't afford it your version was if you can write a little more more more places are starting to integrate programs like this and i'm sort of fascinated by it and i'm tracking it at the school that i teach at right now is they now have three tiered payment system and they are still making their money on their classes even though they'll have a handful of students who will pay the lowest tier so it's all it's doing is making it accessible for people who used to look at the price tag and say oh i can't afford that i got to take a week off of work and pay 1100 bucks for a class i can't i can't do that but now they can actually make that happen and the school is finding that it's leveling out there are enough people paying the higher one that it subsidizes the lower end so i'm just i'm seeing this happening in a number of different places and just curious if it's something to explore yeah and we just um with the wind progress it's just another example it's a charge of minimal fee but nobody is turned away because yeah it's accessible for all yeah so while we have you on the spot yeah i was just trying to get out you can sweat it now so yeah so now we've gotten phase two of the skateboard part yeah completed or just about completing what what are we looking like is going to be the next phase of that plan plan that we're going to have to sign in yet um and we were just um because with um we don't have anything for the rest of the year on on the agenda um um and um and we're just waiting to see about the pool and people to survey i'd be curious since the original survey was when did you do that 2001 2012 that could be interesting at your booth at town meeting you know you always do a nice booth i'm curious what what do people want now you know i really i just i have no idea anymore we see other towns doing so many different things that's i don't know you know what people would want to see next and the pool yes we they select board made the fix which was nice um and we're just waiting to see what happens with the pool director in the summer right and um you know are you you guys are advertising yet we have advertised yep and we'll be putting it out again but it was advertised there was a poster up at the pool all summer and then yeah and there is one of your advertising we would advertise in the newspaper um and you know from porch forum i think it was out there we put on the website so we end up so but um would you put anything in Vermont league of cities and towns they've got can they have a classifies for free and um but we'll hit it harder now that's once the season wraps up but thank goodness we're able to do the fiberglassing and which wasn't like a full rebuild i know the next thing we have to do over there is we have to build a little addition because the plumber is saying we have to get a chlorine tank yeah out of the right and then he wants us to do that like asap and i'm like well right okay so that's what yeah so that's the rest of the year we're waiting on what's happening with the pool yeah and i do know that Farron Griffin is asked to be at our next um recreation community for the conservation no i think it's first something else oh cool he's always well i mean that's where i was kind of getting at is you know we're coming up to town meeting day so yeah maybe you know circling the wagons and trying to figure out where we're at or where people want to see us go but also we're close to budget season so how much do we need to put in the recreational fund to move forward and keep projects coming and you know be thinking about what i don't so hard you'll have another meeting or two before January so you'll have like one or two more meetings before we have to put our budget in so yeah it's so hard to know now is that what i mean and it looks nice over there since you guys had the equipment moved and now you've done the second phase and you're going to have the you know the accessible parking lot and you have the nice gazebo that chuck donated that's yeah but that's only there temporarily oh where's it wrong i don't know because we agreed that if you put it there that it would be a temporary thing and that we would um he was willing to move it when when because when we got the permit we we have the permits that we have from the drb says that we put a basketball court where that because the voters oh okay oh all right it's nice now i know i think kids put their skates on and stuff in there so it's been they haven't you saw quite a few people there this summer maybe working remotely or right and it's worked well for our halloween events oh sure yeah because evil so maybe he relocated we have to you know um figure out a lot of different things yeah yeah because what we did last year we had some trees removed so because they were if they came down they were going to take out the pool fence so we did have some maintenance like that done and but um yeah so we'll get to know so yeah we have a lot of discussing and researching things so many things that you know many things yeah yeah so the trails will be open so that'll be nice right because yeah we'll be on the trail situation being finished the forewreck that that forewreck thing is being done next summer yep and so between the trails and the pool you know we figured well we get a breather from all exactly all the work and the fundraising we want to celebrate just have a some celebration yeah before we get to working again maybe y'all you could maybe i should only do this over just like do a really fun family fun friday and call you know what i mean right it's been fundraising since ever and so we need a break you do you deserve a break no it's a lot you guys have done all a tremendous amount and a tremendous amount that wouldn't have happened without you guys yeah so so yeah so that's that's the anything further on the pool fees or if not just need a potion to approve the those b rates for 2024 so moved second okay all in favor right i'll see you guys at the community dinner it's friday friday friday what are you what are you serving um why wait until friday right it's very good for as long as it lands right this is all you can eat right thanks ellie drive safe and we have outdoor cultivator tier one small cultivator cannabis license renewal it's a lot so obviously this person received a license last year directly from the state of ramon but since you formed the cannabis control board these permits come to you you can see they see them anyways well yeah you get to see what you see they asked uh you know do they comply with required inspections they said yes is their