all the meeting to order. First up is to approve the agenda. Does anybody have anything to add? I do. I need to add a discussion about bridge 33. We've got some things happening with that bridge that I'd like to fill you all in on. And it's more than just a staff report item. Do we want to add it? We'll add it right underneath the capital improvement fund? Yeah, I think it kind of ties into probably part of that discussion. Bridge 33. You got that, Lisa? Where are you adding it in? We're going to put bridge 33 right underneath the capital improvement fund. Oh, gotcha. All right, that's good. How about you, Dave? I'd like to add something to the agenda as a every meeting where right under or right above public comment, have the board comment and query. The board comment? Sometimes someone on the board wants to share something that's not on the agenda. Well, you can always do that. You can always do that under other business at the end. I mean, we don't call it that, but typically what we've done in the past is, other business, we bring up anything between us that wasn't on here. If you're OK with that? Yeah, I wanted to add an executive session at the end for personnel issue. Executive session, personnel, did you get that, Lisa? And I would like to also add an executive session. And we're going to label it in regards to performance of an appointed town official. It has to be worded just that way. OK, well, it's the same thing as I want. OK, so strike polls. Strike polls, all right? So performance of a town official. I had a feeling that was probably the same thing, but I was given guidance to use those exact words. All right, anything else? Change your ad. You have to accept that as amended, sir. OK, all in favor. If I have it. OK, we will open that up to public comment. Is there anything that is not on the agenda this evening that someone would like to bring to our attention or comment on? Is bridge 33 a little less open? Mm-hmm, OK. I figured you would wait around for that. So in regards to the bridge 33, OK. Anybody else? It's a big audience tonight. It's because you didn't turn the heat on. I kept them all away. Anything on your end, Janice? Are you good? No, I'm good. All right, we will move along. Our first point was up to 6.15. I don't see him yet. So we will just move on to the continuation of last meeting we started talking about. We've been exploring different ways of paying for water. And we were exploring this new EU system. And we had sent Greg back with some homework, which everybody should have gotten a three-page handout in regards to the calculations of how that potentially would look like if we did go to a little bit of a different EU system in regards to lining up with bedrooms in the residence. So I'll just first let Greg speak to it. And then we can weigh in. Does everybody have enough time to review it and comment? So it's basically just to set a continuation of the last discussion that we had. I was asked to put a value on what it would look like if we were to go to this system, what that would financially look like for the different entities or the different residential units and commercial units. And so that's really all this is. It's just there's two or three columns at the end. And the old cost is basically based off. That should really be current. I just have room to put it on there. It's current cost. So that's how it's broken down currently. And then the new is how it would be broken down based off of the new EU calculation, as well as the increased EUs that you would see on the last page. So the per EU cost would go down, because you would have more EUs. Right, more EUs in the bank. And then the next one is just the plus minus difference on what that actually looks like to each account. Yeah. So I don't remember if Janus was here, but one of the comments that have come out quite a bit is in regards to someone might be a single occupant of a structure. And they're getting billed the same as a family of six right now, right? So one way of looking at this is to break it apart. And this EU calculation, what it does is breaks apart into bedrooms per home. And we're just exploring the idea to see where it was. So this structure here would break it into one bedroom up to five bedrooms. And then we play with the calculation. So it looks like right now, the calculations would pretty much stay the same for a two bedroom. If you had a two bedroom home, based on these calculations, that your water rate would be pretty much the same. Give or take a couple of dollars.  But then anybody that has a three, four, or five bedroom home, it would go up. I guess one concern that I had looking through this was, I don't know how we'd get the information for that, but how that would. It's one thing if you have a family of five that have a five bedroom home. But it's another thing to have a family of one with a five bedroom home. And how would that look like? And I don't even know if we even have any data to figure that out. I mean, I have heard through the grapevine that at one point they used to send surveys out to everybody that were water users. And then we would just build them based off of whatever those, you know, the honesty of people, whatever they came back with as far as their, how many people were in the residence. That's what I've heard. I don't know if that's the truth or not, but that's just what I've heard. That would kind of be what you'd have to do in this situation if you wanted to base it off of how many rooms were actually occupied, you'd have to send out, that's what we do to our commercial properties right now. We send out a survey every year. And then we assess the EUs based off of whatever, whatever they give us back for results. Cause this calculation's here, it looks like on average, you know, once you get above two bedrooms, two bedrooms is kind of the threshold even. And then like a three bedroom home would go up by almost 50%. Now four bedroom home would be about a hundred percent and the five bedroom home would be about 140% from what I saw in the calculations. It looked like all the commercial properties would decrease by probably about a third is what I was looking at. Chris, whose idea was this to go back to that kind of a thought? It's just a model. Remember we talked about what we're gonna look at. You know, if it makes sense or not, we're gonna look at everything. And this was one of- Including water meters? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we were looking at everything, so. Cause it's that to me seems to be the only fair and equitable way. Well, I mean, I would, we, you know, we're exploring the water meters still. We have done research with the water meters prior, which didn't look favorable for the majority of the town. This is another method that- No, no, but- Stated that we're looking at as well. The people who were using the water within pay for the water that they're using. The people who use very little water then would pay that amount. And I think that's the only fair and equitable way. Well, it's probably the most fair and equitable way, and it's probably the most efficient way for the town to manage water. But I can tell you that it would be by far the most expensive way for the residents of the town. When you say most expensively, we're talking about $350,000 to the town or maybe to the town. On top of what your current costs are. Yep. Well, that's the only way to go for the future. So if you want to wait 10 years, it will probably be $500,000. But eventually, there's going to be water meters. So why not do it now? And so that it's fair and equitable for everyone. You know, because right now, the current system that we have in place, our current policy and our current system is the most favorable for the town owners. Regardless if we like it or not, it is. And we are exploring these other ones. One last thing, I cannot see where Barbara Hart, who pays one equivalent unit in a single wide trailer, who pays one equivalent unit in Bethel Mills, who has 35 employees, plus everybody that goes in and out, plus hosing the trucks camp, plays a unit and a half. That to me does not seem fair or equitable. That's the way the system is. But all I can say right now is we have promised the town, taxpayers, even when Carl was on the board, we started this long process of, well first, getting the cost control under hand and now actually making sure that we are paying for the cost of the system, which we weren't for many years. And now that we have that under control, now we're looking at different methods of possible payments in the future. And it could be water meters, could be this model that we're looking at here. Could be the same model we're doing now or it could be some sort of hybrid of a couple things. So we're just gonna keep working on this until something that makes sense and that is favorable for the majority of the town. The only thing that makes sense, Chris, is water meters. And a broadchester, little broadchester can do. I don't see why we can't. Well I think what we'll do, once we go through this process, and we have all the data, is we will publish it. We'll put it out there on the town website where people can get this information and see for themselves maybe these three or four models that we're looking at and what, that way you can see this is how much water meters would cost you or this is how much this EU system would cost you or our current system or maybe a hybrid of EUs and water meters for the commercial or something. We're gonna post it and then you can see for yourself. They do that when it's time. They have a hybrid. So I think just to get back to this one, I mean before we sent Greg with his homework assignment, I was thinking pretty good about it actually. I thought it was a decent system until he brought the numbers back and I'm thinking, well this isn't gonna be very fair to a person that lives by themselves and has a four bedroom home. You know, now if you have a family and you have a four bedroom home, that makes sense.  