We'll put them in the lead, we'll call the meeting to order joint meeting tonight for at least the first half with you, but first order of business is to approve the agenda. And make a motion to approve the agenda. Is there a second? Second. I have a couple of amendments to the agenda that you got. One, just a quick presentation from the Waterbury Rotary. It will take probably two minutes. And the second would be recognizing Tom Messner's 31 years in meteorology, and I'm suggesting that possibly when we have the first day of winter, dedicated as Tom Messner Day. Both will be pretty quick. I'll add those to the E&S where we can follow your D on select work business. Any other changes? If not, I will take the same. Are you okay with the modification of the motion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Select work and sense agenda items minutes from November 15th. I move to approve the consent agenda items. All right. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. You did the second on that. I'm sorry. Chris. No. My second better. Thank you. Next is public. This is an opportunity for the public to speak not on anything that's currently on the agenda. I will do our best to give everyone an opportunity to speak. I know there's some items that folks hope to discuss tonight. I am going to limit discussion to a minute of person because we have quite a few people that are attending. I also ask that everyone just understand that there's probably a lot of opinions on some of the things we're going to discuss. I just would like to keep it civil. I think one of the important things that we have at Tom meeting is there should be no clocking. There should be no cheering. There should be no intimidating for people to speak. So I just ask that what we have done in the previous meeting, so we've just lined up over here. We don't have a microphone like we've had in the past. So once we get up to an item that you'd like to throw in your voice on, just please line up here. We'll just go down and we'll do everything we can to give everyone a chance to speak. All right. Yeah. If you would, I'd ask you to reconsider that one-minute timeframe to maybe two minutes because it's really, that's really quite short. Yeah. How many people do we have online? One, two, three, four. Or at least, it's difficult to allow people to speak again when they're in the mic center. Yeah, I'm just concerned of how late this might go. Maybe we should have poll how many people want to speak in the public. That's what I was going to say. Sure. How many people are hoping to speak tonight? Ten, five, 20 minutes. I mean, 10, 20 people. We've had longer discussions with less important nations. Sure. I'm just wondering if there's going to be a lot of movement of opinion. Sure. It's been limited at two minutes in person. So like I said, is there anything anyone wants to discuss in the public that's not on the agenda? This is an opportunity to do that right now. Do you have a question? Sorry. I just have. Is this normal for city council to have their back students in the community? It's real. I just find this very odd. The reason that- That's all I wanted to say. I think some of it is because we've transitioned out from Zoom-only meetings, and there's this little owl thing that rotates and films us as we talk to the folks, but I'll ask the board to do everything they can to. It's a little trouble.  I wasn't recognizing Marcus. He doesn't speak loud enough. He doesn't speak loud enough. This is what we used to prior to all of it.  That is just a question. It's more of a technology thing. Okay. Anything else? Sorry, Mr. Neal. No, that's okay. Okay. You weren't facing me, that's fine. All right. Does he probably need to open our meeting? It's right there. He can do it. He wants you to open your meeting. I was going to wake him down to the business there. I think I'm there. Okay. Probably the meeting of the Edward Farrarie Dillon district to order for the joint meeting on Monday, December 6th. Bob is a member of the committee and he's on Zoom there. Natalie Howell left. He's saying I'm selling for the commissioners here. And we want us to approve the agenda. It's up to you if you think you need to do it. I think we're okay. Somebody's calling him. That's my own name. Well, I see if it has any changes. I think a simple nod is probably good enough. Yeah, I think that's fine. Welcome. We haven't had a joint meeting in a while. First item is consider use of ARPA funds and revolving loan funds. I'm going to take my mask off to try to help people hear better. I was hoping that the people in the back could see me on the screen but for some reason with all these people on there. We could pin the speaker, Carla, and make him, or yeah, speaker be there. Right, speaker be there. And then maybe ask everyone to mute if they're not speaking. You start speaking now, I think it will flip through. Okay, so this is a little bit awkward and I'm going to ask you to bear with me and I'm going to talk for several minutes here. And I'm going to talk about the American Rescue Plan and how certain things can go forward in this community. I recognize that I'm the municipal manager. I'm not a policymaker. It is not my job to tell the boards where this community is going