proposed cannabis establishment project in a public building they said no is the physical site of operation on a municipal water supply they said no are you a home occupancy business and they said yes um so i had talked to rick benson and after i looked looked over the application and then i actually reached out to the state of ramon because their original um ccb guidance they actually quoted um a statute that was that had been repealed so i did write to them and said okay wait a second what is it we don't want to put anyone in jeopardy so what is it we're supposed to release and what we're not supposed to release so i heard back from them and um basically i'm right well you know the thing is it says it tells you here that you can't replace their location but if you also release the llc they can look at it on the secretary of state's website so you know i don't want to put anybody in jeopardy especially when the the current law specifically states that outdoor cultivation is subject to required agricultural practices so it's nothing zoning affects it the only thing i did ask because it ended up being the state one of the attorneys for the cannabis control board that wrote me back i did ask him um how this affected the tax the tax department because if you have a home-based business in any town in vermont then when you complete your um uh oh totally true like your uh homestead rebate thank you i'm like claim you go in there do you have as a 20 business is it five percent business and so i did ask him i said how does this work because do they have to claim that part of their house is business but he didn't know the answer he was going to reach out to the tax department but once i realized that they were under required agricultural practices so this becomes an accessory on farm business i actually don't think they have to but he said he would reach out to the state he didn't he said that's actually a good question and i don't know the answer i should so he was going to reach out i haven't heard back from him but it's an accessory on farm business which means they're going to be under the ag in our current zoning regulations wouldn't apply and also the state statute is very specific saying that um regulate the same way as farming and not development for permitting props so in my my you have no it could be wrong but i thought a year ago when this original license rights was granted that we didn't make any motion on that it just you didn't because you did not have a cannabis control board yet but i thought the cannabis control board was only for retail no it's for all permits but what happens is so that's why they sent it to you and that's what it says in the cover letter so what happens is as soon as as soon as you signed and we submitted the resolution for the cannabis control board then they come to you and so yes it's retail but it's also these and it's really more about in this case just pretty much a blessing and the retail would just be whether or not they're adhering to the retail regulations for your town but the state law is clear you cannot zone out cannabis so we twice just uh something we do with no control right just like alcohol i mean yep second hey all in favor all right still just like this it's hard to wrap your head around some of the things i mean and that's why like individuals that come here to ask questions that seem pretty simple based they're not so simple based because the state does so many things that don't even make any sense i mean the only reason why we you know the only reason why we had to vote well we had to vote as a town to either allow or not allow retail sales and then once you did that then you had to vote if you wanted to have a cannabis control board or not right but that was based on retail sales and the year prior to that you couldn't even talk about cultivation growth like we couldn't even talk about that right you know even though it is like you said at the end of the day we have no power it's a rubber stamp right as long as they're adhering to all their so i mean it's like whoa yeah what does the board really do you know like yeah yeah basically pretty much i mean if it's a retail then obviously we'll go through on a zoning aspect to make sure it here just on the zoning but yeah i mean people forget that you know vermont is a dylan's rule state so we only have the authority granted to us by the state you know we're not like other free-wheelers who get to do what they want so yeah it is an interesting process but um you know and i don't know how much last permit we did we got 200 bucks i don't i don't know if a small tier is a different which it all went to the state yeah well it came we got and that's the thing is like you know do you get involved in local government like just some of the things that you just assume are very simple yeah i'm not you know in your head now you're getting this chair and you go but i don't make any sense like you know it's like you're like the police thing and all these things that we talk about like oh my god doesn't he make any sense like why they gotta make this so difficult yeah true and that is definitely one of them so talking about things that don't make a lot of sense health insurance yep goes up and up and up and up and up and up and up and it's true so we had this discussion at the last select board meeting i think and you guys had talked about you know what we're the new rates were out and it came time for it actually just coincidentally i got the package to sign and so i compared the current plans that are out to for the same coverage for the employees from and it makes sense to move to blue cross blue shield we actually left blue cross blue shield for this reason to go to mvp at one point probably three years ago maybe um a few years because of the rate increase so i've given you the rate obviously the you were acting ten minutes wasn't it yeah it was the year you were acting could be that i was acting we changed now when she's playing so that's right yeah it's the whole thing so the mvp the for the blue cross blue shield the deductible is 2850 for a single for mvp at 3000 obviously it's a the larger increase it's a mvp is a 12.1 one increase for a family plan over last year and blue cross blue shield would be a 7.64 increase i know that we talked about or chris actually specifically had such talked about how some companies his company are changing so that the employee is paying more of a share or sort of premium you know i want to say it took us a year to find an employee last time in our last opening and i think that it's difficult