So I, and then I think what concerned me on this is that the rate at the commercial end of things, basically the commercial businesses would be in favor of this as it would reduce their cost by about a third. But it would overall increase the residents of the town of Bethel at least if they're based on the model that I see at hand. Greg, do you have bottom line numbers? Old versus new? Old system versus new cost? Is there like a bottom line, old, aged? I don't. You mean what the increase would be? Increase or decrease would be overall? I don't. I get that to you. Yeah, I don't think it's in that spreadsheet on the last page, is it? No, I don't think so. No, no, I could get that. But you know exactly what. And again, these numbers are approximates, of course, because the EU's changed here and there a little bit, but I could get you the overall what the difference looks like. I mean, not that it, I mean, if it wasn't too big of a deal to try and get the information. Well, it's not really a deal. I mean, I don't know what you're asking for, Tully, because what I did here was I basically did the same budget scenario that we do in the past and we take the EU, we take the budget and the known budgets were the same, whatever our water budget is for the year. And then you divide in the number of EU's that you have and it gives you a per EU cost. And then all I did was go through and just to apply that per EU cost to the EU total to give me a cost. So at the end of the day, it's still coming up with the same number. So the old cost, if you total up all the old cost, it comes out to. The same as the new cost. It's still the budget. And if you do the new cost, it would come out to the same number. They'd both come up to the same number. It's just a different way of coming in. Exactly. It's the same bottom lines we have to come up. We have to get to the budget number. So that's what these both lines add up to that. You gotta get to that target number. Yes, yes. I mean, it would, if it wasn't too much work, it would be, it would be interesting to actually see when you're talking about these different, you know, three, four, five bedroom homes, you know, what the, what the data of the family size is out of those homes, you know, if, you know, 60% of our four bedroom homes are, only have two people living in them. Maybe that's not, you know. We'd have to put us through. It wouldn't be very favorable, but if maybe 80% of our four bedroom homes actually have four or more people in it, then maybe that is something to look at. You know, cause you are technically using more water in your home. I don't know how we'd get all the information. You send a survey out in your home for what, 20% is a good number, usually to get back. So I mean, we can do a survey that you'd like and just see if we can get, see what kind of response we can get.  This isn't set in stone, it's just an option. No, just looking at it. Yeah, just looking, just a different way. I'd be curious to see if we installed water meters for BU would be on that. You know, the cost of our water meters and how that figured out on another. Sure, well, we've already calculated, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but we've calculated what the fixed costs of the system are. And it came up to, I want to say 81 or 82% of the overall cost of the system. Right, I knew that. And so that would essentially, that would be your EU number, would be that fixed cost. What I'm getting at is by adding the water meters in, Oh, sure. You know, that's going to change that. Sure. That figure tremendously because that goes into the, we would then have a fixed cost. A fixed cost of the payment, right. I'd be curious to see what that figure would be for. Well, we could get a guess, because I think they went out, they actually didn't go out to bed before I started it. There was a time when they went out and got a number for meters. And I want to say it was about 400 pounds or somewhere in there. You can estimate. And then, well, yeah, we can do that and put that on a amortization table and just kind of see. To install the whole system. I'm going to initially expect 1,500 pounds. But for the whole system, I think Keith that either, I think Keith that actually applied for or had contemplated applying for a state revolving fund loan for that. So there's a number out there that we can get. We can then we'll look and see at, you know, what that payback would be, you know, what that would be per year and add that to the fixed cost and come back to the number. That's going to drive the fixed cost tremendously high. It'll drive it up some. Yeah. Because, you know, the users are going to have to bear that cost. Exactly. But I can do that if you want me to. We can, I got the numbers. So it's just another factor and another element. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, that's the thing with the meters that we keep talking about is that meters are equitable as far as knowing how much water people are using and they're being billed on how much water they're using. But there's also that base fee. There's a base charge of those fixed costs that it would cost to produce that water regardless of whether or not it was used. And that would be kind of our base fee that everybody would have to pay. I think that's where your question's coming from. What would that base fee look like? Yeah. But you'd also need a reader or a meter. You have to have a meter reader. That's a factor. Yeah. Now we have it going through the computer now. Has anybody ever gone over to Rochester to ask them how they do it? No, but I've worked in many towns with water meters. I can tell you there's about 14 different ways to do it. You can manually do it. You can do it through a system of like she's talking about where you've got a. Like GMC. One or two or three fixed locations depending on what sort of bandwidth you have. You can read them that way. Go by and touch pad. Depending on how you read them, the cost goes up. If it's meterized, then the cost are astronomical because that's the highest price meters there are. Yeah. And the long term it's not. It's cheaper to do it with a satellite, but in the short term, yeah. Yeah, but you've got a large amount of cost. Yeah. Can I just ask a question? Why doesn't the need to go over to Rochester? Well, we will. I mean through this process. I mean, we've talked with other local towns. Carl. Just in terms of the other costs of the system in terms of maintenance, improving the price that are in place and ensuring water quality and putting money into the reservoirs and so forth. The half a million dollars for water meters isn't gonna improve those features at all, is it? True, right. So if you're gonna prioritize increasing the cost of the system by $500,000, you could put that into improving your underground distribution system and improving the quality of your water storage systems before you would necessarily benefit from something like water meters. Absolutely. And we have our water master plan that we, it's finished, it's sitting at the state right now we're waiting for the state's comments. And then we'll be able to, I mean, that's the most logical way of doing things is to make sure that we take care of our water delivering mechanism first. But, you know, we're also exploring with the payment and the things too. Yes, not $50,000 present. Well, we're gonna redo it. So it could be 300, could be more, it could be less. I mean, I think what I'd like to see is us to do, you know, if we're gonna compare these things, we might as well compare them. I think it would be, and I think we have the information if we went town-wide with the meters, how much that would. Sure. But the other one that we may wanna look at is based on the current system that we have in place, the current EU system, what if we just metered the commercial properties, what that would be? I mean, that might be like a hybrid type look to take a look at. Does anybody on the board have any other options? They'd like to. Well, I have a question about the calculations. Yeah. I don't wanna derail where we were going. So one thing that I noticed, Greg, and I was wondering if you could just speak to it a little bit is for apartment buildings, a lot of those dropped by this because they're going by bedroom. And I'm wondering if that's actually logical in terms of this type of calculation. Because if you have three apartments, three people cooking dinner, three people running their dishwasher, is different than a one family with three bedrooms, but it's being calculated the same. So I don't know if there's a better system or an alternative calculation that apartment buildings would get that because it doesn't seem logical to this system. And if adding that in would then drop the single family homes in a bit of a way. It would because yeah, because that's what we're currently doing is each unit regardless of one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom, if it's a separate rental unit, it's a EU of a one right now. What this does is it breaks it down into how many bedrooms it has. So that's why you're seeing that reduction there. If we went back to the basically each unit, but we'd have to figure that because right now each unit is based off of bedroom sizes and that's what this is based off of anyway. So there'd have to be some sort of a hybrid if that's the word we're using tonight. To go with that number. I mean, it can be done, but everything here is based off of bedrooms. Right. And I recognize you sort of put this all into one type of calculation. Right. It's all exactly. It's all meant to stay kind of consistent with the state with some of their newer what they're using or that they're talking about using. It's kind of the, that's what it followed. Right. But I get your logic on that. That there's four of kitchens. Then a kitchen and a family and a one bedroom is going to use a lot more than a teenage kid up in their bedroom hanging out or whatever it would. Well, and similarly, like Chris's point about just how a lot of the commercial properties dropped, but it's a 50 to 100% or more increase for a single family residential. Just sort of trying to think through balancing that out a bit that that's a big burden to ask a single family to increase to when you're dropping the commercial rates and they're probably one of the bigger users. And there may be, you may be able to offer a different commercial rate or calculation. Sure. Make that something we can go more balanced. Yeah. If we just hypothetically, let's say we went with a type of calculation like this, it's based on a system that the state is recommending. Do we have to do everybody on the same type of calculation or could we have residential as one and commercial as another? As water commissioners, you can set it however you want to set it. Now, how well that stands up in a court of law, I don't know. But you have the ability and the liberty to set the rates however you feel best does it, I guess. So we can work through whatever you want us to work through. This is solely, like I said, solely kind of based on the newest table that's in the water supply rule. And this is taking it to the letter. Exactly how it's set. And it breaks down multi-families like apartment units and all that. It says calculate by bedroom. It doesn't talk about individual kitchens and things like that. So that's just, that's what this follows. But I mean, I'm all for some sort of a hybrid kind of a thing that makes it as fair as possible. I think we all agree that it's nothing's a magic bullet by any means. But I think we all want to be as fair and as equitable as we can be for sure. So yeah, just let me know. Let me know what kind of ideas you have and we can all run the numbers. Yeah, we're just looking at options now and at least nothing's casting stone. Yeah, right, right. And again, it's 80% or 82% of the system is already paid for. I mean, there's really not much that we can change. Regardless, we're only talking, we're dealing with the 18% to 20% of the pie. The system itself is already fixed. And if you go to whatever it is, if it's going from vacancy to not, or whatever, I mean, you get a pay for the 80%. We're only talking about maybe trying to better the 18% to 20%, which may cost us way more money to do that. But it's fair. I mean, we've tackled the cost and the things and now we're going to tackle the payment. But then finally, I would put it to rest because it would be fair and equitable for everyone. Yeah. So anybody have any other discussion on the new EU proposal