to go. But normally it is to work with you, find out where the community board members want to go and then help get you there. But I think we're in a unique situation in time with this pandemic, with the ARPA money that's coming from Congress, from the federal government, and where we are in this community. I think I have a unique viewpoint, a unique vantage point when looking at community needs and assets and opportunities. And if you would indulge me, I would ask that you let me read a statement and then I'm going to pass out to the board some information. And then we'll talk a little bit about it. I'm not asking for or anticipating any hard, fast decisions being made tonight. This is my attempt to move us forward to where I think the community needs to go. So I'm going to take a few minutes to read and then we'll get back to it and then I can pass out some information. So the American Rescue Plan became law on March 11, 2021, when the act was passed by Congress and signed by President Biden. While the federal government sent money appropriated from municipalities and counties across the country, through the states in which they are located, the money being passed through these local governments is all federal. No state rules or regulations are attached. Only federal law and rulemaking apply. This is the first time since 1986, which was the last year of the federal revenue sharing program that started under President Nixon in the 1970s, that federal government has provided direct aid to municipalities. The share allotted to be paid to municipalities works out to be about $100 per capita. For the purposes of our most villages, utility districts and fire districts are not eligible for direct ARPA payments. But those entities are eligible to receive payments from their, in quotes, parent cities and towns, therefore they could be sub-recipients. Waterbury's population for the 2020 census is just shy of 5,400 persons. On August 10th this year, Waterbury received the first half of its ARPA allotment, $269,833. The second half of the allotment should be deposited into the bank's account in the first quarter of 2022. In New England, as county government provides almost no direct services to the public, the act allows the states to direct the county allotments to cities and towns located in the individual counties. On September 9th, Waterbury received the first half of its county share from the state. That payment was just shy of $500,650. The second payment of the county share money is also expected to arrive in the first quarter of 2022. When all is received, the ARPA payment to Waterbury is expected to be $1,554,964. As these funds, the half that we've already received, have been deposited into an interest-bearing account, the fund balance will grow higher over time until it begins to be spent for appropriate purposes. And we have until 2026 as an aside to actually spend the money, so there's no real hurry. But as long as the money is not spent it will, it will earn interest. So here's where we're going to get into some areas where folks might be more as a politician as opposed to a manager. But I'm going to take that leap of faith and hope you'll follow me with it. In my opinion, these federal funds that are being made available to Waterbury have the potential to be transformational for our community. We have to be willing to think outside the box, and we should be willing to do things that have never been done that way here before. While I don't expect approvals to be granted tonight for all the things I propose, I am convinced they do need to happen. I am convinced that if we do these things our community will operate more effectively and be able to achieve a greater good at lower costs, and our aggregate resources will be better utilized. In short, and in my opinion, the potential for economic and community development will be enhanced. I've worked in Waterbury for almost thirty-four years now. Though we've taken some big strides of late to consolidate governments and their functions under almost one umbrella with almost a unified staff, I still work for two government entities and four elected boards. But that's a different story for downtime. Through the use of funds coming our way through ARPA and the recently passed Federal Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act, which we're just learning about now, that's the Infrastructure Act that you've probably heard about, I believe it is time for Waterbury and EFUD to begin to take steps to merge completely. In a community with fewer than 5,500 residents, one local government is surely enough, that the bungalow of inequitable tax rates between the town and villages behind us, given the dissolution of the village in 2018, it seems the time is right and the infusion of this federal light makes it even a more attractive goal. Of course, this merger cannot be achieved tonight and perhaps the recommendations I outlined now cannot be approved tonight either, but they should be and I think they should be no later than town meeting day. Now I'm going to pass out to the board some information and I'm going to walk through it and amplify things a bit. So there are many moving parts to this proposal. They include a private water distribution system that serves the Nail and Flats Mobile Home Park. It includes the Waterbury Ice Center, the Ice Center of Washington West. It includes the UDAG Evolving Loan Fund that EFUD owns and EFUD's CBG Evolving Loan Fund and also EFUD land being considered for transfer to the town. I'm going to go over this fairly quickly. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot the folks were back there. That's why I'm glad to be sitting at the table. The awful money is not money that is raised locally by our property taxes. It's money that is available through the federal government. And it's coming to us as a grant. I'm not going to go into all the details of how we can use the money, but some money is available to be used to replace lost revenue. Revenue that we lost in 2020 compared to 2019 and again in 2021 compared to 2020 because of the pandemic. And I've been working with folks from the LCT and our accounting company, NEMRIC, to identify the lost revenue. And this is something that cities and towns all across the state are doing now. Anyway, here's what I propose of the $1.5 million plus that the town has in ARPA as of early next year. I will recommend that the town appropriate $600,000 of that to EFOT. The town will have a remaining balance in ARPA of $940,965. There's a mobile home park on Newland Flats. The Newland Flats mobile home park, Newland Flats trailer park, all of you I'm sure are familiar with it. A number of years ago, the owners of that park, Mr. and Mrs. Peck, came to the village of Waterbury and said, we're having trouble with our water system. We need to get on to the village's water system. I likely recommended to the commissioners that, well, we can get them hooked up, but they need to pay to bring the water to the park. And they did. They paid over $200,000 to extend the village's water system from down near Twin Peaks up to the Newland Flats trailer park, and they brought it into the park. And at that point, they used their existing distribution system that they used to have their wells hooked up to provide water to those residents. The EFUD commissioners really do understand that state law makes them responsible for the quality of the water at the tap of all of those individual mobile home units, but that water system that services those mobile homes, that distribution system is still owned by the Pecks. They're a water customer. They pay water bills. The people out there in that park deserve to have a water system that's fully owned by the municipality, and in this case, that's EFUD. $600,000 should do that job. I think maybe it will do more than that job, but that's for a different time. I'm also recommending that EFUD either forgives or restructures a $530,000 UDAC loan that's outstanding to the Ice Center of Washington West. And when they do that, and we'll talk about the details of the forgiveness or the restructuring at this point, I think restructuring is probably better, but I'm going to recommend that they forgive that loan in effect to the Ice Center. After the town pays EFUD $600,000 to allow them to do the work in the Nealon Flats Home Park, I'm going to recommend that EFUD transfer ownership of its UDAC fund and its community development revolving loan fund to the town. Those two funds, net of the Ice Center loan, is worth $670,000 in change today. I'm also going to suggest that the town at town meeting consider appropriating $100,000 to the Ice Center to pay for the replacement of its cooling tower, and then also to add some money to their equipment reserve fund. I believe this appropriation can be made from the aqua funds, so it doesn't necessarily have to cost the taxpayers anything. We've talked with EFUD, the Select Ward and EFUD have been in discussions over the last several months about transferring land from EFUD to the town for parcels in particular, one of which is the site where the Ice Center is located and 40 acres of other land that is used partly for recreation purposes and partly for material storage areas. I would suggest that that transfer be put on hold until the merger that I described is either completed or that the process is exhausted and we find that it can't be done. And I hope that can happen within a year. That is very reasonable given that EFUD has no services that it offers the public for taxes and only has a water and sewer system which are paid by the ratepayers. So there should be no real angst about merging and cutting under one government. And I would suggest that that process of merger between EFUD and the town used that time as an opportunity to write a charter for itself to lay out a proposal to the legislature for how it wants to govern itself in the future. And when I say that, you know, if this merger happens, would the Select Board be responsible for everything they're responsible for? Now, plus water and sewer, perhaps the Select Board would say no, we should still elect water and sewer commissioners but instead of just from the EFUD district, there could be any town resident or maybe the Select Board would say well, we still want water and sewer commission but they should be appointed by the Select Board as they have very specific duties. Those are all things that we can talk about in the future. I'm almost done. I'm going to pass these