to cut benefits i will say i came when i came here one of the reasons i was taking a salary cut but the benefits were going to make me full that was part of my decision um i feel like you have some long-term employees that are on this they were hired under this plan if you're interested in making a change moving forward then maybe that's a change you make via the personnel policy just like you did with sick time you've said as any employee hired after july or january whatever the date is x will no longer be paid out their sick time upon um you know termination or or or they leave to go somewhere else um under good circumstances so that's my thought process is i have been having this you know conversation for 18 19 years it's very difficult to make something that is inequitable equitable and that's the way i feel about health insurance but my recommendation is to leave the coverage same move to blue cross blue shield and if you choose to make a different decision then i think you should do it by amending the personnel policy so it affects people um new hires which i'm not thrilled about because i have my eyes on stealing an employee from another town the only way that'll have a work is every everybody after the same time yeah that would have a well and i think it's difficult i i feel like if they were hired they were hired with what they have now if someone was made a choice to come here knowing they were gonna have to pay all their deductible or five percent of their premium then they made a then they made a knowledgeable choice it wasn't something taken away from them um i so i feel like if you're going to institute it that would be the only fair way to institute is when they came they knew yes they're being treated differently but they are i'm treated differently than a longer-term employee because when i came after the deadline you no longer paid out sick time which made sense to me but but i came on after so i feel like that would be your best way to kind of to if you if that was the direction you want to move yourself in and i think that would be the best and most fair because people would come they're signing on the dotted line saying i know this instead of being here taking advantage of something and then having it changed right but again that's my opinion rock of ages contract was like some of the old timers still had the j y plan and they wanted to keep that and everybody else was going to another plan so if you wanted to j y instead of paying 20 percent of your insurance you're going to pay 25 and most of them jumped on it because it was it was a Cadillac plan but now with the new hires there's a j y it's probably phased out by now then everybody had the regular blue cross but the newer people coming on have like the bottom middle bottom tier but that's the new hires that are coming on but everybody else can how keep their their thing you can't you can't change them in midstream we did change from blue cross blue shield to sigma and our deductibles were a little bit higher but everybody got a quarter an hour raised when that was 15 years ago and so that accumulates over and over and over every year plus year over time right so they beat up for with that quarter of an hour which doesn't sound like much in 2023 but in 2008 i think it was it made it made a pretty big and it's interesting where you're at the another town that i work for did the same thing and i'm sitting there going why didn't you just pay the premium you had more control over that now all of a sudden joe schmoe gets the raise plus it's on ot plus so how much more you could have just eaten the premium i was you know i never broke out the map but i was always well interested in the point where that that's not true anymore when you've got a 33 34 $16 an hour 34 that that's 1750 an hour yeah i i took the number and divided it by 2015 by 2080 hours and it was 16 bucks and some change as long as we insist in this country on having employer provided health insurance i think we need to do that for our phone yeah it's yeah that's just my i think that ultimately the solution is to move away from employer provided health insurance i know when the exchange started in vermont a few years ago as a municipality where i was the time we were like yes we're going to drop our insurance we're going to give everybody x amount of dollars to go into the exchange and then we they didn't allow municipalities to do that and and we we were calculating the numbers thinking the savings it was going to be too you know for us but it didn't end up panning out that way and but it is it's a big benefit i i know personally that people here really appreciate this and and they and i also i have told people look you know it depends it's on we don't give out raises um just because you were here another year and this is one thing that we talk about i've told all employees we're looking at a very large increase in health insurance and what it is and what it is when i did everybody's evaluations this year i said this is your base salary this is what we pay in retirement this is what we pay in um uh you know health and dental our dental fees did not go up and we do tell them and say you know what you want to go somewhere don't be looking at your salary this is your packet you have all the compensation absolutely and that's what i wrote on the back of everybody's evaluation saying this is where you're in contracts you know and somebody on a family plan was actually we all paid the same amount when i first started if you were a single person you had no copay because the person with a family plan but at the time they wanted a family man because he was reliable and a single person was hung over so but and it made it even but towards the end we paid everybody paid 20 but yet the guy that had or the woman that had the family plan they were actually getting like six or seven hundred dollars a month more in benefits than a single person and that's the way it is here and that's the way it was in towns where i've been weren't done the research before and you know it's kind of one of those things that back in the day you went to a town you got low salary but the benefits were good and now people are the wages for us are hard to keep up with you know especially cdl rates so i always lean on hard on the fact that hey let me tell you how much we pay out in your benefits so yeah it may not put bread on the table but it's a big when you go to go to leave go shop around make sure you're looking at the same package yeah i wasn't aware it was like my brother-in-law you're tired and that pension