folk access to things like furnaces um roxbury roots we're working with um um making food for the food shelf and community dinners there's a roxbury crafters group that we we live in a tremendously vital community that will be devastated economically emotionally aspirations will be leveled if the school closes so i'm pleading maybe not to you i've seen the writing you know i'm not a i'm not a utopian i don't have a utopian fantasy i saw the writing on the wall but i just want to say maybe to the residents of roxbury of of montpelier um please please help us keep this school open for one more year we need more time there has not been enough time the language has been dreadful of peace people in montpelier describing uh roxbury village school as this somehow subsidized as if we we don't pay taxes um and i just want to say and as you mentioned jake about the terrible irony of here act 127 which was supposed to address equity and this is this this is a this a school that needs certainly a lot of health and services is is being really hurt by it so i'm kind of appealing to the the voters of montpelier to say hey you know if you believe in a progressive vision for rural development and growth and sustainability please find a compromise in this budget um at least for this next year thank you hi everyone um morgan loyte ues teacher parent um and taxpayer in montpelier um am i right that the roxbury community voted to pass the budget that's correct i just want to start by thanking the voters in roxbury for um supporting their schools and their school budget um sorry also i really just want to urge we've talked about it here and the the message to the voters of so many school budgets being voted down i really want to urge everyone here to take action all of the thoughts that we have about the problem lying with the legislature and with the funding at the state level are are very supported here in this room but unless we take action to make our voices heard and contact our legislators and contact the governor who won't be listening anyway but i i really just want to urge everyone listening online and everyone in the room to take some action today to urge our legislators to fix funding for school education or for schooling in vermont um i also want to urge the board not to make a decision to close roxbury village on short notice the last time that you met you made a decision to form a committee to investigate i really believe that this irreversible decision deserves um deserves a process and a timeline that's respectful of the students in that school and of the staff in the community who has supported that school and now ours as well um i shared joe's concern about riffs and i think that's unavoidable at this point but i believe that that uncertainty um will not only make showing up for work difficult but i really believe that we will lose the high quality staff because when everyone gets a rift notice you start to feel like your position is not so certain there's probably some good communication for our administrators to do around that to try to reduce the impact of this budget situation finally i just want to end by asking you know in that slides that will be shared there are so many things i don't know what the dollar amount is that we could save but there are so many creative ways to save money that i'm not seeing in these slides and so i want the board to ask questions about things like increasing class size at the elementary level that's what i know best multi-h classrooms um what when i started in montpelier roxbury schools montpelier public schools um ues was a k5 school with declining enrollment do we have space to make ues k5 again and hold six through 12 at montpelier high school could we look at closing the middle school as opposed to roxbury village school do we have the capacity to house our students in another way what opportunities does our district have to generate income whether that's through tuition students or international students renting spaces these are questions that i would like the board to ask um before we look at cutting positions closing schools and reducing services for kids in our community thank you anyone else in the room i'll give another shot i'd like to thank you by the way for your comments because i think there are a lot of things that could be explored before you take the drastic action to close the school there's been i don't know how many times i've heard it that all the roxbury kids could get just as good or a better education experience at ues than they can in rvs well that's just not true um i don't think the ues kids take forest walks and have science in the forest or um you know go ice skating on their own ice skating pond you know i don't think they do those things and but roxbury kids do you know we have a new park right across the street from the school where they'll be able to have classes in the in the gazebo or or doing things that you know that you don't have access to here so we have an excellent program in roxbury and you're not going to save i've said this a hundred times you're not going to save the money you think you're going to save because at least 500 000 of what you attribute to roxbury is not going to go away that money is going to just be reabsorbed and you're still going to pay it it's liby salary it's her staff salary her her salary for for roxbury not her salary but her staff is uh oh what is it four hundred and forty five thousand dollars for the little three room school roxbury four hundred and forty five thousand dollars for your office in addition to that is operation maintenance services that's for mowing the lawn i guess and you know cleaning the building seventy seven thousand dollars you're going to get rid of those guys no they're going to come back and go to work here the the guy that mows the lawn comes out from montpellier mows the lawn comes back he's not going to go away those costs are going to be ongoing you're not going to save 1.5 million like people in montpellier want to throw around it just isn't going to happen in addition to that you know if you close ues nobody would even know it it's not a back street nobody even looks at it you know unless you live next door it could fall down you wouldn't even you know nobody in montpellier would care really certainly i wouldn't if i was driving through town you would never see it but in roxbury what are we going to do with that building it was built as a school building it was paid for when we joined with you guys we took on a portion of your debt and we've been paying a portion of that debt for the last five eight years or however it's been are we going to get any money back are you going to buy us out of this contract or are you just going to oh well we'll give you the building back for a dollar you know it's just not going to work you need to give us time to work out what we can do and how we can maintain that building because the cost of the cost of educating a kid in roxbury according to liby's slide 20 which jim says is meaningless you did say that the other night monday you said these numbers are meaningless it says but this number for roxbury is five thousand dollars more per kid than ues now that's probably just bussing you know what's five thousand dollars per kid and you know and our our numbers are going up your numbers are going down you know so you need to think long and hard about what you're actually saying and and people in long pillion need to think long and hard about what they say and how derogatory they are towards the town of roxbury you know we got forced into this merger we didn't have a choice we thought we were getting a good deal but if i can guarantee you the townspeople who voted on it never knew that we were going to get that you the decision to close it was going to be made by this board nobody in town knew that except for those people who were negotiated it was not widely known thank you ah yes we have three people on two people online um tim and melissa tim hi there can you hear me yeah um thank you all this is a really important meeting and very long um but i appreciate it uh this is tim synnet the father of two boys in ues and ms ms and i'm up with your resident um if we're setting the record straight as john wefrey wanted to do earlier this evening i would like to point out that the closure of roxbury village school was certainly discussed during the merger committee work uh meaning that meaning that closing rvs was not at all off the table they have a much larger longer comment so that i'll be emailing you all plus john and liby um but i just wanted to point to one quote from the minutes of february 6 2017 uh roxbury montelio school consolidation study committee of which john glee fray was chairperson in those minutes it says chairperson glee fray said that he is not interested in seeing rvs closed and that the distance from montelio would help keep the the building open because no one wants to bus young children large distances whereas if roxbury emerged with northfield it might be considered acceptable to bus young children to northfield i was going to read that again but i think i'll just let that sink in for a second um so chairperson glee fray himself discussed the possibility of a roxbury village school closure and i would argue that his calculation in that comment was both risky and more importantly manipulative thank you all for your time tonight and much appreciation for the week ahead thank you chairperson i would i would like to remind the public to please keep comments as impersonal as possible and then based on the facts uh i i i no i appreciate that i just i just i'm not sure i'm not sure it's helpful to say things like i think it's great to point out that comment and then it was okay i let me let me just say one last thing which is i think that john should apologize to tina munsey thank you yeah no john did the same thing and i think the reminders should go to john i and i i know it's it's it's there are other community members who who've said things this is hard i think we should trust that the intentions of everyone are are are are good and above board uh no sorry to call you out tim it's just i i don't know that's fine yeah i think it's good to point out that that it was discussed and john probably knew it at the time whether he was being manipulative or not i think is something that that hopefully and i think this for everyone i i think if we can avoid those characterizations i think we all have a better discussion um because there's a lot of misinformation out there so so um melissa yeah i know and thank you tim and i didn't mean to call you out i i apologize for that but i just wanted to use that opportunity to point out that if we can for everyone if we can keep keep it from being personal i think we'll all be better off uh melissa yes can you hear me yes all right thank you um i appreciate the comments that i heard from christin as well as some others uh tonight i think the busing situation as it was somewhat brushed off of the logistics and put on to the bus company i think uh needs to be at the forefront um i do not agree with kids kindergartners getting on the bus at 6 30 in the morning i also recognize i'm an aot person 32 miles of our town is back roads 10 miles of our road is pavement that bus never leaves pavement let that sink in 32 miles of people drive their kids to meet that bus multiple miles very few kids get to walk home and most of our kids don't use the bus because their parents already have to put them in the car to drive them to the bus stop so why not leave a little later and just drive them to school those same students will not be able to be dropped off at their houses at the end of the normal school day they will their parents would have to meet them at the end of the road because over 50% of our bus stops are road intersections they are not houses i know this is the case obviously in my appeal year but i watch i follow one of those buses every day when i pick up from main street and those students walk through two or three houses down to their house that is not the case with roxbury students that is why we have a robust after school program because those kids cannot go home