that we looked at? I guess I would be curious to see what that alternate would look like with the apartments. And I don't know if it's going, if it's putting them back on the one we looked at last week for just commercial properties, so apartments and businesses, but still, like you said, coming down to the same bottom line of what the cost of water is. I just think it'd be interesting to compare that with what that would do with the residential rates on this new calculation as they are. That's a piece of cake. I can link that. Yeah, that's just a couple of points. I can do that. So I would basically go as we would keep the, I think I called it new EUs, the new cost or the new calculation for the single families would stay the same, the actual EU calculation. We're talking not the money. The EU calculation would stay the same except the multifamilies would be charged. I'd have to work through it because right now they're charged per bedroom and so are single families. So how do you charge, are you proposing that each unit is a one? Yeah, I'm not sure what I'm proposing. You know what I mean? I don't know how to make that. So currently they are one EU per unit, right? Per unit, and a single family is a one EU regardless of how big it is. Right, and so, yeah. Come on in, Cini, let's talk about it. I'm sure we can at least put something on paper. Yeah. Business move in the right direction. I'm kind of curious that a bathroom, I mean a bedroom is being used as a measure of water usage when it's clearly a kitchen or a bathroom. This is where the water is being used. Yeah. Yeah, and their theory, I think. You could be focusing more on the facilities that are designed to be using water and the number of people that are using those facilities. And that's one of the ways that I've done this in the past too, is we've done it by fixture count. I've actually gone into, I haven't gone in, that we've done a survey or during building permit or whatever, we assessed the water rates based off of their fixture count. Because like Carl said, that's really where the water consumption is. What the state is saying through this table is they're saying that the use is, or the consumption is a byproduct of the use. So, like the gas stations. I always bring this example up. It says that I have to charge, or the calculation is like 500 gallons of water for the first pump at a gas station. Well, we know that the pump itself, they're not watering our gas now. You know, it's not using the water. It's those secondary uses of people coming in and they're using the bathroom or they're making sandwiches to eat or whatever. That's where the consumption actually comes in. So that's kind of the concept here is that if there's somebody inhabiting a room and staying there, they assume. But I mean, like I said, there's 14 different ways to do this. We can look at fixture counts, we can look and do a survey and hope that we get some accurate numbers back on how many people are actually in the home. You know, but that's gonna change. What if you did, so essentially break, you know, if you have a three unit apartment building, if you treated each one of those as a sub unit, so you're treating it as an individual home. So if it's a one bedroom apartment, it's calculated with this new calculation as a one bedroom apartment in that apartment building. So it's like you have the one line with three subcategories for each apartment. If it's a two bedroom apartment, then it's calculated as a two. The numbers will come out the same. Would they if you're calculating them, because you're calculating them three times? Yeah, but you're doing, so the calculation is basically 150. So the way it reads is that every bedroom assumes an occupancy of two people, which is 150 gallons per day. That's every bedroom. So if you have a three bedroom, the calculation's the same. If you have a three bedroom house, the calculation's the same as if you have three, one bedroom, it's still 150, 150 and 150. But I think what Lindy's trying to say is that a three apartment building would be different because they, as other people said, there'd be a kitchen, you know. Right. So each apartment would be classified as... Like a separate house. So the problem is just trying to quantify that. Right. If we go back to this, we can revert back to this one number, which is what we are now. But if you try to quantify it based on the table, it's still a 150. If it's a one bedroom, if you have a three bedroom house, that's 450. If you have three one bedroom apartments, that's 450. Even though they're broken up differently, it's still, at the end of the day, it's the same number. I see what you're saying. I think also one of the other things that's confusing is based on rental, on an assumption of rental, not actually on usage.  So you're renting water to supply that facility. And when we start going back down the road toward meter concept, everybody wants to know how much gallons go through this house. But it's not really the reason why you have an equivalent unit system is because you could have a house with five bedrooms, which only have one person in it, but you still have the potential of using five bedrooms worth of water. And it's a lot like listing the value of your home. You pay a certain value of your home whether you've painted the outside of it or not. Because it may not look like a $100,000 home, but it's a $100,000 home because of how it's built and where it's located. So it's a different way of appraising value. And that's when you get back to that point that Chris was making about the 18% of the actual cost of delivering water to these homes. That's where that equivalent concept comes in is you're just trying to create a comparative measure so that this home has a rate that's comparatively different to this home based on the potential that that structure has when it's hooked to that system. It all seems so complicated. You know, when the easiest way to be would be to have a water meter. And it probably would, but again. You know, it's like standing in the water. By far would be the easiest for the town. By far for the town would be the easiest, no doubt, because you put a water meter in somebody's house, you're gonna be able to, the town's gonna be able to dictate how much water they have to clean to deliver to your house, but what's gonna end up doing, it's gonna raise everybody's, everybody's gonna go up. But then every, then Bethel Mills would be paying for what Bethel Mills uses. Maybe, but then you might be paying twice of what you're paying now. No, because I have a 96 year old mother and myself. But that's the way it is. Then I have one tenant in the apartment and the other one is not rented at the time. So that would alleviate the next thing on the agenda about the occupancy.  Right.  But we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna go through it and as we do it, or as we complete these potential proposals, we'll find a way of seeing how we can put it on the website or whatever for people to look at. If we went water meters, we wouldn't need the EU system because it would be our cost would be divided into gallons. You use X number of gallons, the total cost would be on that one gallon of water, correct? No, well your consumption would be, but your fixed cost costs. Yeah, but I mean, you take your fixed cost and everything would be lumped together to what it cost to produce that one gallon of water to a fixed cost. No. You can't do it that way. Why not? That's a whole nother discussion when you talk. Okay. But the model is that you take your fixed cost and that's your base rate. Your base rate can include for the low users a little bit of water, maybe 3,000 gallons or whatever, but your base rate is all your fixed costs. So you take those and you'll divide those for your users. Typically you divide them up based on the meter size. So if you've got a larger meter, you're gonna pay more of your base cost because you, like Carl said, you've got the potential for more water. And then the remainder of that is that variable that are those variable costs based on the consumption. And that's what the meter, the user would pay that's kind of variable would be that. I was just being a devil to have a kid. I know, I know. I mean, the problem with the theory there, I mean, I get what you're saying, but the problem with that is, is that it's such a variable as far as how much water is being used that we would never be able to budget for it. Because you never know if you're gonna hit your number and you could be way under, you could be way over. Just depends on what, not what water people are using. So that's really tough to budget and to actually stay on par for. Anything from the board left on this discussion? Have you taken and looked at, you've got to care of the old cost and the new cost. Are the old cost on the buildings that actually have meters, is that the number? Or did you use an EU in the calculation? That is the number that they pay. And that does not include their consumption. So if they've got a meter, the way it works now, if you have got a meter, we read the meter every month or every quarter, I guess it is. And then we run a calculation that basically says, okay, you're given based on this calculation, 150 gallons per day per EU that you're paying for. So we do that calculation and say, okay, well you have two EUs. So there's a credit, if you will, so many gallons that you're credited for your EU calculation. And then anything above that, you're charged on our rate. So much per thousand gallons. So much per thousand gallons. But that additional usage is not in here. It's just the EU calculation. Okay, we're good for tonight. I'd like to get to Alex this year. So his appointment's at 6.15. So if we could go back into the future. We'll catch you on time. I should not be the developer. I'm a developer very much. Okay. And what I'm looking for is permission for the road use that we've used for crossings and class boards and small stretches of Class 3 road. Basically it's unchanged from last year except for one small section in the mall's peak. We were actually running a less road there than we used to. But about 0.5% of what we used to run on that road. I have a town map. I've marked every place on here that we were running and everywhere that we were crossing. And there's also a brief description of all the crossings and road use areas that we're using and for permission for the 18, 19-solid this season. So it sounds like it's pretty much identical footprint as last year. Actually it'll be on the last road. Yep, okay. We're trying to get off all of them, but some of the class boards are gonna, obviously that's gonna stay. Any of the Class 3 stuff that we run pretty long stretch of Penney Bridge Road and we're gonna try to remove and get off of that. We don't like running roads anymore. We have to, it's not good for the machines, but. Anybody from aboard have any questions for the guys? Thank you. I would entertain a motion to allow the Snowmobile Club to continue the footprint that they have from last year with the slight modifications on the new map. So move. Second. Okay, all in favor? All right, five. All right, all set. I appreciate you getting the map and stuff to us as well. I thought it was interesting, I saw ATV