you checked he gets so he's bitching about two dollars an hour less than i can is $1,500 a month more than i'm getting now so really is it worth that two dollars i think so yeah because he again total compensation exactly you really have to look at that and the package that we have um obviously when uh visors is taken out pre-tax so when we draw and we retire we have to pay tax isn't it is there any other differences on here um the health saving plan is a little different no it's a hra it's the same i asked the gentleman at blue cross bushield that's it was a irs rule of time where you couldn't have an hsa if you had an hra and he was kind of looking into it a little bit and how easy is it to just switch plans i'm gonna all write to blue cross bushield i'll let him know and it's it's a lot everybody has to you know all the employees i think the plan i'm getting to is you know i've been but i don't think it's been to enough of these now and yeah you know like when we did this whatever five years ago it actually went well whatever but what i'm saying is it's always like oh look you know five years ago we were like oh look mvp is only seven percent and blue cross bushield is 12 percent right and in the next year it's put you you get you get on with them and all of a sudden their rates go up yeah and you know blue cross bushield might be seven percent this year they might be 13 next year absolutely so it's like at this point i mean it's an undertaking what we may save here which is is not a lot of money when you're talking um i don't know maybe when you're talking how many how many employees do we have on health insurance we have i think i said that let me look i did we have um i did i wrote it to i'm thinking right here um we currently have four family plans and three single plans we only have seven people on insurance right so we got rid of that so right now we're looking at if we made this switch for our budget season yeah we'd save it would potentially save us seven thousand dollars yes in this budget that we're going to propose yep but then it could you know then we could be off by 10 000 the next timer so yeah we've been managed to stick for three years but it's a competitive business it's a competitive industry and so next year if the rates come in then switch back do we have do you have a cause for those insurance companies any no i'm just saying like if it's a pain to yeah swap it over and you know yeah well if we if you decide to switch then i'll let the gentleman know about blue cross blue shield tomorrow and i'm sure he'll send us you know he already sent a sizable package you know it is i mean and then all the employees are gonna have to come in fill all the paperwork out right i don't look at each employee has to go to every place they go to and say oh i got a new card i got you know i mean like oh yeah it sounds like it's not a lot but it is like you go to doctors you know yeah every time i go to cbmc for anything i gotta give them my card yeah it's the same card that i and also too what i well now obvious the only risk here that i cannot say for sure because it's none of my business is is somebody gonna become now their regular doctor out of their provider network i would assume not i would like to assume that all doctors take that take mvp take blue cross blue shield but it's not my purview to know who's someone sees as a doctor that's not my business more the other way around i have no idea i'm just saying that's the i could verify coverage for coverage and i spent a lot of time and the gentleman answered a whole bunch of questions and and i was very helpful but that i can't say but i i mean blue it's hard vermont you have two choices blue cross blue shield mvp done game over unless you're a big company like like where you can you can you're international and you or national and you can you know go outside and get your insurance both we can yeah i mean so i mean in this case i mean if it's the burden isn't too great it's on and you know it'll end up saving us like a third of a penny on the tax rate in place which are the burden falls on you and yeah me or i gotta pass it on we gotta make sure all the paperwork make sure everybody's in and then again i mean next year it could be flip-flopped right so it's yep it's just like anything so i don't know anybody have any but i will say i didn't want to say this is that i made a note here for you but um the town spent 53 percent of our share of the hra so just because you know we pay our share of the hra first um current we pay the first you know 50 percent of their deductible um it does say we've only spent 53 percent of our share of the hra so which is nice to know is that on a fiscal year or a calendar year calendar oh good good yep so um you know so that's something too that's a savings that you do have that i haven't built in here so if you take out that amount of money it drops that percentage even more so is it a hassle to change it's a hassle for us yeah we're gonna have to put somebody not me somebody in charge of making sure everybody's paperwork is in and upload because blue cross isn't sending somebody here to do this sounds like we need a full-time police officer that's also the recreational director who who's got the insurance i think we're almost to that possession and human resources do they have a CDL and they can fly on the wintertime right yeah fly with the blue lights on and they can be a road commissioner blue cross blue cross blue shield that would second okay all in favor all right all right and any of us are here three four years down the road will be discussing you know that right it's about this moment again we'll say it's like why i'm still here well i was let me tell you i could have signed off on mvp but you guys brought it up to like i'm not doing that now all right well uh july blood event stuff and just just a disclaimer just so that individuals know it's it's it's kind of again it's one of those things when these events i mean we have the normal maintenance that goes on in our roads that can be good not so good and the flood events especially when they're large events that come with state or federal dollars to them they they become very convoluted so some of it is just as fast as like the emergency like re-adjugated the storm is go out fix it right and then there's the next phase which is okay you can fix it but only up to this point and then okay everything now has to be bid out so the challenge that we have with the flood event as you see initially it's get people so that they're able to get out of their homes so that's