and given the competitive nature of part two and other options and my appeal year for after school care it is my opinion you cannot absorb those kids into those programs with the timeline we are giving and those students then will have nowhere to go after school because we rely very heavily on the after school program in roxbury it's hard enough with middle school and high school students who also cannot walk home because they're walking seven or eight miles some of them that is just ridiculous and we already have to find options for those students to be picked up by other individuals or try to find activities after school that align with the bus that is provided you're now going to double that logistical nightmare for families when you add elementary school students into that thank you thank you um we have one more uh jacklyn sorry if i'm just pronouncing your name i'm looking at a zoom it's fine hi everyone jacklyn frazier i am also a roxbury school graduate i went to u32 high school and i have been abroad for the last 10 years and i moved back to roxbury i was not expecting to have my children be in a local school here but i've been incredibly thrilled with the results of them having attended the school i have a seven year old and a fourth grader who'll be heading into mom piliar next year i'm i'm exhausted i don't know how else to say it other than i am just exhausted with the back and forth just like i'm sure all of you are i'm a single parent i want to know what's happening next year so i make decisions that will allow me to take care of my children because as melissa just said i don't know what to do with them after school if i'm if i have to be responsible for them knowing we had already gotten a grant for after school programs next year knowing that i have to be there for my seven-year-old kid who by the way good luck to the bus driver who's going to have him on her bus her bus for an hour and a half i wish her the best of luck on that i do wonder what the plan is for other young children to be on that bus because they're going to need a lot of support um so i i'm just you know i want this to be wrapped up and as efficient a manner as it can be so that we can try to make the plans necessary to to deal with this major upheaval in our lives and as a graduate of roxbury of course i mean i can speak to all of my colleagues in roxbury school who've gone on to do amazing things we all came from a very tiny school but it was that um niche and that really special unique element of having it been such a small school that allowed us to spread our wings so broadly so thank you for your time thank you um i think that was the final uh hope to comment thank you thank you everyone um so in terms of our next steps my suggestion i'm happy to um have it amended is that we give libya some parameters of i think a slightly more formal budget presentation um i think we probably want multiple options my initial option is that you build on the three that you presented tonight and go into a little more depth and kind of put it kind of a little you know in the form that you put the original budget presentations in so we can really see it um and i know that you have christina back uh which i think will be helpful because i know she's just wrapping up her vacation so that would be my suggestion i don't know if people have other suggestions or more specific things you want to see i mean i think one one question that might be good for me to see is the came up is um your confidence level of of a transition if we do send you kids to us having things like part two will there will there be space okay um like having some answers to you know the house on that um i don't know if i'd have to be able to do that in a week yeah i mean like some of it like would we have space for you know take the transportation question can we get them there can we can we house them after school and not all the particulars but are there any big obstacles that you see yeah gotta stand up and scott go ahead scott yeah uh liby i know you had like less than 24 hours to put that presentation together and i really appreciate um for the next one um if you could be consistent in the scenarios the way that you describe so i think if i remember correctly in the first scenario you had things like fte's and then the second one you had a broken down by spending category um and so it's hard to compare sort of apples to apples that way um so as best as you can be consistent across the options would be my um request um and i also again know that you're you know working more than over time on this so i appreciate it yeah um i was just saying and thinking as you were asking for those other details that to me feels like the work we would be asking the committee to do to look into transportation after school options so i'm not sure we'd want to include those in the budget conversation i i think i mean the reason i have it is because if if we do opt to send ues students starting in fall i i think liby knows enough to know that like hey there's no way we can get that or like yeah we yeah as you know it's kind of the answer to chris chris and throw their question yes we have an existing bus we have room out of us i mean like the part two question like if there's a if there's gonna be an after school care problem do we know that immediately i mean i think the committee knows that i'm not sure we can get the committee to answer those questions if we have to pass a budget in three weeks i mean and if there's a major hurdle i would say that if i knew of a major hurdle right now i wouldn't be presenting it as an option to the board okay i guess i'm just thinking jim i we have heard from people who have deep concerns about the tax implications of a budget that was the size that we proposed and even maybe a little bit smaller we've also heard from people who have deep concerns about the life implications of making a decision that is irreversible to close a school within one month's time and i think that one of the things that has gotten challenging about these conversations is that we start to go down different tangents like should we put kindergartners on a bus when what we're really trying to do is figure out what the budget looks like and i understand that those are interrelated but we have also heard from members of both communities telling us take your time on a big decision like that and so i think it's more valuable for us as a board to look at the budget scenarios regarding the numbers that they represent and not the details of like what would it take to make it work if we were to close roxbury village school so i would rather that we but i think it's important that we have some knowledge about what those numbers mean and and i mean we can't make them in a vacuum we can't i mean we could just say liby find 1.5 million that you want and we'll pass it except that liby just told us if she if she saw a major hurdle to it she wouldn't have put it forward yes and good information to have yeah absolutely and so i think it's more our role to look at the numbers in the big picture and as liby said at the beginning of the budget conversation decide as a board what we think a renewed budget going back to our voters and another effort could pass and maybe there are board members who think a budget that looks more like 700 000 cuts really would pass maybe there are board members who say no way i think we got to go to 1.5 million maybe there are board members here we haven't discussed it and we're not going to tonight who say actually it should probably be 2.2 million that third scenario is looking pretty good to me because i'm really concerned about tax increases and i don't think it's worth us to get into the details of how would it work i think that is putting the card for the horse and i'm not i'm not finished and i think that there it's just my two cents as far as whether or not it makes sense to have that big decision happen within a month is that it would be really valuable to go through a full process which we have already begun and have that kind and ask the committee to dive into those questions and not do at the board level because this is what we have established and when when we look back on big decisions that we have had to make as a board i've only been here three and a half years but we've had some pretty big ones the times that we have taken our time like with school safety and really run a process we have been able to make to do the due diligence that it takes to make the best decision for our community and when we haven't run a real process we find ourselves with the decisions not fully embraced by the community and this is a decision that has way higher stakes than any of the other ones that we have considered before and feels valuable for both of our communities to do that due diligence and i don't think having the conversation about whether or not we can put kindergartners on the bus next week is the right time to have that conversation so i i think we just need to be looking at budget scenarios but how can we look at budget scenarios without knowing the implications of those budget scenarios because all of the things she put have different implications there are all all these decisions are going to be rushed you have the slide five that wasn't closing rocks break that's going to have implications it's going to have a different set of implications and those implications we're going to have to live with them closing rocks break is going to have implications it is going to have a different set of implications in slide five and we're going to have to live with them we have to make a rushed decision either way and we have to have some education on what the implications of those various decisions are it's not just about a number there's there are impacts behind those numbers and how we cut and where we cut and the choices we make are going to have lastly all of these all these decisions are potentially irreversible so i think we have to have some awareness of where the potholes are with all of these and and that's why i do want to point out that the thing you were asking about as far as awareness goes only pertained to closing rocks break village school just now when you were saying can you give us some scenarios of what it would look like to transition that's what i mean by when by putting the cart before the horse yes but we got some questions about that and some legitimate questions like you know like after school care is a big deal i you know i would love to hear more about the implications of getting rid of the ms ms bus as well so um yeah time is time it's late um and i know we talked about circling back to the committee and then mea you just brought it up and and margan brought it up before i think i think we need to make some decisions about the committee and let the committee do its work i know our time is short um i i don't know if it's possible i i heard joe's comment and just the idea of rift notices going out to all of the teachers is just just destroys me to my core can we not like perhaps work with the union to reopen that clause of the contract such that we can not send rift notices until maybe the end of april or you know like we're talking about trying to be flexible and the importance of of the process and yet i think it's just it's a little disingenuous to be into entering into the conversation about closing uh the roxbury village school after we just developed a process through which we all agreed we would go through before making a decision um so so i i do think we need to act um the committee as quickly as possible and do whatever we can to hold off on um on making a decision until we have the information that we need and again i don't know if it's possible i don't know what the implications are or even if it's possible to reopen the contract but but have those conversations and and then decide at this point we already know that we're gonna have we're past the march 30th deadline so so maybe we can hold off on sending rift notices to all our teachers um and give us some time to get into the end of april perhaps and let the committee meet for a month and go through the process and get the community input that we we said