club when I was thinking about it. Must be something going on because that's not usually the time of year we talk about that, but it makes more sense now, all right. Well, thank you. We, next on we had the, also last time we were talking about, cause we had a couple of business owners come to us recently in regards to vacancy, commercial properties through the new water policy we took out the vacancy rate for commercial properties in regards to water. At the time, basically our thinking was a majority of the properties it's hard to just discontinue service at one apartment inside that whole complex. So it was just easy to just take it completely out of the calculations and just say no vacancy rate for commercial properties. However, there are a small limited amount of potential up and coming businesses or some that might be in the process of being sold that may be a vacancy rate could apply to that. So, I believe Paul, Paul. Yeah, I just, I put the liberty of take a strapping, drafting up something that we might be able to apply in these cases. You know, we have to realize that every decision that we make regarding these cases has potential ramifications. So I felt that if we had a policy, more or less, that we could apply to these situations equally whenever they come up, then we will never go wrong in equally applying these things. So what I was thinking was that at the discretion and approval of the water commissioners, building classified as commercial can have its water and sewerage fixed at the vacancy rate for that building if the building meets following requirements. Building must be totally unoccupied. Town must be able and will shut off the water at the curb stop. And then a timetable for returning the building to regular building rates must be established by the owner with the town. Timetable will be reviewed on a regular schedule to be determined by the town manager. And I thought the reduced rate should be in effect for no longer than a year. So we kind of put some kind of an end to it unless we come down and decide again to extend that out further, further time period and that. That's basically what we did for McCullough, right? In some ways. I mean, we didn't put him on a vacancy rate. We kind of more treated his property as that he's making an enhancement to the village area. We're giving him kind of in a way like a grant to get his building up and going in a short period of time by relieving him of his water rate for that period. But I mean, I would, I mean, either way, I don't think it's good if we put it in place. And if not, I don't think there's a lot of buildings that it would technically fall under like complete, nothing's going on there. I guess the one thing I just had put in here under the bullet point, number two, where the town must be able to and will shut off the water is just, we'd have to put some language in there in regards to following our current vacancy rate procedure, which entitles paying $25 to have your water shut off that whole procedure there.  And then you're saying you can't get the rate if you can't find it. And we are responsible for that curb stop. They're responsible starts after the curb stop. They shouldn't have to be held accountable for the fact that the town can't find the curb stop. And that's definitely. We're not holding them. No, it wouldn't hold them. It would hold us. I'm just saying we're not gonna give them the vacancy rate if we're not able to and shut off the water. So maybe I should say the town will shut off the water. I see what you're saying, Dave. Yep, yeah. We could take that part out of the requirement. Whether or not we turn it off or not is up to us. Yeah, if we can't or not. Yeah. And again, I mean, when we're looking at this, I mean, a one EU building right now, if there is a one EU building, it probably isn't, but one EU building is what, $116 or something, right? So if they went on vacancy rate, it's not like they would go back to the $25 days. They would be paying 82%, you know, $90.   It might be better to just keep it on and we'll pay, you know, 100% of that, you know. But I mean, I guess it's an option. And usually the commercial accounts are higher than one EU accounts? Nothing necessarily. Not if you have a small business or something that's, it's not. Like I'm sure that, I don't know, I could be wrong, but I'm sure like probably the hardware store, for instance, is probably a one EU account. Yeah, and we actually, the minimum is a one EU anyway. Yeah, so the businesses that are less than a matter of one EU.  Or more, yeah.  Maybe at the end of the day, he's saving himself $20 or $30 a quarter, but it's not a lot of money, you know. The other thing I was talking with Teresa about this and the only concern that she had is currently our water budget for the 2019 budget is calculated based upon the current policy that we have. So if we were to make an addendum to the commercial policies on having, being able to take advantage of the vacancy rate, it could, you know, have a negative, slight negative impact to revenue shortfall.  And there's a process or buzz anyway. This has to be warned and it has to go through, you know, public meetings and all that too. So it's not an immediate. Oh no, no, no, not to me. Right, that's what I'm saying, I understand there's a little bit of time in there in the process. It's just a thought to try to get some uniformity in when these situations come up.  Well, we'd have to follow president for whatever way, you know, if we give it to one person and we say case by case, we'd have to refer back how we did it to the previous person. And I think that's why Paul wants to have something in writing that you can review. Yeah, I think we ought to also, I'm not real sure what the, how they define commercial in our ordinance. So we'd probably want to look at that and see and make sure that that's well-defined. Yeah, we've got time till July. Yeah, we have time till July. So it's a good start. Yeah, yeah. Do you want to, what's the board think about maybe making some changes to it and kind of keep moving with it? I think that we've brought up some things that could be rewritten and look at it again. Yeah. Chris is talking about, I'd like to see number two changed a little bit with my concern. Do you guys want to copy Paul's language included with this week's minutes? Is that how that works? No, I think Paul and I or whoever will sit down with it and we'll revise it and we'll bring it back. Okay. Any further discussion? Thank you, you're probably here for winterberry lane closure. Great. Do you want to start this or? No, do you want to talk to him? Do you all know Carl? So, you know, Carl Russell is here to talk about a temporary shutdown of winterberry. They did some, he can explain more in depth but I think there was some logging operations that were done up there and they've done a lot of work to remediate the area and they want to keep people off of it temporarily so they can get back to what it needs to be. So, Carl, take it away. The winterberry lane and the forestry plan that goes bridges between Gilliam Brook Road and Brook Road, in the center, the property belongs to James DePalma, the forestry plan in mind and prior to that it was Joe and Colette and Mundy and they're in their forestry plans, they develop a network of roads, one of which circumvents a section of the fourth class road that washed out in the 70s and it's been used publicly for ever since then but it, and Greg came out and visited, we were looking at the roadway and I showed him the gully that is through the woods that in fact matches up with the town map for the fourth class road. So, the Snow Machine Club has offered to have machinery work and to place culverts in two stream crossings and to put the time into remediating the private portion of the log road because over the last 10 years, maybe even a little bit earlier, over the last, the recent past, that road has become extremely eroded because of the public use of it and so the vast club has a lot of difficulty using the trail as does the private landowner. So, the operator of my recent timber harvest has his equipment in there and he offered to be the one to, while he was closing out the timber sale for me, doing road maintenance that he offered to do this road maintenance for the, to benefit the fourth class, I mean to benefit the Snow Machine Club and based on the town policy, I talked with Greg because we wanted to replace one failed culvert and another culvert that was poorly placed and so the town supplied us with the culverts and we've altered a section of the town highway to improve the water dispersal and then we've improved the section of the private road and I included a map but hopefully, I also, hopefully described it well enough for you. So, it's just been done. Yesterday and today, the road work was done as you can imagine. It's freshly disturbed woods dirt. It's not, it is a road but it's not road material. In fact, yesterday there were, this morning for the day when I walked through, there's evidence from yesterday of three, four wheelers and two dirt bikes, the dirt bikes helping themselves to private roads to get around the construction zone. Right up our logging trail that the operator had just back-dragged and water-barned to as part of his reclamation of his performance plot. So, what we intended was to block off the private section of the road and not allow any more vehicular traffic until the road has become solid again and the problem with that is based on the map and see is that there is no adequate turnaround for the public when they have reached the portion of the private road and then all we're doing is inviting public use of our private network of roads which is unacceptable and we're gonna do what we can to eliminate that but the work that we have done to the public portion of the right away will also be impacted by this fresh dirt around two culverts right now. So, that would be pretty easily deserved by just a couple of jeeps. So, what I was, what I'm asking is if the select board would consider a temporary road closure where Winneberry Road hits Trout Brook Road, there's a town-made turnaround where the plows turn around at the end of the third class road where it turns from third class to fourth class to close it off there to vehicular traffic and then on the private, below the primary culvert there's a private log landing which is a good and adequate turnaround and that would be the other portion for the public closing of the road. Well, we could close it at either end of the private property but I thought that that was a section that is the section that has been impacted by our construction that we want to protect. And, like I said, as long as there's snow and frozen ground, that meets the criteria for fast, right? To open your trails. So, that would be appropriate, that would be appropriate vehicular use during that period of time. And then presumably it would be solid after mud season and could be reopened to public vehicular use. So, your current proposal, Carl, would be to close it, I don't know how soon you can close the road, how much time you have to get the motors, but. Yes, to close it as soon as possible. To close it and then reopen it after mud season so that's what we're looking at. Do you have