the first piece that's the emergency piece and then the second piece is we have a small window to repair certain projects until they say you can't do that anymore you must bid it so we we did that um yeah you cannot just it's really just yeah so you temporary even just grading or we're putting some bro down to get people out is really where you pretty much had like you know the first let's say a well for us luckily the first two or three days after the event was really the emergency phase of getting people accessibility in and out of their homes all the roads opened up in one manner or another and then you know through july into august was kind of doing what they still call the emergency work so you could literally just go and say okay uh now linley i want you to go up and take care of those two roads and i'm going to send you know trees up to take care of those roads and you start putting people in place and then then once you come to about august is when they kind of put the brakes on they say okay well now you need to go out and all that damage you survey that you haven't done you need to bid it and then it just slows way down um the process just stops and people are like why aren't you guys doing anything you know because you see a lot of work been going on and now all of a sudden stops you go from emergency to like kind of emergent and then of course it kept raining for us and then yeah everything so we're at where at the gate you might have had five contractors on five different roads doing work now you have to bid it so let's say one contractor gets all five things now obviously they're going to do like one before they do the other so there there becomes different you know caveats to the whole thing and and where we're at now is you know we're finishing up on the biddable work um and and then and then to even convoluted a little bit more is we have a piece of roadway in our town that is under federal highway uh Wednesday jurisdiction but they they oversee it um it used to be a you know a corridor road that was 100 federal highway that somehow we got content to taking and we received that and now we're in charge of the maintenance on that road and and so um usually when things happen on that road it's kind of majorly and then there's the the process to do anything at that point is oh we need to get a study and we need to get this and that and before you can change this over so we had to spend a month at least to talk about camp brook so like camp brook was like a month or two just getting yeah all the strings put together to then be able to bid it we did the work about two weeks ago yeah um yeah two weeks ago and then but remember because of that that's since federal highway you have the federal highway people are steering that ship and but as as frustrating as it is you get a hundred percent of that money we're gonna have a million dollars into that road and we as and you know as residents won't pay a dime so it it's it's insane yeah a little bit but a question trees um in all of the stuff with FEMA and federal highway and state etc do you have anything like a spreadsheet oh yeah do we have a spreadsheet that says these are the this these are the the roads that were impacted by the floods and this is when we worked on it and this is when it was done yeah oh yeah that's um let me let me just show you the reason i'm asking here's the picture of that pothole or that wash out is FEMA and that's yeah yeah it's of course like i have a master spreadsheet the the day we rolled it out i had one within a week right so the reason i'm asking uh is because i think it would be helpful in addition to what we're doing now which is uh going back again over all the work we've done is to just say here's the spreadsheet we have 75 roads whatever that we have done x amount of work on these roads are finished these roads are not this is that that to me would be a more effective report on how we've done with the flood damage than even sitting here and going through this is where we are with this road this road this road because it would give me the whole picture sure i have it once right so you could say yeah 40 roads were not touched or were not damaged 30 were 30 we've done 27 but it gives me a so this is progress we've made i can print it for you um for the next pet the next support meeting so i can tell you the progress that we have made and this might not cover all of them because again it's challenging because some of the work got done initially some of it got bit out some of it you know and so we and i and i'm not asking for a verbal report and in fact i'm asking not for a verbal report i'm asking for this is the big picture yeah now we did it what it looks like because that's how we had to submit it to to fema that's how you had to submit it to fema or whatever and then we continue but i just want to make a point here that when like right now obviously i'm in the weeds i mean i work friday i work saturday i'm going on vacation but this there's no other way to say this is asinine what is in here is they have a sheet i have to go through every time card they have a sheet for um labor summary so they have a sheet for equipment summary for material summary so you go through every single payroll i all right so each guy thank they're all good at aj's driving this truck he hauled this amount of material to this road that is a labor sheet an equipment sheet and a material sheet and you have to say where it's going how many hours they work and i'm finally caught up on that how much left and and the only other project in here is there's the smallest folder is woodland so this this is not just what this basically isn't the big stuff no this is mostly stuff that we did what we'd say i just think it's important for people to see that when i say no we can't do that we're not having our first budget meeting until december and i did well aside from chris's green fold the stuff that chris did i've done all that paperwork and so i have talked to the state i talked to fema i talked to uh two rivers and i said you know i'm gonna get all this done in january i'm coming for you because the state of vermont has the software they have on tablets this gentleman showed up god bless him but he showed up working for the state he has a tablet he went out to a site he took photos and that had the photos the gps he put in the measurements and he came up with an estimate we're running around with a slide rule and advocacy and a piece of you know pencil and a notebook out there and the spreadsheet you've seen at this long we go out to every single