we all wanted yeah would um maybe i do appreciate the budget scenarios you put forward but i think one of the inadvertent sort of ways that that got teed up was it's sort of you know you had the cut Montpelier slide and then you had the cut ropster slide and it kind of i think teed up a bit of a combativeness between the two ideas and i think i wonder if we can have more of an a la carte options list kind of in the vein that scott suggested with numbers that were consistent across so we had a framing of you know fte's or this that whatever you can find but in a way that was we could understand it as compared to other options and just see a list of areas and sort of what the impact of that would be you know bullet or two right now seeing it as a package sort of package one versus package two doesn't doesn't quite feel right to me and i think while i understand that to realize the savings for you know if you're if you're trying to grab one point five million dollars at once there's a scenario where a lot of these have to come together i get that i think i'd rather look at a list that was um that we could understand and maybe have then have the discussion amongst the board to say okay well we think that this might be an area this might be an area we might end up in the place where it's you know if there is there is will to grab the one point five million dollar chunk but i i i really don't feel like and i recognize you know me has been here for three and a half years i've been here about three and a half hours so i don't have a lot of the background to understand and it may be obvious to everyone here but i can't based on what i've seen tonight make reasonable decisions and so i wonder if a more a la carte presentation would be helpful and if you have a timeline where we have specific questions what would that be so that we can kind of feel ready for the next conversation can't do that uh the challenge is that to get two numbers that i believe we need to get to to pass a budget you're talking about a significant number of fte so what you would see is 15 fte from mre mre yet i can't i can't do that from well you did that three in your slide yeah so it would be a bigger number right so then where would the the next logical question that i know these school board members will ask me is where is where they come from that position i guess i would i would ask that sort of we have the chance to do the math on that and say if we can just figure out well what is your sort of you know fte cost and then what's you know how many do you think like it's i'm not advocating that this is sort of an fte based approach in any way shape or form i just want to see a list because right now i just see a couple of sort of all or nothing scenarios that i'm not sure i guess i want to think a bit more whether there's different options between those it does feel like it can be broken down into a la carte pieces that feels like a single concept right and slide seems a little like roxbury some variation again because it could be like fight you couldn't could be roxbury roxbury is a truck yeah no i get i totally get that certain decisions might have to be carry and if we see a consequence but right now for example you know presumably there might be something small at roxbury in the same way that there are some at mom peeler that i just want to see that out because right now unless what the message is is that we really only have choice a or choice b and we can't consider putting that package i think it's really important for us all to remember in this conversation that there are roxbury students at msms and mhs as well and they would also be negatively impacted by any cuts to staff um and then two um i think if there was some hidden mattress with money in it we would have found it by now i you know we just we spent so much time and i just i have so much respect for liby in our leadership team which very clearly has spent so much time on this like i don't think we're going to find another answer i think we've been told that we have to make something a pretty serious decision in a pretty short period of time because we answer to the taxpayers and i don't i don't know if slicing this differently or showing and i i agree it would be great to have like more but and but there's only 24 hours in the day but i mean that's just the reality is we have to find a way to get a budget that will actually pass in mhs and i don't know how many different ways we can slice it because we are still one district we are not mhs Roxbury we are Montpelier Roxbury and the students are all together at msms and mhs and those teaching cuts would directly impact students in both towns in all four buildings so it's not an either or either way we're going to have to make a really hard decision that's going to hurt our entire district and but we don't have a choice between how the funding works and what the voters are able and willing to pay you're going to i just think we're i don't think there's some hidden way around this i guess it's interesting right curious what the situation where if there is in fact a grant funded after school program at rbs if there's a combination of rbs students what that might look like with rbs students at us and then doing the after school program at rbs because a lot of what we're losing is community and that and that vitality and i'm not saying that that's going to be a choice that the board would make but i'm really i personally would would really like to see what that might look like as an option because um that would that might it's you know it wouldn't it wouldn't be as cost saving i understand but if there's a big grant that's kind of already in the works i don't you know for the after school program there's no known use for the building other than our kids um i would really like to see that as a temporary a possibility put in for the after school program we have not heard whether i think it was due today so we haven't heard whether or maybe friday haven't heard whether we got it or not but we did put in for it i mean it would be money that we would be i don't know what you know like if we did get it then it's already there so as a scenario i'm curious what that might look like i would be sitting there as i'm not going to cost because i back two is 90 a week and i part two yeah and i that's more than a 20 increase in in my income it's also a subsidized program so yeah well it's not going to help it's got yeah just another you know thought about creativity um you know i know before cobit there was lengthy conversations around um like a language immersion program i know a lot of montpellier residents that would gladly put their kids on a bus for 45 minutes to roxbury to be able to be in a language immersion program and i i i remember the conversation distinctly about not talking about closing roxbury village school but about educating our our roxbury residents the k through four roxbury residents at ues and so and so yeah i just i those are the kinds of things that i think the committee could could get into and again why i think it's so important to have those conversations and and not just rush the decision at the board level um yeah so again like we've talked about different ways to be creative and and i want to want to see those um those scenarios play out so that we're not just closing a school but perhaps reinvigorating the community i don't want to i don't want this comment to sound like i'm against roxbury village school in any way shape or form it's one of my four babies so i don't want anybody to take it as that um however this board is in a position where you need to cut costs like we need to get the tax rate down and so that is that quite honestly to sound heartless a little bit is your main task right now yeah is that we have to get the tax rate down and that means we have to cut costs uh it's getting late so i saying something stupid um but you know i i originally was for the deliberate approach of forming the committee and taking a year um but what happened between then and now is our budget was defeated um so it's a it's a different landscape and as you said we do have to cut costs um and what's occurring to me is that this feels ultra rushed and it's pretty awful um but what would be even worse is if roxbury roxbury village school starts up in august and there aren't enough staff and at that point it has to the decision has to be made that would be a hundred times worse than this and that's my fear um so that is where i am at so um i was going to propose i do realize that it's late i think we have identified that the committee would be useless useful see it's late i'm saying something stupid useful no matter what yes and so i think it would be worthwhile to name to nominate the or i forget exactly to committees do we nominate maybe i'll just use it to nominate the people on this board who will serve on the roxbury village school future committee whatever it's time to call it and we can get started on staffing that up with the community members as well by putting the notices out if you know if you're interested send us the letters of interest and the board can decide by the march 20th meeting who's going to be on that committee and at that point if there is some sort of decision that is somewhat final for roxbury village school which i truly hope there is not by march 20th um then the committee can have a different task ahead of it than we originally intended but it is my hope that that committee will follow through on the deliberate process that we set forth and i would like to get either way i would like to get that committee going sooner rather than later yeah i i agree that the the committee has purpose regardless whether it's whether it's a how or and i don't think we have to take too long tonight to put the board members on the committee yeah we can do that i first let's see if let me have some clarity so i think what we want is kind of a a version of what you put together tonight um i need to know what how much you want to i need to know what i'm going for the dollar figure or like a tax rate increase that the board would be comfortable for me to get around now the tax rate could change because as my friend jake will tell us that dollar yield's not set yeah so like a range of what you think the voters will vote yes on is really what we need just for the roxbury voters did so i i also so i'm kind of looking to our our montpelier folks and you are more attuned to your community members and what they are asking of us so i would ask you all where do you think montpelier folks want to land i i there's no crystal ball but even if it's a range yeah it's hard to say because without the range i don't know what i'm doing i mean i can present something to you and it's going to work for some of you and it's not going to work for other people and it's not going to be enough for it's going to be too much or so i need i need something to go on here um you know with regards to the yield um it's going to go up i don't know how much but um you know i have a company yield cheer that the two of us do every morning together um you know so many budgets were defeated around the state and as those are revised that actually increases the yield for everybody um so you know i i guess i'm asking like can we just assume a higher yield and plug it in well you and i were talking about that and i'm kind of going with that 10 000 number yeah let's use that is that realistic yes yeah is it low is it what seems like could it be higher could it be 11 maybe 12 if they put a new revenue source into the ed fund it would go higher but that's sounding maybe not so likely so so 10 sounds consider realistic realistic yeah yeah i mean i think it yeah um i can you that's what jake and i've already talked about is is assuming it's going to be around 10 000 and that helps it does i mean i think if we could bring the rate into the mid to low teens that would be i think that would show a really solid effort to it would still be much higher than we've seen in past years but i think that would show a really solid effort to bring it down 24 is that 10 or less i was thinking 10 or less i think mid teens i don't know it's still low teens