anything to close it with, besides or anything, or would we, we can get it. Well, what I'm asking for is official town signage so that embolsters are, because I can put this, I actually will be making private property science to try to prevent public rest of the private roads until they are, but that doesn't give me any authority against people who want to use the road and claim it as a fourth class road, so. So, we can get it, but I imagine by the end of the week we could get it done. So, we would get some roll for something to. Yeah, a couple of temporary. Yeah. And then just all we would need from the town would be an official statement of authorizing the temporary road closure, and if you had the dates on there, it would be, I mean, affirmative to the public, so they know that they could reuse the road. Are there any immediate residents that would be impacted negatively by this? James DePalma owns the property inclusive of this entire section of road that I've talked about. His property line ends right at the cul-de-sac at the top of, at the bottom of the Trailbrook Road, and he, his property, closes the log landing that he proposed for the turnaround. Okay. It will impact a lot of people, though. Look, there are a lot of people that use that road and don't use it for generations. So, I know we will have people concerned about the fact that that is closed to the track, and particularly during deer season. What's your recommendation, Greg? I think we're better doing it than not. It sounds like, I mean, there's a lot of work going on up there, the town. Like I said, there's two new culverts that are up there now. So, I mean, there's a significant amount of work up there that's been done. I hate to see it to the left. I hate to see it when we'll get torn up, for sure. This time of year, I don't know how much activity you're really gonna see if there are other than the snow machines, jeeps and all that. Deer season, right? Like this is the highway. Is that a thing? Is it? Yeah. So, I mean, you know, from a, from a, you know, like an engineering, if you will, about whatever, it's, I mean, of course, we don't want to disturb any new work that's been done until they can, you know, that culverts placed in there in a certain grade and everything. So, if we, if it were damaged or whatever, I don't even know how much cover you got over it. It was pretty shallow before. Did you, okay. So, that's not a big issue. I just thought, but it was a detergent's over it. It won't take us three quarters on the pickup. All right. Yeah. That's the big issue. It's a fairly shallow culvert. And then you grab your ruts and then the water goes in there. And the other, I remember the other culvert, it was broke on top because of the traffic on the top of it. So, my opinion would be to just, I mean, you know, I'd like to see that it's left alone until it's, can be driven on and can be used for, it's supposed to be used for later. That'd be my opinion. It wouldn't be the only one in town. Was that? It wouldn't be the only one in town. We have one on top of a mountain. We close every year. Yeah. And as I described, we are going to be closing off private portion. So, we won't, there won't be through traffic, even if you don't close off the town portion. But by us doing that, we're then inviting impact on our private property without your assistance. So, it's sort of a quick broke call because we don't, I hung up a sign about 15 years ago that thanked the public for using the private portion of the road with respect. So, we've set the precedent that we know where the private road is and where the public road is. And we're going to protect that. So, as long as we allow public use throughout the year, I think it benefits both of us to close off a bigger portion. Well, I would entertain a motion to temporarily close the sections outlined by Carl's proposal here for Winterbury Lane effective immediately until after mud season. So, move. Second. All in favor? Eyes. Eyes have it, barely. In fact, I don't like mud season. I like a date. Well, they had between April and May, which, you know, I mean, it's late April and you've got another couple of weeks to get out of mud season. You'd probably rather keep it closed. I think so. So, we'll do it as April 15th, doesn't it? April 15th, fine. At that point, you might discover that it still needs to be closed for a while, too. Right. So, I'll just get you a couple of letters then. Kind of laminated letters with some signage. Yeah, sure, we'll find some. I'll just, I'll get them to you. And then you can work. If you need something, let's just work with Allen and we'll get you squared away. Okay. All righty, thank you. All right, moving along. Greg's got something on here for the Kubota snow blower attachment. Yeah, so there should be some pictures in your packet there. It was working with, so, you know, we have kind of, we have a new position that we will be working downtown, working on the sidewalks downtown and a lot and some of the paved roads. And it occurred to me one day when I was walking around at the shop, the public workshop, that there was a Kubota tracker sitting there and it hadn't been used for a while and we, I had the guys get that thing out and started working on it and lo and behold it seems to run okay. The mower deck is in that shape but everything else seems to work just fine. So I talked to Morgan about it a little bit and he said what, you know, I'd love to run that thing on our sidewalks because it's got chains on the back. It's, you know, it's got more oomph to it. It's PTO driven for the snow blower. If we have a snow blower. He said I can do it way faster. I can quit, because that other machine we use, it gets stuck all the time. It rolls over all the time. It throws belts all the time. It's just too small. It mows really well but it doesn't plow and it doesn't blow snow at all. So I talked to Morgan about this and I'm sure you can attest is that we end up with a big huge windrow at the curb line because we're not throwing the snow. It's just being piled up with a blade. So I asked Morgan to see what he could do about finding an attachment, a snow blower attachment for that machine, that tractor. Because he thinks he can use that tractor a lot better than the other machine. He can navigate it in and out all the way down the sidewalks and he'll plan for that.  If he has this machine, he would shoot all of the snow off the sidewalks into that extra lane that we have, that parking lane. I think he'll come back with his e-plow and he'll move all that snow to a corner somewhere. If he has the other machine it's a windrow. So he can't get that snow. You'll still have that windrow. You'll have a clear sidewalk and a clear parking stall but you'll have a big windrow here. This allows him to actually shoot that snow and get that snow out of there. He went and looked. We found this used piece of equipment. It's at, I don't have my card on me but it's, I don't know if it says in there where it came from. I didn't see anything. I've got a card for the guy. But Morgan actually went down and looked at this piece of machinery. He said it looks great. It's not too rusted. It's a little old but it's not brand new. Functions just fine. It runs off the PTO on Kubota tractor and it's got enough room to push a pretty hefty amount of snow and kick it out off the sidewalk and into the parking lane. It's $2,000. The reason why I'm here today is because of the snow. So I'm asking that the Board if you would be interested or willing to appropriate those $2,000 out of the highway equipment fund. We did this with tires before. I know that fund is not, it's not just there for picking and taking little pieces but I'm a big advocate of having all of our equipment running when we can and this tractor is just sitting there. It's a lot of snow especially for snow. It's a lot better piece of equipment. So this would allow us to not only use that piece of machinery but I think it's going to increase our efficiency because it's going to be able to push that snow and get it where it needs to be. It's a bigger machine. It's going to be able to push more snow in general. It's going to get stuck a lot less. It's not going to throw belts all over the place like the other one has. He's going to be a busy kid. He's got a lot of work to do when the snow flies. So I'm trying to get him the best equipment I can and allow him to get as much done as he possibly can. So that's what this is. It's a snowblower attachment for the Kubota tractor. Is that a 5 foot? You know, I don't know. Is it sitting on a pallet? Yeah, it could be. The first question I asked Morgan was the first question I asked was to navigate down through town. He's done it with that tractor before not with this but with a platform. And he said, yeah, this thing will go all the way down through. He won't get stuck. There's no obstructions. He can make it from one end to the other all the way out in front of the houses down there. That was the first question I asked because it seemed like it was kind of it's hard to navigate down through town here. But he's confident that he can use this all the way down through. So again, you know, the concept here with this new position, part of that was that we wanted to improve kind of the services downtown, get that snow out of there so we're not having windrows and problems with people tripping and all that. This to me is just another step in that process. Get that snow out of that drive lane so that or into that parking lane so that he can come back and push it away and hopefully eliminate a lot of the windrow at the curb line. It's been saving him a lot of time. What's that? Basically, from the other machine to doing it this way. The amount of snow that we get here, I watched Chicken last year, I don't know if any of you saw, but in front of the houses down here by where it got hit with the truck, he was just doing this much of the time because it was so high and that equipment won't do it. But that's all he had to really use at the time because he didn't have anything else to do. This is a large enough tractor that it's going to be able to do what it needs to do, I think. The tires, I just hate to see this piece of equipment go to waste. I think for snow removal in particular it's a much better piece of equipment than the Vantrax is. Did we use the Vantrax to throw salt on sand? That would hook onto this too. Yeah, there's a little pull behind the salting thing that just spins around. It's the one that Don was talking about. Yeah, it's a little Kubota tractor with a cab on it. It's got a mower deck. I think it was used for mowing a lot, but the mower deck has brought it away. But everything else still works. I think it's a three point with PTO. That all works just fine. I just trying to find increasing efficiency because I'm really a little concerned about the workload when it comes to snow removal because I think between these little side streets and the sidewalks and the parking lot and everything doesn't seem like a big area, but it's a lot of work. It's a lot of moving snow around. How old is the snowblower? I don't know the date on it. It's only a few years old. He went and looked at it and said it's got a little bit of rust on the bottom of it. But nothing that can't be