location we've climbed down banks and you know and you know stepping in holes and there's not and you have to put every single spot beginning ending gps and we do it in pencil the guys come in the gang gave me their section and then i put it into a spreadsheet and i talked to carlos from fema and i said listen there's got to be a better way and he said and he sent me an excel spreadsheet i'm like i already have an excel spreadsheet that i wrote so that i had given to him and so but all these forms and they don't continue so when you run out of lines and then you have all the backup for all these and so and this is i'm this isn't federal highway so i guess i just want people to realize especially the select board that we're doing this all this paperwork and so i have told all state of vermont two rivers somebody else at the state i said i'm coming for you because i want that software you tell us we got to prove this permit that permit we're dylan's rule state then give us the tools that you have to do the job easier all of our employees downloaded excuse me solo cater so we took photos had the gps on them then you come in with your phone you have to upload those to i'm like rubbing two sticks together to start a fire it's the craziest thing so we will be fighting the good fight got all of us it's crazy i'm trying to no minimize yeah it's a myth yeah that's why i'm asking yeah i can give it to you guys when it's back up summary it might be good for you to see it because then you can be like wow well i've noticed just doing payables and payroll one every other week all the time sheets with stuff on it and until july 10th it was just just their hours and now they're you know like aj's and morgan's their little boxes are like how small can they write and the payables with this company and that company and the gravel and and it's just and it has been and it's and then you're trying to track it it was actually funny because the guys gave me you know obviously they were tracking their materials and we had the whole conversation we knew the it was coming we did all of our preparedness up front and then i went through all of their material sheets i knew what we had for tonnage what we had what we bought and i went back to my said i had all clipped together like this and i said here you go doesn't match you i'm done tapping out you figure out where your material is well aj was figured it out he took his truck down and weighed it at the transfer station and he said because he was like are we frightened everything i said i'm off you find it and he said we as we underestimated the amount of tonnage that we were hauling so i was like okay so he came back and then he updated all of his numbers but it's it's just crazy to me and then people like well what have you been doing i'm like well between answering email and doing fema and i just barely caught up on all my grant reimbursements to try to get you know this is we have a 2.5 million dollar water project going and all the other stuff to try to play catch up and uh but it's not so i'm telling you i'm january february we're fighting this fight we're going to legislative breakfast i don't care if we have to camp out of state i want that software and i don't want to just for bethle i want it for everybody because i have talked to multiple towns that didn't have the staff that we have or the ability that we have that we've been through it before and they're really hurting yeah no i'm happy to give it to you oh we have spreadsheets too many because i don't want to add work no no i have it i just yeah it gives me a way to look at the big picture i mean overall we're we're in a pretty good position um we hope to have we hope to have all the work finished by the end of this month um a majority of the work has been finished to date um we have a couple of the bigger projects that are out right now because they had to go through the long bid phase which the most part is impacting camphor throat um we do have a couple of other smaller projects going on that we're finishing some of the other areas um you know that the good thing is some of the areas needed to be upgraded better so we've got that going for us um the the challenge we've had is you know we've had to take our road crew away from doing their normal maintenance basically the whole summer because this happened in july so it's they've had to be assisting other contractors to get the work done so they may be hauling gravel for the day they might be helping out putting stick pipe in the you know so they've been i wouldn't say their whole time but probably half their time has been devoted to fema since july we also now we have we have we've had some contractors coming to do some of the work that we normally would do some some grade and stuff like that that's been going on behind the scenes but but um but again it's just a three-person garage as well so it's um and and most of our contractors are one or two person identities so it's not like they come with 10 people and all the toys they might have you know one or two pieces of equipment they need to help with something or um so i i no i think we you know overall that the work and again fema is like fix exactly what is broken like sometimes it's like well we fix this but this really kind of needs to be done as a result and fema doesn't pay for that so sometimes when you're driving down the road you might say well why didn't they just fix that too well that's because fema doesn't pay for that that would be something that would be on our our dime which at times we have done on our yeah because it makes sense and do it over there but um right so the um when it comes down we'll just say quadrant so like the west quadrant which was uh wittier liliesville ringe their little piece of campbell um that um brink uh those were ones that we had fema associated project stoles have been finished according to fema standards um there's things that we had to touch up there um that we'll try to do um woodland which was you know it's a little animal because that road basically was wiped off the face of the earth that's back together again for now um so that that is done um the uh cleveland brook is which that was another road that was almost wiped off the face of the earth and that was reconstructed and that is all open we should have some garbriles being done at the end of the week to finish that up um oh actually with the the west quadrant was also dunham road which was hit very hard and a little piece uh the tail end of uh sugar hill that we're just waiting for some guard rail there the you know the