i mean 10 or less is getting yeah i know that's how much 255 is the third scenario yeah it could be very low teens like 11 so maybe really quickly what was the second scenario the second scenario was a cut of 1.5 million dollars yeah and what was the projected tax indication was about 12 yeah percent increase sorry yep right side um the second the second slide was 1.975 million oh that's right and it was a tax increase in Montpelier with a $9,775 yield at 11.69 percent thank you we were we were it was supposed to be 24 percent like a couple weeks ago yeah yeah i think that's what ultimately that's the order yep with the lower yield and we're still in a place where $500,000 is a somewhat somewhat equivalent to three cents in Montpelier should be still still around that so a one million dollar cut without rocks per unit million dollars with rock you know one point whatever it is you know this i don't know that this slide number six can just go away but maybe there's a high number with this is an option and i don't know is there a way to find a million dollars just as an option not as a just to put it out there so that we can so why don't we just do around the room what people sense are of where we need to get Montpelier's tax rate this is because Roxbury actually starts going to negative with some of the bigger cuts it sounds Kristen well well i mean i'm not going to say you know an 11 percent tax increase for Roxbury is very real for some folks so i mean i'm not saying some Roxbury folks could also appreciate you know a decrease um you know it did pass it passed by 34 votes so it's not like you know 55 percent of the voters voted yes 45 voted no so it was not a landslide right so um so i mean as as far as Roxbury goes you know an additional decrease of one to two percent i mean as as you know take a look at but you know it did pass so and there's a lot of you know there's a lot of things motivating Roxbury for that budget to pass well i also want to point out that if we do send rvs students to ues even though the tax implications of Roxbury may go down the no votes may go up i said even though the the tax implications of Roxbury may go down there's a chance that the no votes may go up right what's your sense i i would like to see a scenario without rvs students going to ues i would like to see a scenario where the building is utilized for after school and i would like to see a third scenario that cuts a million dollars just i don't know yeah i mean because can you get to 1.5 without rvs i'm sorry are we talking about substantive ideas for reducing or are we talking about kind of like number palatable a validable tax increase that that that voters are like okay like what's what's the number that that voters 1.4 gets mobiliar down to 11.69 1.4 and spending plus that's $575 plus all right so it's like two million that's two million gets you down to 11.69 yeah i don't know if i can say anything that makes any sense at this point i'm sorry it's okay i think you know given that we were at 24 percent if we could now if we could make it 12 percent ish that would be meaningful um and you know that's that's right that's what i think the the conversations that i was having leading up to the vote and the emails that we were getting and the posts that i was reading on front porch forum i did not see very many numbers mentioned what i saw were principles and there were a lot of people who made the case that voting no would mean that we would have to revisit the the the conversation of merger with u32 or or closing roxbury and so i get the impression from from all of those bits of information that it's it's not necessarily the the percent figure so much as the decisions that we make and so if we decide to not saying that i'm supporting this but if we decide to educate the k4 roxbury students at ues and that only results in a 16 percent or that results in a 16 percent um tax increase i i think we'll get a lot of people that will support that budget because we closed the we decided to close the school now i'm again not suggesting that we should do that but i i guess that's evidence for me that it's not so much the the percent value so much as it's it's what those specific um decisions that we make um represent so i don't know that helped at all um but but i think it's a very observation yeah which is why i think us throwing out percentages tonight is just a guess i think it's just a guess i think i know that's what you're asking for libya i'm sorry yeah so realities we have to get a printer to print what we're asking for in three weeks so it's not ideal but i think we that's what happened when our budget got voted down now this is how we have to do it i mean i i think the important thing is that we we show that we are making hard choices and being responsible to the very real financial concerns of this community um and i think that's the point is to adapt that i think that's what i heard is it's yeah it's time to to make some some tough choices and to acknowledge that we're not playing with monopoly money if you want a number i think i think if we can get in the 10 to 12 percent range i think that's pretty safe and i think that i i don't think we can do that without making the type of choices that people are asking us to make would you say went already i did um i so what got voted down yesterday was like 23 24 percent so i'm sort of with jake and the 12 percent 12 to 14 i think it would show a very real response to that and it's a very real amount of money um but i'm really concerned by going below 10 or to 8 because looking at what 8 percent increase still increase gets us is a really um really ripped apart district and i don't i don't want this situation to make us do something so drastic because once we do something we can't undo it so if we're losing educators and we're closing buildings and everything like that um and it still leads to a tax increase and that feels futile so i feel like 10 to 12 to 14 at the most the private palatable when you said 10 or less um yeah i'm i'm closer to the 10 um and possibly because i'm the oldest person on the board and probably the only person on the board who's on a fixed income and so i hear from people like that and um you know it's a reality in my failure my failure is becoming a very unaffordable place to live for many people and the school tax is a huge part of that so um i think and and you know that compounds every year it's not like we're going to increase decrease our budget a whole lot next year it's going to be added on to what we already add on this year and so every year it just becomes this heavier and heavier burden for people so i think we really have to think about that and my my failure has a pretty high population of people who are over 65 yeah i think i really agree with what scott said um i think it's for sort of what what we're seeing is doing then a certain number i want to be really cautious about overreacting to this if if you know this board thought um that the budget passed uh that the budget recommended was responsible i want to make sure that we're not overreacting and and taking too much from this vote in a way that's going to make irreparable change um so you know while i certainly want to be low 20 i don't i i don't want to i don't think that's ultimately the message that is going to get through i think we you know so one thing i've been thinking with um discussion about where to educate kids from robsbury is is um it seems like there's not been direction on that question and all of a sudden we're going from not really engaging with that question to you know thinking about answering it within a couple weeks and that that's a little concerning to me the speed there um i'm really concerned about that pace um and i heard i watched the the discussion about establishing the committee that i i don't think that sort of endless discussion about you know what to do on the matter is appropriate either but i i think that i'm really uncomfortable with making a decision of that consequence in this short period of time and i wonder if there's some ability to signal we heard from a few people that you know even the year is really important and i want to think on that more about whether or not there's a way to signal a direction maybe focusing more on the how as opposed to the weather and um really understanding what the um what our position is with our existing fund balance how that can be utilized because i do see the potential for a bridge if there is a substantial cost saving and there's a direction clearly articulated by this board where that could be utilized in the short term and you know if there is general consensus that it change might be in order um there may be savings in the subsequent years so it's not to create any kind of shock i think i'd like to explore that issue a little bit more but i don't have like a specific number give me a chat see what i can bring to you i i'm hearing i'm hearing in the fuzziness something around 12 yeah that's whatever with the what's matter um i think we can name two members of the to the committee now um we're all slightly zombie like uh or heading to that direction um i'll just open it up for our discussion guys i think we do we say two or four i think that's four two from up yeah so that's we're done i'll wrap that we're done on the roxbury side that that's that's easy uh assuming you guys want to leave can i still in pumped um uh who from the bumper i i was on the merger committee i would be happy to step up again um i mean i i i want to do it the acknowledgement that i have put some language out there that we need to think seriously in this budget cycle about whether or not we send students to ues and perhaps before the committee has a chance to decide that so um i i if if that makes me seem prejudiced i i just want that out there i i um because i know others have have maybe not stated um but i would be willing scott i think i've probably shared privately with about half the folks um on the board that i'd be more than happy to represent mom hillier and lin did i hear you say you're yeah i'd be interested and you know i i do empathize with the situation in roxbury i don't i don't want it to be a shock and i also realize that we have to figure this out and so i would like it to be um an honest process right that kind of values everybody involved you know and i have very much of that vote too i mean i when i was part of the merger committee i mean i i was really i've always been impressed with that school and impressed with that town and uh i ideally would would love to keep that school open i think closing is is the worst possible option we have except perhaps for all the rest um and i i've just i'm very cognizant of that so i'm happy to have it be scott and lin i have it to be some combination of whoever but it seems like one of the three of us and i will let the board make a decision about that but we have our roxbury folks chosen um i'm i'm happy to have it be scott or me and lin or me and scott or okay well i'm just gonna make a nomination um i nominate jim and lin um i do appreciate scott your willingness to step forward i think there's the perspective of that you have the historical perspective jim of having been worked on having worked on the merger um and and lin i think your perspective as as you've said maybe the only person on the board on a fixed income um do those two combinations i think are very helpful perspectives to have in the conversation but i do appreciate you offering scott but that's my nomination so or my motion any discussion or objections i i'm not sure that yeah jim i appreciate you the historic perspective but times are very different now and the context is very different now um and you've been pretty vocal um over the last couple of weeks about your perspective um and yeah and so that that would be my concern um so i want to voice it and i think it's i think it's a valid concern if the rest of the board is is simply a concern i'm happy to step aside i am i mean i mean it when i say you know i i would like that school to survive i am just being very realistic about what our budget situation is and what our choices are and i think my the fact that i've i've