repaired. You know him. He can fix anything and weld it up. Do we know if it functions? It does function. They had it running. He just didn't. If he went and looked at it and looked at it he'd hear the bearings. That's the thing that gets on these. It's the gearing side. But brand new, these things were probably eight to ten thousand dollars. This one's two. I might build a better deal, but two is probably about where we're at. Just asking if you would contemplate the idea. It does require a motion to appropriate those funds to the highway equipment fund. I'd be in favor of it. I think, I guess my opinion on it would be as far as buying it I'm in favor of it. I probably would rather see us pay for it through our general fund and find a way to make up the two thousand somewhere else. It's kind of that, if you want this toy maybe you don't get this toy this year. We don't have a lot of toys. I know, but we bought the truck through it I don't want to I personally wouldn't want to keep opening up that piggy bank because that is highly scrutinized and being two thousand dollars on a two million dollar budget, I would think that we could make some concessions in one item or multiple items in our budget to buy this. If that might be a little less gravel on this road this year to buy this, then maybe that's the trade off. That's just my opinion. What is the other machine costing us every one of our repairs? I'd have to look. I think it's more downtime than anything else. If you've got belts, I mean they're not cheap. It goes through a lot of belts. The downtime is the worst thing and I said, oh, I flipped over again. Maybe that's operator error or maybe not. The tires on that thing are only that big and you're in snow. I don't have those numbers for you. My guess is that just the downtime for the piece of equipment and the lack of efficiency of that other piece of equipment and just getting the job done it would pay for itself. What about the Vantrarchs up on blocks for the winter? For the winter, yeah. It's a backup. Right, and using it as primarily a mower. You'll probably see on the heavy slush snow you'll have to get that out. That's where I started to get in trouble when you get the heavy slush. You won't be able to use that. They still got the blade for the commuter, right? So I have the what? He still has the blade for the commuter. Yeah, we have everything still. That snowy to switch over the blade. Or he can use the Vantrarchs. I mean, it doesn't mean the Vantrarchs is never going to be used again. It's still sitting there. After that slush freezes, I've never seen him checking this.  Trying to get through. So I imagine this is it's a much... Well listen, if it comes up with chunks this will probably take care of the chunks pretty well. And I think it's going to be faster overall. That's kind of why I'm pushing for it myself. I want to... I just know he's going to be busy. I want to try to get it all done. I don't know about the concept of shooting and shooting the snow into the into the lane and then coming back and plowing it. You know we have parking issues already. Well this would be at 3 o'clock in the morning. 3 o'clock in the morning. Awesome. My bedroom's on the back side. 3 o'clock in the morning. You don't wear earphones? And that's part of what we're working through. I just met with Morgan now and trying to work through kind of how this was going to look. And it's not always going to be perfect because it could snow all day long. It is what it is. But the idea is that he would start at 3 o'clock in the morning whatever start hitting the roads and come back and this would allow him time to shoot that stuff into that driveway and get out of there by 5 or 6 in the morning. I don't know what time you really start seeing people pulling into those lanes and just walk for sure. But you know that something else we're working on is trying to Yeah I mean it's usually pretty empty around 7. I would say 7.30 Yeah I mean these guys are starting at 3 o'clock in the morning, 3 o'clock in the morning and if he has to start earlier he will. I mean he's not, he's kind of doing his own thing down here so Yeah you know something else that will go along with this is we're trying to move that snow locally too and the idea is not to get up and take it away right away. It will have to be piled somewhere until he can get back to it. But this just allows, you know I heard a lot of complaints last year that people are tripping trying to step over a 2 foot high drip of snow at the curb line and I get that. You know there's only so far you can take the snow with a blade so this would allow us to get it out of there. I mean I certainly like the concept of getting it getting the snow out of there and not having the constant fight of you know sidewalk snow being in the parking lane and vice versa. I'm curious if you have any thoughts to Chris's point about sort of where you'd be pulling the money from. Proposal right now is to take it out of the the capital improvement. The highway equipment fund. But you were sort of counter proposing to do it out of the general fund. I would have to look at that because I wouldn't ask you for tires because there wasn't any money there for tires so I mean we tighten that budget up per year request as much as we possibly could and I mean I hate to say Alan you can't have this because this you know it's that's a tough sell. Especially when Alan's not even doing the sidewalks he could probably care less. It's coming from his budget but he you know he doesn't care about that. That's a whole different thing but I always make things happen but it would be a tough sell to you know last year again we were struggling just to put tires on the equipment. We had to ask for additional money out of this fund and I get your point this is not just a piggy bank of money. But I don't know if I start taking from somewhere else I feel like I'm shorting Alan somewhere else. That's what we're doing. We dipped into it twice. We bought the new truck and the tires which the truck was a necessarily large tool to have an expensive one so we weren't able to balance our budget like in the truck and then the tires we were at the back end of our budget and we didn't have that it was kind of an emergency usage. Just a clarification on the dipping in. We dipped in for the tires the truck I actually redid the entire capital improvement plan. The whole budget was changed and I put some more realistic numbers and I moved out a little bit because it made sense so it freed up some money. Freed up some money. So we weren't really a dip. The tires were definitely a dip because we had it all time. And it was the money in the budget. So we dipped in for that for sure. Well I guess the two part question for the board is one do we agree on purchasing this piece of equipment and two do we agree with just borrowing from the highway reserve fund to do that? How about a compromise on that? We take it out now and then if he can find $2,000 that he can eliminate the budget put it back in. Theresa's gonna kick you. I'll just say it. I don't It's not a good concept but it might be one way to do things. That you're Tuesday for a hamburger today? Yeah. You're gonna kick 20 bucks. You think you're gonna get the $20 back? I never saw it back. Exactly. Just a thought. I was just suggesting. You know the capital is an out years kind of a thing. It's done over 5 to 10 years so it just feels like it's a little easier to absorb $2,000 out of 10 or 15 years than it is telling a guy that hey you can't get more sand or sand on the site already. We've built up these budget numbers from the first four. We're tight if not over in some of the other areas of the highway department. So to try to take $2,000 out of that more I'm just gonna throw that side of it into a matter of two. So it's I think it's an effective use of the money out of the funnel. I agree with Paul. Linda? Dave? It's gonna make it work better. Whatever we gotta do. We'll just need a motion. We approve the purchase and the funds come out of the highway reserve fund. Second. Second? All in favor? All right. Who seconded? Thank you. Second. Is Morgan gonna bake us cookies for next meeting? I don't know if you want Morgan to bake you cookies. I don't think so. I think right though there is an expectation that this year it's all one to determine you know what's gonna happen. But that thing should be much smoother and more effectively managed since we know the new equipment I think there's a heightened expectation that I hear that things are gonna be quite a bit different. That's an expectation that I have and I think that's weather driven.  Right? But I was meeting with Alan and Morgan to go over the details of how this was gonna work and they were the same way. That's what I hear. I'm gonna have to have to do this. I think that would be better than what we've seen before. I think the folks down street are gonna appreciate this next spring looking backwards. I think people in this town have high expectations and we're trying to meet them. I think we'll just get this there. I'm not gonna say this is gonna be painless because we're all kind of learning still and we still got the parking lot permit issue and all that. But I think we're going there. I'll tell you the guys are ready. Morgan's pretty excited about having his own kind of thing. He said he's already got the truck ready to go and he's kind of been up seeing what he's supposed to do. Yeah, we'll see. The guys are ready to fall back and help each other out too. That was part of that meeting. There was a lot of discussion about how we're gonna communicate so that we know if one guy's not keeping up or if something breaks down because we know our equipment never breaks down. So if something breaks down we've got to cover it. I hope it works as well as I think it's gonna work. I think it will. But this will definitely, I think, speed us up and get it. More cost effective. I mean, if he spends a half an hour less he's got a half an hour to do something elsewhere. Right, and how many times have you seen, you know, you plow the snow into the site or to the curb and then the plow comes through and he shows it right back up on top of the sidewalk. You know, that's just job security, of course, but that's kind of productive. There's some areas on the sidewalks if you won't have to put it in the street anyways. What's that? There's some areas he can blow it in other places down down here. Yeah, I was actually gonna meet up with the guys over at Babes, too, and see if we can use that little niche they have next to the pizza place to store it. Because that's gonna be kind of a one of our to me one of our biggest obstacles is gonna be we're gonna take all that snow once we get it out of the way, because it can't go away right away, but it can for a while and then he gets a chance to go back and he'll grab his backhoe or his loader or whatever and take it somewhere. But there's still a delay there. But this gets it immediately at least out of the way. So thank you. All right. Capital Improvement Reserve Fund. Yeah. So back in 2017, let me make sure I've got my wording here because it was a fund that was created and we called it, it was called the I guess it's just Capital Improvements Fund. So it was created in 2017 and