out. So to the elephant in the room probably, when people heard that I'm suggesting forgiving or restructuring the ice center's debt, let me expand on that a little bit. There is precedent in both the town and the EFUD forgiveness of loans to local not-for-profit organizations. The Seminary Building and Warbury Center and the Stimson Graves Building on Stow Street are two prime examples. If you look at what I just passed out, if you look at page one, you'll see that that is the Tows Community Development Fund from 2005. And you can see there were three loans outstanding at the time, a $336,700 loan and then a almost $9,800 loan and about a $66,300 loan. The two smaller loans were loans made from CDBG funds that had been granted to the town earlier in time, had been loaned out and partially repaid back to the town. The town applied for a grant to help with the renovation of the Seminary Building, turning it into affordable housing. The grant that was received to do that was this $336,700. It was a community development block grant, lent to the town, the town used that money and then lent additional funds into that project. The two smaller loans were intended to be paid back with interest. If you look at your next page, mark two at the top, you'll see that that $20,000 seminary note and that $80,000 seminary note are at zero. This is current year, but that $336,700 note is still outstanding. That loan was made to the developers of that. I can't remember if it's down street or I believe it is down street is involved in that. It wasn't down street at the time. That $336,000 loan was made for a term where principal and interest was suspended for that whole term with a balloon payment at the end with the expectation when the end of the period comes the loan would be waived. So the Select Board has not technically waived that $336,700 note as of yet. If you look at the next page, page three, this is the PFUDs Community Development Fund. You'll see there a $535,000 loan to Stimson Graves Building and you'll see $72,071 as a loan to the Lad Hall Liwity Partnership, which is the affordable housing at Lad Hall, which was part of the state complex until it was flooded out in Tropical Storm Irene. The village at the time lent $74,000 of Community Development Block Grant into that Lad Hall project. This is a very complicated amortization schedule there. Down the street has only paid a couple of thousand dollars of that back, but that money will come back to the community. But if you notice... Oh, man. Did they all go? That blame all blown. Well, I hope they can still see and hear us. Can they hear you? I can hear you. Let's see. We just can't see them. I think if you look at the local non-reader, I'll probably hear from them. Yeah. If you turn to the next page... Not coming along. All right. If you turn to page four, you'll see in 2019... You'll see in 2019 that the $72,000 Lad Hall loan is still there, but the $535,000 Stimson Graves loan is not there. In 2019, the E-Flight Commissioners... Excuse me. I just got confirmation that people can still see and hear us. And I feel confirmation that there's power outages in town from my home. Thank you. We're probably working on it, gentlemen. Yeah. Anyway, the E-Flight Commissioners in 2019 and November of 2019 the 30-year, the 19... That $535,000 was lent to Stimson Graves' project in 1989 when revitalizing Waterbury was born and tried to prevent that building from being torn down. And now it's a key community center. There's senior citizen centers there and elderly housing is in that building. The E-Flight Commissioners forgave that loan as anticipated when that balloon payment came up. I'm not sure why it looks like page five is almost the same as page four. Don't worry about page five. If you go to page six, you'll see this is the village's E-Fud's Udag Fund. You can see there in the middle of the page on the assets above where I've highlighted. There's the loan to the Ice Center of $523,915. This is from 2019. You'll also see a loan there, $202,500, to revitalizing Waterbury, which ultimately gets transferred to Down Street in the process of transferring that property. And you see $63,075 down at the bottom as a crude interest. The CDBG loan, that $535,000, the E-Flight Commissioners forgave the entire loan and a crude interest. So on that, I think that point was crude interest. Anyway, the Udag Fund in 2019 at the same time in November, the E-Flight Commissioners wrote off that $202,500 Udag loan, but collected the $63,075 of interest. So there's some examples of federal lending, which was passed through the state that came to the community that was lent for community development purposes that was then forgiven by the entity that loaned it because it was the right thing to do in order to foster the economic vitality of our community and meet community needs, both housing needs in those cases. If you continue looking on... Well, if you look at page 7 now, this is the last page, you'll see there that the revitalizing Waterbury Loan is gone. It's zero, and the crude interest is gone and I just told you how that happened. You'll also see that the ICE Center loan is now $529,802. That seems counterintuitive, but over time, that loan that was made to the ICE Center has been