been involved with that school for for four or five years is is is part of of that perspective i think um from reading the post on front porch forum we do have some constituents who have that perspective of um wanting to see things move along um i think it's a quick turn around myself but i realize we're we're in a bad spot here and we really need to talk about it and figure it out yeah and i'm gonna i don't have a and i think some of the front porch forum perspectives and some others are very unfair i mean you know and wrong yes uh you know roxbury is not subsidized by paul failure the i don't think there's any objection there from a educational perspective to go into us i think it's it's concerns about their community and the centerpiece of their community and you know it's that's a it's a very important part of that town and we have very hard choices to buy jim thank you for for bringing that up about front porch forum and and i i should have started by saying i also would feel comfortable with a combination of uh glenn and scott or jim and lin or scott and jim i think those are the three possible combinations so i apologize for not for not starting with that comment yes um should should we move this to a vote or do people want to amend or change it i just think the last thing i'd like to add to the discussion part is that i think it's really important that anybody who joins the committee i think it's impossible to have zero percent bias coming into this we all have an experience and so i think we should just take that off the table as a possibility but i think that there needs to be a commitment to anybody who is going to serve on this committee whether it be a board member or a community member that they are going to lead with curiosity and really good hard questions and not coming into this process with a foregone conclusion or decision and so i just i want to make i want to get that out there and it has been challenging at times jim i will say that it sometimes does feel like there is a um an opinion that you hold about what is best for the roxbury school and i could say if you're going to serve on this committee that you put that aside and that you be and yes the perspective is is super meaningful and helpful and historical i mean it's very that is very very real and i appreciate that and i also want to make sure that whomever i am serving on this committee with is going to come to this work um with a commitment to to put the bias aside as much as humanly possible knowing it can't completely go away so i just want to have that i just want to remind people too we have this conversation at the last meeting which is the committee does not decide the board decides what happens i mean our job as i see it is to figure out the process for this happening in the least painless and most beneficial way to everybody right well it's but it's not i just want the committee is not for the purpose of my reason to make a recommendation is what we last discussed on the future of the roxbury village school it's not a transition planning committee it's a committee that's really the purpose is is to deliberate the future of the building and where roxbury elementary age students are best educated so is that correct yeah okay should i move to vote all those in favor of me as nomination or motion motion okay oh hi hi sorry um me as nomination with i nominated jim and lin to serve on the roxbury village school committee all right and are we doing a different vote for a different configuration nope no just that just a configuration um i can vote yes or no yes you're allowed to you were sworn in so you can vote oh yeah you couldn't stay yes um and there will be no other configuration that we're voting on if it goes oh i think we have formally dominated your point we heard it if we if we don't vote in favor of what my motion was then we could try a different configuration but it's also i think we did that last meeting so right now it's just jim and lin serving as the montpelier representatives on the roxbury village school committee i'm going to say all those in favor i did say all those oh i don't do hey guys i said i guys i got three or four eyes jake jake is is wondering what his choices are uh and i'm not sure red or christin have spoken up yet so they may be okay guys okay one one two three four so we've got oh okay eight of 16 votes um i think i think it counts one vote we count us two oh right that's what you did eight got it got it thank you so your vote would carry so we need we need one more vote and and i if if another configuration makes sense awkward uh but um can i vote pass you know that that's staying awful for yay okay wait if you got this morning okay you can't vote but i love you so much do you want do you want me on the committee or not i mean i'm gonna be honest i think i could be a fair broker i'd be i wanted to start this conversation four or five years ago because i wanted to find a path to save roxbury i i've said what i've said because i think we're at a really hard place i would be very honest i think of all the cuts out there it has the least impact and i think the path to save roxbury for long term is very narrow and i would hate to see us take a hatchet to things that are going to have a longer term in fact that's why i'm saying what i'm saying and it's not because i don't love the school it's not because i don't love the community it's because we're in a shitty spot and i i think of the choices we have it does the least long term problem and if we do send students to us i hope we i think we can come together and do it the way that is that that takes care of the hard problems and makes it as as wonderful as it can be and i think it's a wonderful school and i think the roxbury students have great experiences at msms and mhs and i think they can have great experiences at us too and i think we can do as much as we can to heal the community and i've just it's been very difficult for me but trying to steer through a mob billiard community that clearly has big concerns about what we're asking them to pay it is one of the paths that i see is is one of the most pliable to getting to a yes vote and dealing with the crisis that and that's that's why i've been pushing us hard to seriously think about a very hard thing and making the case in a way that might sound a little advocating but i feel we need to grapple with this now and i think if we do something different we have to have a really good explanation to the voters why we're making the choices we're making because it's it's it's the the the case we made coming to the voters yesterday didn't sell so really quickly as the associate parliamentarian and the non-voting member i think by my math you've already the the the motion passed because um my votes i don't count so it's it's eight out of 14 so okay and i want to go to bed and i want to go to bed that says yes okay um i woke up at four o'clock in car to henna so okay so we have one of four o'clock yeah we've got yeah yeah uh we did chance any any no votes and if if you want to vote no i i i will totally respect that i don't i don't know if you guys voted yet you can abstain or vote now but you said i oh then we're there i mean i will vote i because i i want to i support and i just want to make a commitment to one another to do this work you know authentically with curiosity and with as much objectivity as we can and that is that yes yes and i appreciate that yeah uh motion i think we're at a motion to adjourn we do we do oh do we table them till next week well let me ask a question does did anyone have any objections to policy monitoring no no do i have a motion to approve the policy monitoring reports which i'm sure listed on the sheet so moved yep got it second any discussions all is in favor aye any opposed great um looks like we will schedule a meeting for next week does the 13th make the most sense probably we have negotiations but i don't know if you'll be allowed and it's 415 to 615 okay um why don't we just do it on on that Wednesday or do we want to do it maybe on the tuesday or thursday because we've gotten people have not been happy with us overlapping with the city council can people do it tuesday yes we go to sit on tuesday just 536 30 no at 630 is the high school right right starts at 630 i've got so many rooms in this building Nathan okay is it there there's a track there's a meet the coaches yep i've got a huge auditorium for those 85 tractors that can go right in there or a gym well let's do it Wednesday the the city council passed their budget and hopefully they've they've got happier things to talk about um yeah 13th it's just just keep it on Wednesday um it's supposed to go to share of the plan you are that's your tuesday let's do it tuesday we can't go on an airplane on wednesday at 630 so it's tuesday tuesday tuesday tuesday is fine yeah airplanes and sharers are okay this is late notice people were probably planning around having regular board meetings scheduled not special board meetings scheduled uh 630 okay Nathan you're in the gym uh motion to adjourn some of them thank thank you everyone i know this is very hard and we're we're doing a really good job thank you


A mom who fell four floors in Florida condo collapse pulled her daughter out from the rubble with a broken pelvis. As more news is revealed about the deadly Surfside condo collapse surface, more of the terror of what unsuspecting people went through is coming to light. Among the many stories, there is a particular one of a mom that shows the amazing strength and resolve she was able to show during those scary moments to save herself and her daughter. While a section of the 12-story Champlain Towers South condo crumbled to the ground, Angela Gonzalez and her teenage daughter, Devin, were inside the building at the time. It was reported that Angela fell from the ninth floor to the fifth floor during the collapse. The massive fall shattered Angela's pelvis. However, she still summoned the strength to pull out herself and Devin from the rubble. Soon, rescue crews were able to get the mother and daughter out and take them to the Jackson Memorial Hospital, according to CBS Miami. Wasn't something that I thought I would come down to this, I guess. But pick up the pieces, trying to figure out how to make this work, how to make this better than what it is, said a family friend, Lisa Melanchol, who was one among those who came to the hospital. Even though it's a tragic scenario. I just want prayers and just the best for her and her family. Based on the latest that was reported about the family, Angela's husband, Edgar still remains missing and is one among the many people who are still unaccounted for after the collapse. While Angela and Devin are still recovering, the family is hoping to receive news about the beloved husband and father, Edgar. Hope for the best, Lisa said, as quoted by New York Post. Everybody just give prayers. Everybody else's families or any colleagues or friends that were in the incidents, I wish you prayers, thoughts. And I hope everybody gets well. According to Reuters, the official death toll from the high rise condos collapse climbed up to nine on Sunday, June 28. More than 150 people were still reportedly missing, and rescue crews continue peeling through the rubble to find residents, many of whom were fast to sleep when their homes fell to the ground. A GoFundMe page was set up to raise funds for Angela's family as she and her daughter are receiving treatment. An update posted on the page on June 27 said, Devin is doing great. We are so thankful. She had surgery yesterday and it went well. She will have one more surgery next week to repair the leg and if all goes well should be walking, with a lot of assistance of course, by Thursday or Friday. Angela is still intubated. They are letting her sleep so her body can concentrate on healing. She is responsive when asked questions so that is great news. She will have surgery on Monday to repair her pelvis. There has not been any news on Edgar, the update added. We are still praying and hoping for a miracle. This is a strong and wonderful family. They have a lot of faith, please continue to keep all of them in your prayers.