funded with $50,000 in that fund. And we've continued to put money into that every year. And if you look at the language of when the fund was created, it doesn't specifically say what it's for. It doesn't say it really kind of says it's for anything, anything. And the reason why I brought this is I'd like to talk with you about possibly either putting this on the warning for next year or getting some clarification as to what we really want to use this fund for. During the, in the minutes of this when this thing happened, it really talked about if we needed a new truck or if we needed a water line or if we needed this or needed that. You know, it's kind of there for a fallback. But the more we talked in here, it sounded as though we were looking at it more as a kind of a facilities fund. Because we've got a water capital fund or we're going to have a water capital fund. We've got a highway equipment fund. So we've got these other funds that we're using and we're using them like we should but this fund is kind of sitting there in this kind of nebulous area not being utilized. I was starting to put together a facility capital plan which would be for all of our buildings and things like that to put together a budget for that in a long-range capital plan but I had no idea what kind of money I had. Because this this was in all I think in my opinion and everybody else when I talked to you, we thought that's what this money was for. And that's not the way the language is written. So in my opinion and we just need some communication as to really is this money really intended for facilities or is it sort of a rainy day thing? Is it what is it? That's what this is about. That's why I brought this here. I'd have to dig through my we had a packet that was done up and I think it was put together with Mr. Hall and Keith might have had a part in that but they had some examples of what would be forecasted but never had like an ending date. They were just, you know, like a new town hall or municipal building right, the public works building. Those were that was for the most part the intention of that. So almost like your structures but I'll have to go and look at it but I think there were some other things thrown in somehow at that time the new wreck building and stuff might have been in there. Keith, in the minutes Keith had said that it's a fun for unforeseen things. Like say a truck breaks down, we need a new truck or a water line. So it was very, it was just it wasn't really exact and you know we have these other funds that we're creating and I already have created for particular departments if you will. We've got highway equipment fund we've got the road maintenance money we've got, you know, we've got all these other funds so again I was just trying to put together a facilities long range budget plan and I started to look at the language and I had no idea if that's what this is for. No, these were for the big ticket items which was the municipal building that we need you know it would be something like we don't need now but projecting out you know 30, 40 years of maybe a new fire station you know that type of projections and the idea was if we put $50,000 in there a year and let's say we didn't really tackle it for 10 years and we would have a half a million dollars to put towards a $2 million facility, you know, let's say so we wouldn't have to come up with 100% of it out of the gate. Yeah, then this is you know, at town meeting last year that word and I hate to use this word slush fund came up and I can understand why people are using that term just because it's not designated for anything it's a capital found fund so anything can be, I mean I could take the $2,000 for that Kubota out of this Well it did, if you look at it Not the language, I'm looking so I get the language from the It shows the items in there that you have to use that money for Well the warning says create a fund to be administered by a select board for purposes of capital improvements That's it. Trying to think, did you have, were you on the board that time? No I wasn't. I'll have to look through my notes because I'm pretty sure I still have that. Well like I said I just read the and the minutes basically said that it was for a little bit everything it was for emergencies, essentially Do you have a copy of the plan? No. I'll copy of it that I got from the I'll dig through it All I'm really asking is just maybe if we need clarification we need to discuss it, if it is really if the intent was to have it as sort of facilities fund, great I can take that money and then I can put it and project it out and start looking at facilities and see what we need to do I don't know how much I'm playing with here and if that's truly the intent of the motion Well the warning just says capital improvements you know I'm looking at the language in the warning and that's what I have to go by is what people voted on and it just says capital improvements which is a very open-ended item so if you have anything that you can maybe clarify for me if not I think it might be in our best interest to look at it again Reward it Clarify it Yeah, clarify it that it's maybe it's for facilities so that we know and the people out there can quit using this flush fund word and they know what it says in it How about we just why don't we continue this discussion at the next meeting and and either myself or Paul will get you to the capital the capital improvement plan that we have copies of I know I have that capital plan I was like unless there's more language about this money but that's not so much the issue the capital plan itself it's more well I need to see the capital plan I guess it's more what are the items you know there are items listed on the spreadsheet don't have it all were they all over the like water departments or the department don't know so I think the next question would be once we find that and look at that answer we need to because we are going to have a capital plan for the water department we're going to have these individual plans and hopefully funding out of each one of us and we need to figure that out if it comes out that maybe part of this needs to go to water cool I'll take that piece out and when I'm doing my budget for facilities I'll just know how much I have to add to it so we've been meaning to circle the wagons on this for some time now but I think the when we get you that information you're going to see that it's they had some details of what they wanted to use the money for but no road map to get there so there's no projection of by 2025 we're going to start with a public works building there's nothing like that the idea was to they developed a few items it was like it might be four at the most I think there's three I know it established the fund that way we could get some start some traction sure and start saving some money I know the public works building and a new municipal office where two of them okay and I want to say for some reason the rec facility or building there something was on there but maybe there's the point above it on this morning is the 30,000 for the rec facility so I'd be surprised if it was so I guess I'll look at I know I have a master plan or that plan I'll look through that and then I just want to revisit if there are items in there that kind of crossover departments maybe maybe that's not what we really want maybe we don't want to take some of this money and use it for water because we're going to have our own water fund and it's going to be funded independently through these other sources so maybe that money is better to use somewhere else I think you can see things like you know for instance if we were going to better the parking in the downtown area and we wanted to use or let's say we wanted to buy a parcel that would come under the capital improvement right you know if we were buying part one set place so I will look through it and I'll come back to you with maybe we do have a discussion on how we how we itemize the items or whether or not those items are even oh they might be items that we don't need on there right okay so we'll just continue that for next time okay next meeting alright bridge 33 alright so I think you all know we're bridge 33 is lilyville bridge high bridge all that stuff we're in the process of replacing a wing wall on that bridge was required by the state we got a state inspection that said it's going to fall you need to do it you know so we got engineering got a state structure grant actually got two of them one was for engineering the other was for the construction had an idea that we were having some issues with the project we have issues with their budget there was some engineering issues that happened we they thought they were on bedrock or what you guys call it ledge they thought they were on ledge the engineers thought we were on ledge like two foot deep come to find out there was no ledge there was a revised plan they said okay you got to go seven foot deep well that's all well and great that means five foot more concrete that means a deeper excavation that means a lot of things so that happened and then today I find out that when we put when the engineer put this out to bid they screwed up on their calculations and it was bid out it was under calculated for the quantities so of course when the contractor did his work he was looking at his quantities and putting out against the bid schedule and saying wait a minute I'm twice as much so let's get to the fun part we have a team of two change orders one is for the additional work for the excavation and the additional concrete for the not finding the the bedrock under the footing the other is for the quantity issue we're looking at roughly $87,000 that we are over budget yeah did the I have reached out to the engineer haven't heard anything yet because in my opinion my opinion some of this is I mean it's not anything that we did I think well the quantity thing is easy to say they screwed up under calculations and I'm going to call and when I I'm going to call them again tomorrow but I want to sit down with them and I want to look over and calculate with them how they got to what they got to and maybe maybe the contractor is missing something he brought me a change order today that has all the calculations that he has but I want to sit down with our engineer and see what they're calculating maybe the maybe the contractor is wrong I don't know but that mess up in quantities is roughly $21,000 that we're over the change order for the not hitting the ledge at roughly 2 feet is $66,000 what were their borings that were taken that's my next point that's why I have a problem with the engineers they did one boring they did one boring and they and they got with a drill rig they hit one spot they did one spot on this entire 42 foot long span of a wall and hit a rock or hit something and they said we're at the bottom and they engineered it from there I'm not an engineer but I've played one on TV and something like that you would have done at least four borings on that at a minimum you'd be surprised I work with engineers in the state every day all day and I want to go back to this and say hey don't kill me I'm just a messenger I wasn't involved with this with the designer or anything it was just before me but I don't