north road piece which was you know i wasn't directly part of but that that has been done um there were some pieces up in the christian hill section that have been going on finished or almost finished yeah i'm still waiting on perm but that'll wrap up here in the next couple of weeks i hear you i got it it's here must have just came because i the other day i went up you know that that great big long was there oh yeah ours was here we finished up uh the well not finished but working on finishing the p vine sand hill pieces we're just waiting on finishing some grappling um and then um abbott abbott road a little piece of uh older 12 and um fish shale we're finishing now so i i mean i think overall i mean just it it really is um until you've gone through the process quite the undertaking it's really overwhelming when you get going it's it's definitely one of those projects that if you look at it like this you're you're going to be so overwhelmed and probably get anxiety and want to hide under your desk i'm not being critical yeah but when you start but all those little pieces it's like it's just amazing how much work goes into it and talking just with our neighbors not even other towns but just our neighboring towns they're just they're just starting to do some work like they we've been doing work since like you know July and August like they're they're literally just starting to do some work i mean and you know mother nature's knocking on the door so um now i will say that the reason why we are not the two our own horns but we've been through it before so like i guarantee if nobody here had been through it before we'd be struggling and like 2019 you had just come in i'd never done one before i mean it was figured out as we went and and now this time we had kind of our ducks on the road because we knew what they were looking for um but it you know it's one of those things that i think we had talked about the last meeting before of it's definitely one of those things that we need to make sure it's passed down because it's going to continue to happen in this town so we need to make sure that the next administration or the next select board understands that whole FEMA process because it is it's a full time or two full time positions in its own like yeah just to keep up with them and people too you know we do this in the emergency let us not forget you know we had 15 or 17 people stranded like the day we were prepped for the flood we had 15 or 17 people so go with 15 people stranded come Tuesday morning so we're all in here and we're figuring out who is it who do we have to get out first how fast can we get them out by the end of that day we had everybody out but one person luckily that woman was smart she'd been through it before she parked somewhere else so she could kind of hike out so she could get to her car to go where she needed to go but then so we had so we got her out the next so I mean you know when people complain about their road it's like listen you know our first priority is life safety and we were during that storm the fire department was rescuing people in some scenarios where the fire chief was like look you called we came we can't come back for you you come now or you're staying and I won't put men in jeopardy to come back and so you know we had that situation we also had people we were sending our people to Chelsea to help do rescues because Chelsea was having you know issues and um you know so I think people forget that it yeah it's a road and you can complain you're inconvenienced but you know we were saving that had a flood and he died and went to heaven and sat at the party I have I sent a boat I often I like that one but yeah so but I think we are getting there it's it's been a long road to get there and there's clearly going to be things that just you know maintenance stuff that's not going to get done before winter that we'd like him to be done but and I understand that but I know two specific things that are going to cost us a lot of money I mean holes this deep that are when they put snow on them they're going to dry that big fucking hand well if that's per we're we're fixing per um we still have firms on the list Finley's on the list and um there's section on Finley per um and I'm missing one it's done on daring road where Dylan fixed that he did put a head wall on a culvert now there's a big just as big a hole yeah where the truck is going to drive right into that one too all right well I'll let him know daring over a head wall um because was your other one per um yeah that one yeah I know and we'll be done we'll get there it took me a month to get the culvert you just call it deep breaths Dave deep breaths yes that would be my recommendation so uh I know I went and saw them on Friday I knew they were moving so so we're getting there and then you know the campbrook road is the last hurrah I mean it's the biggest of the projects that's going to inconvenience the most amount of people because it's on a major true way over the mountain and just like it's inconveniencing people on the Rochester side if we could are this the detour signs do they begin at the bottom of the hill yep they're both on on the Rochester side right at the green I went to Rochester on Friday and part of my visit was to double check the signage yeah yeah we have big message boards right there and we did reach out to J mcdonald and suggest that they put a road closure at the trailer park or at not sugar farm or sugar house because people could turn around right there so we did make that suggestion but they do voice and king had drafted a traffic plan which the state approved and and um so they're they're managing it I did get a message a couple times that signs have been out as soon as I get the message to J mcdonald they go they go out and deal with it and I still do not have a schedule for the culvert the large culvert will do that they will also do below pond road but I figured they need to get into the top one and figure that out before they're going to give me a schedule in a second they did come in at 244 thousand I have a $200,000 grant you know what it was better than the 600 that I was or more I was looking for you know originally so we had to convoluted anymore so no on camprock road it's it's our responsibility a federal highway kind of oversees it and what happens is if it's something that maybe we should have done that federal highway now doesn't want to take part in so we have a culvert that probably should have had or had deferred maintenance to that should probably have been um maintained better and we had