Hello from Johannesburg, South Africa. Later on today, we'll be welcoming IBM's CEO Ginny Romani to the grand opening of the newest research lab. Stay tuned. Welcome to our new research Africa. We're very excited to be there in the past. Later on, I'll give you a behind-the-scenes tour of the lab. Hi, I'm Darlington. I'm Jeffrey. I'm Prishas. Welcome to IBM Research South Africa. One of my favourite spaces is this walkway that connects the researchers out to the open areas and the world beyond us in terms of the people that we work with. I'm topuachewari, research scientist. I'm part of the Digital Urban Ecosystems Group with an 8-quality and solar estimation. Hi, I'm François Lise. And I'm Mr. Akuaia. We're back from IBM Research South Africa and we're exploring the universe. Our IBM CEO, Ginny Romani, has just survived at the South Africa Lab for the very first time. Let's give her a warm welcome. Come on. I'm the president of IBM, Ginny Romani. Strategic decisions. And so, one is that there is proof that there is great scientific and innovation skills, which... Busy day at the lab in South Africa. Now we're going to go on a behind-the-scenes tour. In our CEO, signing off from Johannesburg. Good night.


A support group called Youth Alliance for Tinnabu have called on various stakeholders in the democratic struggle all around the world to come in defense of Nigeria's democracy. The national coordinator of the group Belu Shagari and some of the other group members made this call in Thalsteinabuja while addressing a press conference. He called on the stakeholders to join hands with the president-elect and the renewal of hope for Nigerians. When his Excellency Wala Ame Tinnabu was declared the winner, desperate elements have risen up against our democracy, insisting that the election was rigged, thereby threatening our instability in the guise of protests and instigating Nigerians in order to truncate our democracy. I therefore wish to call on various stakeholders in the democratic struggle including democratic governments around the world to come in the defense of Nigeria's democracy. It is our duty to defend our mandates and our democracy. We cannot afford a few people who don't want to accept a clear defeat in the elections to become a threat to the largest democracy in Africa which has survived its longest journey of 23 years. We also want to call on them to join hands with Ame Tinnabu in his effort in the renewal of hope for Nigerians. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Hi everyone. Hello there. Ramon Roman is in here, product manager at Red Hat, maintainer at the conveyor project. I'm Juan Manuel Leflete Estrada, senior software engineer at Red Hat and also a contributor to the conveyor project. And yeah, you might have guessed it, but we are going to be talking about the conveyor project. So, what is conveyor? Conveyor is an open source project to help organizations with the onboarding of their traditional workloads into Kubernetes to leverage cloud native technologies. And our approach to that is to provide as much insight as possible for the migration and modernization leads to make informed decisions. And on the other hand, for the developers that are performing the actual changes, provide some guidance and some degree of automation. The way our project is a structure, we have a central piece which is the conveyor half, which manages the user experience. And then we have a series of other modules that provide additional functionalities. We'll go through them. First of all, we have portfolio management to allow organizations have a holistic view of their application portfolio to categorize obligations and make decisions and find suitable migration strategies for each one of those applications. Then we have the assessment modules to have a high level understanding of the application landscape and detect risks that might affect the containerization process. Then we have the analysis module that is able to find source code anti-patterns that might prevent an application from running on the target platform and provide some hints on how to solve those problems. We have a planning module that allows you to break the modernization initiative into different migration waves. The reporting module that allows you to get further insight on issues and dependencies. And finally, we have the code transformation module that provides a way to automate simple and tedious changes across the portfolio. I'd say the most exciting one will be the analysis module. So Juanma here will tell you a little bit more about that. So in our latest conveyor release, which we did a couple of months ago, 0.3, we included a new analysis engine. Is everyone here aware of the language server protocol, language servers? So, yeah, so we basically, in our new engine, leverage the power of the language server protocol that Microsoft developed for VS Code to be able to handle different languages and use that to abstract our analysis engine away from the complexities and peculiarities of each language. So the idea is that, as you might be aware of, there are language server implementations for almost every language up there. So our idea is to keep adding new language, new providers for analysis, to be able to analyze applications in different, in more languages. And to basically make queries to the language servers that will allow us to get insights on the application, the codes of the applications. So in our latest release, we have support for Java and Go, and there are more to come. So as I said, in our latest release, 0.3, which we did a couple of months ago, it was a major leap forward. It included, apart from this new analysis engine that I just mentioned, the concept of archetypes, new concept for organizing your applications, a re-implementation of the assessment module that Ramon just mentioned before. And additional enhanced reporting, sorry about that. And for 0.4 and 0.5, which are our next releases in Q2 and Q3, we basically plan on adding new languages, as I said. So we're expecting in Q2 to have .NET and Python support, alongside some quality of life improvements. And also in Q3, we will have TypeScript support. On Q1 next year, we plan on releasing Conveyor 1.0, which will come with three big new features. One of them is platform awareness, also assets generation and integration with generative AI, which we'll speak about in a second. So the first of these three major features will be platform awareness, which will basically be able to inspect not just the application itself, but also its runtime, its deployment, and its runtime to be able to extract more information about the application and not just to the application, but where it runs. And this leads us to the next feature for Conveyor 1.0. And the next feature will be assets generation. So we retrieve the configuration from the platforms in which the application is running, and we use that to generate assets to get the application deployed in the target platform, for example, Kubernetes. So if we were talking about an application to deploy in Kubernetes, we will have something that will generate all the deployment manifests for the application. But for example, if the application is running on a application server, we will also be able to generate all the configuration files for the application to be deployed on the target platform. So pretty interesting. And I would say everyone is playing with GenAI. We are playing with that as well. This next module, CHI, which is the short for Conveyor AI.  The idea is to automate source code transformation as much as possible by leveraging generative AI. And our approach to CHI is to leverage the structure migration data that we have at Conveyor and use that to enhance commercial LLMs. So the idea is to use prompt engineering and a rack approach to that to provide additional context to make these LLMs more accurate on their responses, especially when we're talking about custom technologies, custom frameworks, adding that additional context for the LLM to be accurate on the responses. And that's all we have for today. You have our coordinates in there. It will be Thursday afternoon, Friday morning, at the CNC of Pavilion. You have the QR to our website. And if you're going to get involved, we have a room at the Conveyor, sorry, at the Kubernetes Slack instance mailing list. Just come and join us and tell us what your pains are with modern insights on the migration. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.