know that we're going to be able to get anything from these engineers I think it's ridiculous that they were given well let's give me some more let me give you a little more good news we paid them roughly 30% of the construction cost for engineering normally you're looking at about 15 to 20 which one of your board members pointed that out don't want to mention any names and their theory on that is they engineered the whole bridge they had a reasoning for it and luckily we got another structural scrap and they did cost us hardly anything to do that part so they were already overpaid and then they don't spend the extra $800 or $1000 to put an extra couple of holes in that ground that burns my backside big time I don't know what I can do I'm going to make the call I'm going to look at the quantities they might wash their hands of it I don't know of course we really have is we don't use them yet I'm not impressed it's my first time with them my first rodeo with them and I got bumped up why don't we do this if it's alright with the board we have an executive session to talk about something else why don't we add a second executive session it could potentially be legal implications in regards to this do you want to hear my sort of my resolution to where the money is going to come from oh cool yeah do you want to hear that now do you want to wait until we get to the session I would just caution on any you know anything that could it's not going to implicate us no no so if okay if we had to pay the check tomorrow which I've got a pay request here so we need to pay the check um it would come out of our highway maintenance fund now here's something else about that fund so this is that money that's been put in to do roadway maintenance every year um I looked back at all of the town meetings and all the warnings that were done that fund is not a special fund that is not a carryover fund it was never put together that way and I think I was under the impression that some of that carried over and I don't know if others were or not but that money that were that 100 and what is 130 I think we put in 111 we put 111 and 110 every year to do different projects road maintenance small road maintenance projects in town but if it's a fund that should carryover it's not a special fund it was never voted on as a special fund it does not carryover so that is there that money is there to cover this overage if it gets to the end and we say well we have to pay it the money's there but it just delays our next well piece which is I think our next piece was the new sand hill road and I looked I looked through everything when they put that fund together that fund is in the budget it's just a regular budget item it is not a special fund that gets funded every year and kind of accumulates that's not what it is and I hope you check and prove me wrong but it's not so anyway those funds are there there's 110 thousand dollars I can tell it's a user to lose it so it's there to be used it will delay some of our road maintenance we'll still be able to do some road maintenance we've got some things to do because we were laying back on a little bit anyway but that's where the money would come we were laying back hoping that we could use extra to tackle the next piece because we thought we could carry it over rather than go to the voters for more money correct so I'm just full of good news today no heat I figured once I told you this it would be enough heat in the room no I'm still freezing October 31st you guys will be toasty warm I'll turn the heat up this time so yeah we'll see what the engineers say I mean they're not I mean I engineers in Colorado are the same as they are here I'm sure they're not going to give me any money their contract I'm sure there's a I look through their contract and there's a clause in there but I just don't know I don't know I mean in my opinion it's this is their issue they're the cause of this issue if they had done more boring I mean there is no guarantee that you're going to you're going to find something different but to make an assumption off of one hole in the ground over a 42, 44 foot span of wall yeah and that's what it is it's all tillage, it's all placial tillage in there and they hit a rock of some kind and they got refusal on their drill bit and they said it was it was done welcome to what a generic company is it's your boyfriend? yeah that was my question I was going to ask you but I never know in the contract and any caveat to their over contract I mean that is for the contractor so that's for the contractor if he has issues not only engineer, that's the contractor and the contractor's had active god and all that kind of stuff and we would have to go for liquidated damages and all that and we're not there I mean it's not their fault by any means that was for the if you read that again it's actually for the contractor not the engineer sure but I mean I wish it was like that but yeah the engineer basically washed their hands of this they were hired well they were hired to do design they were hired to do the design now granted things happen, change orders happen I get that but again I'm not an engineer but one hole is that enough to design an entire span of something I just don't see it and then also to screw up your numbers when you're an engineer you screw up your calculations if that is true and it costs you a client something thousand dollars that's a problem now I'm hoping that the contractor's wrong when I sit down with the engineer she goes over the numbers and says no, we're right but they're not because I got the rebar numbers the rebar is done by weight all the tickets from the bill of ladings that came in from the rebar producers and the contractors and it's way over so no, not the rebar this is the rebar the rebar is all the same nothing changed with that so now we're going to get in some nerding stuff engineering by a line what we had to add concrete to was the sub footing not necessarily the load bearing component but it's kind of your your leveling course if you will but it has to be on an adequate material and it has to be so far below the stream bed and they thought when they hit legs that it was far enough below the stream bed that they could do all this stuff and it would be on a solid platform and it would have little nuances to it this whole cross section that long and they did one hole here but instead of being that two foot deep or a foot they had to excavate down to seven because that's where the engineers said it was competent enough material and structurally sound enough that's all concrete and that's where a big part of this cost overrun is is they went from we went from 72 yards of concrete was our estimated actually 70 yards of concrete from 7? 70 so we doubled the concrete cost so that was an addition of $25,000 right there just in concrete and then of course because it's deeper they have to excavate it out further to get their slopes and all that so they've got more excavation more backfill or everything more time yeah I mean it sounds like it's probably something that won't get settled now so we will have to move forward and finish the project in the meantime I'll pay the bill with these change orders on it we'll just pay the bill and then we'll have to figure out where it's coming out of I've already called the state the state says there are no more grants you're tapped out we've got two of them in a row we got and they're maxed out as high as they can go so there's nothing else well let's let's take it into executive session we can talk on the legal part sure but I just want to let you know that I will be paying this bill and we'll have to just figure out how it shakes out later on there goes your snowblower oh you know timing is everything yeah sure I just wanted to know I spoke with you about it what are the plans maybe not everybody has in Lilliesville was provided with a piece of mail stating that the bridge was going to be closed so a lot of people didn't find out until Monday morning when roadsides went up I found out at Tumbridge Fair on Saturday so I was able to kind of spread it through Lilliesville for those that hadn't been notified the mail system there's going to be flaws you know I understand that but maybe in the future in Lilliesville any time soon but for future bridges in Bethel putting up road signs a few weeks in advance Stockbridge did some fixing up on the Gaysville bridge and they had signs up several weeks in advance and then when the start date was confirmed they put up when the start date would start for construction so on the letter we sent letters out to everybody directly affected we thought on the roadway and in any little offshoots of the road I asked the ladies in the office who sent those out and they said the addresses were all based off of the grand list and yeah so I don't know if there are some people who are not getting it because the address is wrong I don't know we are going to send out another letter because I think the letter that you got or that didn't get but said the 18th I believe was the date so of course I'm going to send out I've got a better idea of what that date might be so we're sending out more letters so you should be and we've corrected your I think we've corrected the address on yours I know we have so you should see another letter out there too to kind of give you a better idea of what the date looks like probably three or four weeks probably three weeks I'm hoping and it won't be finished by then you're on camera he told me he thought if everything went well and they're actually working in the rain they're doing everything when it rained the other day like Thursday whatever they were out there tying steel they just you know honestly the part that takes time is the concrete has to set up you can't just pour concrete away you go there you go so he knows you got a little bit of time there they aren't going to use some quick up concrete which allows it to set up a little bit quicker so we can get traffic on it knock on wood then three weeks they'll have a lane open and at least you can go through and then they'll be doing all the rest of the work down down below but they got to wait on guardrails too and that's one of the things that's kind of an unknown at this point is it's a company that comes in and does their guardrails for them so they're waiting on those people to kind of coordinate everything because they can't open the ridge without guardrails it's illegal can't do it but hopefully three weeks but you should be getting a letter soon we'll put it on the web we try to always put them on the website and on our Facebook page so we'll update that also once I complete the letter friendly future yeah no I understand I understand why you're especially not getting a letter yeah yeah and I've talked to the guys about doing some additional grading out there too did you also tell them that I gave them compliments I did I always tell them about kudos yeah we always tell them about that yeah so you hopefully see some more grading work out there too I mean they're busy we got one grader but they know that traffic has increased in those areas so yeah you did there you go so be patient with us I'm patient with you guys yeah well the guys out there on the job are doing the best they can too yeah