to flood event one of those culverts federal highway now looks in and says that's deferred maintenance we're not going to cover it well because federal highway says they're not going to cover it then FEMA goes that we're not going to cover it either so yeah they don't and FEMA and federal highway even though they're both federal they don't work together so if federal highway covers it then FEMA won't cover or you know and in this case because federal highways through their hands up saying no that's you know then FEMA wouldn't even look at it so it just became ours dumped on our lap to fix yeah you know so luckily we were able to shift around a grant that we were gonna use for p-vine so the p-vine temporary bridge will still be temporary bridge for I don't know I'll write that I'll write that no I'll write this not a structures grant next year well um so we had to shift that and luckily initially they were talking the half a million dollars or more to fix the culvert that we have and then the district was able to um loan us a multi plate a multi plate culvert for there and the contract's doing the upper one's going to do the bottom one for us are they going to come take it back oh what's it what's that's in the ground that they want to come reclaim it it's theirs hey yeah but yeah once we put it in the ground I don't think they're coming to get it but but it these things are crazy like you know 2019 you know we had quite a bit of flooding not on this side scale but I mean we still have a bridge that we haven't put in that's still the works because it just takes forever to get everything it is that's a 1.1 million dollar bridge that will pay 12.5 percent of its panello bridge yeah it'll go in sear it's going out to bid and we're on just time to see it go out again yeah well but can we fill that road up before that happens no you're gonna own it I want to see it's already been done this all this is the same guys that me up yeah all that bridge put a d9 in there for two days drop that riverbed porphy now put a bridge in and forget about it I'll put you in a room along with jaren borg instead of the state and the river engineer I know it's it's I've told me Dave sometimes common sense just left just got on the train and left for months thank you thank you Chris for all your time yeah I mean it's yeah I'm kind of at the end of my rope at this point that's like I'm trying to get things button up at work and yeah then I hurt my arm hammering a grade steak there a couple weeks ago it was it's not town well yeah it was it was I was here great but it was like just overused the year and now well and I just grew up baking for me you know what he was really mad was when he found out that another town hired someone and they're paying that gentleman a percentage of the work I mean we're looking at over a million you know in work and Chris is like this guy's getting a percentage of the guy this guy's this guy's getting the retirement plan so Chris was like next I don't understand why people would do that oh too funny but anything that we didn't cover in the town managers report so there's a couple things one I thought was a really smart comment from a gentleman on sand hill he tuned in via zoom and was listening and he he just he made a really good point sometimes when we're discussing these topics it's not our first visit so it becomes rote so if you are just tuning into a meeting we've been talking about sand hill for you know year year and a half and so if you just tune in we're not really giving any history we're just kind of talking about the aspect that we're discussing so I thought he made a really good point that I think it's something at times we need to be more cognizant of um yes they have the ability to go back and read minutes etc but I think he made a really valid point that sometimes we're speaking about a topic that we're so well versed in we don't think about that so I thought it was a great point and appreciated him saying that um the thing is I'm going to be out of state from Wednesday of this week until Tuesday afternoon so during that time Dave Albergetti the fire chief will be the emergency management director I told him if it something burns he can handle it if it floods he's to call morgan and chris jarvis and I also told the office staff that if they had any issues that couldn't handle it couldn't wait I'm in the past you know when tim was alive he would kind of help them or give them some guidance I told him to call you chris and um if something came up that they knew on duty and say yeah add a tear hour exactly um so the other thing is too that I put in the packet is I'm not saying you have to make a decision about tonight but I really like you to think about it I'd like to talk about the idea of deleting our facebook page this thing I refuse to have one in another town um it just causes so much strife within the office within other staff I think then between I see residents going at each other it's really frustrating and it takes up a lot of time because Kelly or Pam somebody's monitoring it like 24 7 because if there's comments we need to hide or something's going on and you know residents can contact us and receive uh and request information multiple ways town manager's office you know we're both open 8 to 4 but we have voicemail somebody can leave us a message 24 7 they can email us 24 7 people can stop by which they do frequently um they mail us notes sometimes nice sometimes not with their water checks or tax checks or whatever um our website they can um see what's happening there they can read all the committee minute meeting minutes we are currently working on that's right we're working on uh the new site we are a member of um front porch forum residents can also subscribe to front porch forum and the great thing about front porch forum is if two residents say are getting into something front porch forum monitors that and they will kick you out like you know if they you know which is somebody monitoring other than us and um orca has our websites they show they record and show all the slack board meetings people could attend slack board meetings committee meetings agendas and are placed in three places and it's it just has become at times just really frustrating and difficult to manage I want everybody to know everything and if you pick up the phone call me I'll tell you whatever you want to know 99% of what we do is public record and if you want to know I'll tell you I have no problem with that and of all transparency but Facebook can just be so so caustic that and when you're out there saying