Hello everyone, and good evening. My name is Taryn Erhardt and I'm the Arts and Special Events Programmer here at the West Vancouver Memorial Library. On behalf of the library and the West Vancouver Art Museum, I would like to welcome you to tonight's architecture talk, Paul Merrick in Conversation with Hillary Letwin. While I recognize that we are all in different places this evening, I would like to acknowledge that the West Vancouver Library and Art Museum reside within the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Squamish Nation, Slava Tooth Nation, and Musqueam Nation. We recognize and respect them as nations in this territory, as well as their historic connection to the lands and waters around us since time immemorial. I am personally grateful to call the Pacific Northwest my home, and I'm thankful to the Coast Salish communities that continue to protect the natural beauty and animal diversity that surround me every day. It has been my great pleasure to work with Hillary Letwin and her guest tonight to bring this event to our community. So now I would like to pass things over to Hillary, who is waiting for us over at the museum. Thank you, Taryn, and thank you to the West Vancouver Memorial Library for hosting our talk this evening. Paul, it's such a pleasure to see you. You're located in Victoria, and I'm here at the West Vancouver Art Museum in your exhibition. The current exhibition, A Twist of the Rules, the architecture of Paul Merrick, which is on here at the Art Museum until June 23. Paul, I'd like to start out our talk this evening by speaking a little bit about your connection to West Vancouver. Can you tell us a little bit about your upbringing in West Vancouver? And perhaps also speak about the connection that you have to the West Vancouver Art Museum's home, Gertrude Lawson House. Well, it's a reflection. It's quite a pleasant story. I had the great good fortune to be born in West Vancouver. Technically, I suppose it was North Vancouver because West Vancouver has in the hospital. And I find a bit of minor amusement in the fact that the building I was born in in North Vancouver Hospital is still there. It's not a psychiatric ward. Some people find it amusing. We lived on Sentinel Hill in Nambleside. The family was in West Van because Grandfather was an engineer on the West Anchorage from the early 20s. So I grew up in a very, I think on hindsight I realized I'm really a wonderful, close-knit, easygoing village. It was a very strong community. And most people knew most other people. We all knew the bus drivers and we knew the shopkeepers. And a few of them were even still there in Nambleside was our shopping briefing. And we, at the time, we lived on Betches, 100 block, which at the time didn't go through. So at the end of the street was just wilderness. We lived in wilderness, so it was woodlands. And as youngsters, we built a lot of time in that woodland and building forts and things like that. A couple of amusing stories around that that I won't go into. And the went through first elementary school at Holyburn, which amazingly is still there, still the same building, still intact. The high school, of course, was what then became the wine has now been replaced with the new building, but that was Nambleside. I think part of the impact of that in terms of how I was able to see the world as it went on was that as a community, it felt quite grounded and in a good place and supported by local society that one was a part of. And so I found along with the two or three early influences I had, which we've talked about before, found that it was, it was not difficult to go up having at least a reasonable sense of oneself that you could, you could explore things and and at an early stage was kind of, I don't know, not so much talk, but given permission to ask why. So, Paul, I'd love to hear your connection to Gertrude Lawson house I think there was somebody who was an early influence in your life, who had a connection to the building can you speak to that. Absolutely. Having grown up in Ambleside and gone to Hollywood school as I said, I found myself in I think it was the second grade with a teacher named Gertrude Lawson, and I had learned over time that her father john Lawson was one of if not one of the original settlers in West Vancouver and his Lawson Park at the foot of 17th now is, of course, in his name and that's, that's where his farm was and his farm extended up the hill to and, in fact, apparently include lens that the city of all across the road from where you are in the museum, which is Gertrude Lawson's home with that land was given to me established by john Lawson. Gertrude Lawson was just my grade one teacher. She never writes, I told, generally that it was her father who built this stone house for her. And, and she took in, among other things, tenants, typically single single people and, and I've learned recently that they were, they were typically women who were on their own and and making their own way. They were women tenants of Gertrude's became my stepmother. She, she was my natural mother's friend in the early teens, they knew each other. And so she was a friend of a family all my growing years. My mother sadly died when I was about seven. And so sometime after that, this, this lady, Betty Copeland, Elizabeth Copeland became my stepmother. She was a public health nurse in the school nurse in West London so a lot of people know her as a young person in the 40s. She had a car which very few people did which was kind of a privilege that we realized later. But she proved among other things to be a wonderful person in terms of both provoking me and and stewarding me and, and, and, and I guess providing a reason to have confidence in exploring what's caught. And I think you, you have noted previously that she handed you a copy of Frank Lloyd Wright's autobiography when you were 17.  And other things that I'm sure it was very influential. Because that autobiography which even I find a lot of my colleagues aren't familiar with because so much has been published about right and his work.  There's not a, there's not a shot of anything in that it's just a verbiage, and it's his story of his life. And I guess and he was in his late 60s or 70s at the time he wrote this, and of course he doesn't another decade or two. And the thing about about his story was he, he kind of illustrated from an early age, how he acquired his view of things and his value structure, and what he found to be important because he grew up in Wisconsin and they were foreign people and it was much more rural than we're used to. And, but, but he, and he, and he had the, these wooden blocks as a child that his mother given them to, to explore form of composition and but three dimensionally with. And he went variously into the influences of his aunts and relatives and, and they're out of, I don't know that they were Quakers but they, they were, they had quite a simplistic, you know, shaker like view of, of life and out of care for each other. So, so he, I think, you know, in a word, one of the, one of the best summaries of what that man was about came from a Mrs Cheney, who was, was an early client of his in the little park in Chicago and, and went on to become his, I guess, second wife. When, when Mrs Cheney with their first husband we're looking for an architect, they, they sought many out and, and decided that Mr right was the only one who evidence the competence of principle. And I thought that pretty, pretty well some summed it up. I mean, because we're presenting this talk tonight with the library it's very appropriate that a book should be credited with setting you on your course towards architecture. And I do, I love that connection to Gertrude Lawson house and your stepmother being a border here. Well, I'd like to switch gears a little bit and talk about some of your projects here in West Vancouver and also outside of West Vancouver. I'm, of course, sitting in front of the wall devoted to the Orpheum theater project in Vancouver and this was a renovation project that you undertook in the early 80s. I want to hear a little bit about your work on the Orpheum theater and how this project came about. Can you tell us about that. Excuse me. I probably have to begin with a story consistent with with where we are my first experience in that Orpheum theater was as fairly, fairly early in my youth I might have been 10 or 11 or 12. And this new mother of ours, Miss Copeland, took my brother and I to a concert in the afternoon would have been a Sunday afternoon concert I think and I don't remember what was playing or much about the music, except it was a physical experience. But I remember at intermission, we were in the balcony of course in the door seats and went out on the balcony on Seymour Street that's still there. We looked down on the street and there were all the Cadillacs and the salsons and the light from the folks who we lived in Shaundersie, waiting for their lordship to come out and be driven home. And they were all having a cigarette and chatting with each other and that was my perception of the good life when it came to to find music. Years later, of course, the Orpheum was, at that point, a movie house owned by famous players, been built as a vaudeville house. It was designed by Marcus Priddick had practiced I think at that point out of Seattle. And it was the 749th theater he had built across North America. He was a good age by then. And so he had learned more or less empirically what made a good house what made good sound. And at that time, of course, at the last century amplifications and systems and the like were certainly not developed the way we know them today. So you had to manage the projection and the quality of sound, even as a vaudeville house. And as most people know that there's there's still an organ in there which what the words are which was part of the original format presentation. The famous players was wanting to sell the building as they already had sold the Capitol Theater next door. And there was a group in Vancouver, called the Community Arts Council, I think something like that. And my partner and my early years at Thompson for John Deaton had been a member of the Community Arts Council and learned about this. And so a number of them created a case that they put the City Council to to take on the, the building. Because, by that time, of course, the Queen Elizabeth had been operating for some time. And they found that it was of course multi purpose was still is a multi purpose hall had a very big stage and huge striking areas that was good for for ballet and opera and large scale stage presentations. They didn't have that brilliant or some quality for for concert orchestra work. So that so they thought that the working would would be a wonderful alternative and in fact, highly inexpensive way of getting a concert hall in the city so the city was convinced to take it on with the help of the federal government was willing to come aboard equal share. I think on the grounds that the foyer's would be extended because along the as we know it sits behind the lane on scene on scene between Lane and Seymour and there's just wonderful gallery access from from Warfian Street which is traditionally its main entrance. Yeah, but the lobbies were, although they're wonderful spaces they're tight and congested for the size of house that is which is over 2000, 2800 seats I think. So it became a case of expanding the foyer's which is done as a second stage and more importantly, expanding the performance area the stage. There were very limited ways of doing that because the back wall of the stage was hard against the Jason property you couldn't expand away from the, from the house proper. So it was a case of either going expanding it sideways or forwards into the house. And we did that as much as was practical but the problem with that is that as you come forward towards the patron already established in the seating, you start to lose sight line from the balcony of, you know, the most important person on the stage being the conductor probably with a soloist and and so so even to this day you'll see the stage still goes further forward than they typically will arrange the orchestra and that's because of the sight lines, unless unless it's a very large orchestra it doesn't require combination. Going sideways was was accomplished by literally taking the entire finished development that the, the, the, the kind of tablatures I decided the stage and the stage arch, the prescenium, which is all done in suspended plaster work. The whole of the house services are just plaster suspended from a structural shell and took it apart and kind of recreated it, literally as, as critic had designed it but half again as big. And most people don't, don't realize that because it's sense of the same vocabulary that was there originally, but the prescenium was pushed up into the, into the cornice and the, and the transects were were widened to accommodate a bigger performing area. Tony Heisberg and as I said was the decorator and he, he was a wonderful he was in. Well, cute story about his age. At a reception he was a Dutch fellow been a decorator all his life and he had been the original decorator of the Orpheum which is why we were able to dig him up through Marcus critic as successor in Seattle. And he's been living in Los Angeles and he had a home in Karnac in France, where you go every summer with a rule of canvassers and become home with a rule of paintings. And he was the most amazing Bosardian copyist, he could, he could paint and he took me to a, to, to a health club like a wife facility in downtown Los Angeles that had this beautiful pool that they were developed like Roman tepidarium. The Roman baths of classical time, and, and he done it all in pink, he had to look at the tile closely there were one inch square tiles and that was all painted by Tony. And, and he developed when we came to have him recreate the theater he developed a two or three different options, which I learned was how you did it in the Bosardian school of thought. It was the elephant scheme and the gold and silver scheme and the, you know, the grain gold scheme. And you would pick one and that then became the drawing from which the painters doing the restoration worked. And then the last story about Tony was he wanted to do a mural in the dome, which, which was there but it never never been finished. And it was full of when we took it on for for for the musical, the, sorry, the film use, the cinema use. It had been filled with the material because there were some bad reflections, because don't do that. And, and so Tony wanted to do a mural. It was agreed and there was some ways developed a funding it. So he worked himself in his wife, he called little tiger if you look at the ceiling, you'll find a tiger there that's Tony and Bergman's wife. And he wanted to put all my children in so he has to take photographs of them. They're all 4567.  And he said, well, she was too young and too innocent to be without clothes. So he put her in 90, but that's all the little kids up there. And the conductor I think is was my partner Ron Nelson at the time. Now to see who was the kind of manager of the project. So the faces of your children are immortalized on the on the roof of the on the ceiling of the Orpheum theater. So the Orpheum theater is a great example of heritage building that you took on and sort of oversaw the renovation for it. And we see this happening throughout your career. I'm thinking of the Marine building, for example, I'm thinking of the new customs house project that you've more or less just completed in Victoria. There are these heritage buildings that you have come in and sort of given new life to. But I'd like to contrast that with some of your totally new projects and I'm thinking about the the Cathedral Place project in Vancouver. Of course across from the from the hotel Vancouver and the Vancouver Gallery. Can you speak a little bit about that project and and maybe talk a bit about how these new products are separate from your heritage projects. That's a good question that has also multiple levels of depth. This thing we call heritage is kind of ubiquitous term even because it tends to imply the acknowledgement of some kind of lineage or age or it's old and some things have to be old in order to be heritage and the reality is, of course, everything we do and build and inhabit is our heritage whether it was built last week or last century. And but we've evolved ways of trying to come to grips with how to distinguish or articulate what what that might mean. And it's not enough for something simply to be old but it needs to be in whatever its age it needs to be worth respect and and and looking after along with that. And from another point of view I've always I've always had the view that that the world we have our environment made up of buildings is is a kind of organism. It's, if you zoom back which I'm always in danger of doing. It's as if each project is a cell in the organism of the city or the village or the community or the nation for that matter. And collectively, the environment we have it is as good as each and every individual cell that we add to it that makes it up. And, and whether a project is a new project on a clean site, or an added to an altered project as the custom solution mentioned, for instance, was part of it, vintage and part of its current. Or, or, or whether it's just an old building that needs new life break read into as the orphaness. I come to find those. I guess I've had the good fortune of being offered a number of those kinds of projects and realize over time that they really are quite meaningful because they're not just about bigger and better or or replacing old within is we've been through a part, even, even in our lifetime swear that that was sought to be the way to do things and it didn't take us long to realize that that wasn't really the best it was often better to try and, and, and repair and add new life to vintage start a long thought a building properly made, even, even in very simple materials will endure far longer, far longer than any one of us as human we have a lifespan, maybe if we're fortunate and thank goodness it wasn't necessary to go on longer than that. But, but buildings will last many centuries, even native simple material. If they're looked after and they need to be. I remember a moment in years years back in visiting Salisbury near where where my wife's family were from, and went of course to see Wolfgang's house. And which is, you know, an embellished facade on a main street where all the buildings are cheap by Joe party wall buildings that were in that time, and with a small courtyard and you know an H shape or I shape or any shape they, the way pre 20th century buildings were built, and in that case you came in, kind of from the back into this courtyard and went upstairs to visit Wolfie referred to Mr Mozart, and there was a little sign there saying that when Wolfgang of Smoltzart lived in this building, it was already 200 years old. And so that man says again he said well that makes it about 400 and somewhat now. That was already a few decades ago, and it was perfectly sound and intact and it was built literally of the brick and rubble the side walls were all just whatever they could scrounge. The facade was always better material that maybe stone or or fired, fired material, and the wood was hard to come by so they use it sparingly that the rafters and beans and let the like we're just poles cut from trees that they would have been able to manage and yet it was four or 500 years old, and completely usable and as we're all its neighbors still there. And it has less me feeling over time that breathing new life into existing building fabric is pretty almost a quiet kind of honor to to to nurture or maintain or sustain the life of something that's that that's already done from a good deal of duty, it's already had a life and is capable of more. And at least to the something we call adaptive reuse where an old building fabric may be put to a very different use from from what I mean a simple example. Again, they were the original build of the water, which is quite a different, different, although it's a place of assembly, the needs of water bill quite different than say concert hall, which which is mutated into in St. Andrea, it was a school built by the sisters and St. Anne's and and there's now government office building. It may not always be a government office building but the happy, happy notice that it's, it's, it's now where where here for decades ago when we restored it, it probably had a life span of another several. Again, if it's looked after it looked much the same from the outside and new building was built inside and tied up tied back and, and the, the, the issue that comes out of these kinds of journeys always have to do with the degree to which you halter or intervene in the degree to which you maintain and retain and respect. Absolutely. What one of my early heritage advisors consultants was Harold Coleman, who has, he was really the kind of father of heritage thinking as you'll see operated then out of Ottawa, and it comes from from the US, he had a lovely turn for, for being too precious about retaining heritage he called it, it was, you could either refer to it as mummification, or petrification, both of which imply not much presence of life. And, and I had at that point, again, the good fortune of having spent a couple of years living in Britain doing a project in the Middle East, and, and found a world that was roughly 10 times old as well as the world we were familiar with the West colony at, you know, at an age of about a century and were written at an age of roughly 10 centuries from, from you know, more primitive times. And they had some time, you know, with the advent of the industrial revolution and all that went with it and and escalation of population and the rest they had had to start to learn about these things that we were just beginning to be confronted with half a century ago, which the orphan was an example of. Yeah, no, it's, it's, I'm sorry. It's an excellent example. I, Paul, before we wrap up, I would really like to speak to some more local projects here in West Vancouver. And the first project I'd like to just touch on is the renovation to the West Vancouver Memorial Library or host this evening. You were brought in to do that renovation and I think that there were some changes to the plan. Can you speak very briefly about that project. Absolutely. And it's perfect example of what we're just talking about, of this metamorphosis and the life that a building that the original building was built as a second World War Memorial Library, done by Bob Burwick, and in the post and beam or timber frame structure with a scissor truss across the main space. And that, that that was a good but had become too small for for its purpose. It sat roughly in the middle of its site, which went from 19th to the east to the creek. And so we were able to add on to it around its edges, going west to expand the the stacked areas and put some parking on top of that because of the grade, made that possible and then on the east and put the Children's Center and went down to the creek and into the trees and the like. But it's a good example of how something relatively small and simple if there's room can be can be added and modified and still have a coherence. A couple of cute stories, but your librarian friend will will probably be amused by the, at the time of doing the first renovations, because the like the library is situated where if you're not driving there you're walking east or west on green drive on the sidewalk. And so you're coming at it from either end so we put an entrance at the end of the original Memorial Library and on the east end build a walkway out to the street and on the east end it was at the bottom of the stairs coming from the parking. And there was much debate about that. But at the veryest name of the time was Elizabeth muster as I recall or something, something close to that. She was a wonderful person but she was very concerned about control and of course, in those days, we didn't have the kind of electronic devices for control and the like that we have today so it was a case of being able to stay on top of what books you had in house and which would be taken out and whether they'd been returned or not and all the like. So, so we agree much about this but or defeated I suppose, and and and and built both both both those points of access, but it wasn't a matter of months I don't think and it built west at the time and would drive by it every day and one day I can was coming in. And there was a man up on the roof of the of the of the second blue entrance with a chainsaw, cutting it up into sections that became bus stops down marine drag all the way over. So much as you make your system and having your way over something which I don't remember being being that early in the boat. The world has a way of getting it the way it needs it to be for for its own purpose. That's fantastic. Well, Paul, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this evening it's such a pleasure to connect and to hear about these different projects. I'd also like to encourage our participants this evening to join us at our exhibition here at West Bank of Art Museum. The Orphan Theater is one of the projects that we covered, and you can see Paul's beautiful sketch behind me. Paul you are a fantastic architect but you're also an incredible draftsman and we have some really lovely examples of your sketches in our exhibition. Thank you so much for coming out and thank you Paul for joining us this evening and encourage our participants to come and see us at the Art Museum soon. Thank you very much.