restructured and refinanced to the benefit of the ICE Center by E-Flight. So that's the precedent for forgiveness of loans. Why do I think that we should do this? At the bottom of that page that I had handed out, the narrative, before it says there are many moving parts, it says there's a great deal of pressure from the public right now to improve recreation facilities on land owned by our two municipalities. I think these proposals should be explored. I believe they are possible, but I believe it should happen only after we take steps necessary to protect the recreational gym that we have in this community now that almost nobody in the local government ever thinks about which almost costs nothing but is a vital part of our community. And the multiplier effects, I'm not an economist and I don't have the time even if I was to do this, but there's probably, Katie would know better than I, but high school hockey team, girls and boys, both teams I'm sure probably 15, 18 kids on each team, they both have 20 game seasons, they play 10 games at home each, so that's 20 games that they're playing at home where other teams from other communities come here and play. Then you've got the Harvard U-Talky, which is from ages five to about freshman and high school when the Bantams are graduating and those who are interested in try out for the high school team move up to high school sports. But there's scores more kids. I don't know the number of kids that are playing down there. And those kids practice two or three times a week and they play a game. And when I was in youth hockey because I grew up in a big city, we had a house league. We practiced and we played and we played amongst teams in our own league. And then it was an all-star team or traveling team that was comprised of better players maybe that traveled. But the Harvard Youth Hockey League, for the most part, they play kids from other communities and they go to other communities. So there's people from all over central Vermont, at least, coming here from, you know, basically I think the hockey season in terms of game probably starts in November. But they're practicing from November to March. There's a lot of people that come to this community and spend money here in restaurants at gas stations. Sometimes I'm sure you've been in hotels in the shops in this community. That place center costs us almost nothing, except maybe if you want to count the time that I've put in over the past, especially five years or so, to try to do things to help them out, understanding that, you know, they've got to generate a lot of income to pay their bills. And they've never missed a loan payment. And I'm going to go on here a little bit. They've never missed a loan payment. But in 2000, in 1998, so that's a long time ago, 25 years, the town appropriated $90,000 to extend the road down to the ice center. And then in 2003, when it was actually done, $25,000 more was appropriated. So altogether, the town appropriated $115,000 to send to extend the road to the ice center. The cost of it was actually $109,000. In the same year, 1998, the village appropriated $225,000 to bring the water and the sewer mains to the ice center. The cost of it was about $195,000, so it didn't cost as much as the appropriation was. I believe then still suspect that the ice center paid that money back to the village, but I can't find that they did. And I ran out of time looking, so I'm going to assume that they didn't. So altogether between the road and $195,000 to bring water and sewer to the ice center, the community spent about $305,000 to get those two pieces of infrastructure down there. So the ice center opened in 2003 or 2004, so I just divided that $304,000 by 18 years, and it came out to $16,900 a year. And there was interest that had to be paid on those notes that the town took anyway. I know the motion to build the water and sewer mains, the village voted to use money that they had garnered through sale of timber up in the waterworks, and they didn't have to finance that. But even if you include the interest that the town had to likely pay on a five-year note, if you round that up to $20,000 a year, I think that's a lot. So that's what the public infrastructure, that $305,000 cost the town about $20,000 a year. In 2003, the ice center entered into a 99-year lease and leases the site from the village for $10 a year, bargain basement price. The village in 2003 billed the ice center $56,255 for water and sewer allocation. They financed it, I believe, over 10 years, allowing the ice center to pay that $56,000 over 10 years. In 2004, the ice center borrowed $500,000 from the UDAG fund and financed it over 30 years. They had debt from commercial lenders as well. Their total debt was over $1.2 million. Here we are now, 18 years later, they still owe the ice center $530,000, but they've paid down the other debt. The total debt is in the $840,000 range right now. And the reason why they still owe $530,000 to the ice center is that I have recommended to the water sewer commissioners or to the e-flight commissioners, I mean several times over the past decade to loan the ice center more money at a lower rate so they could pay off and pay down that commercial debt that they have. They still have some debt with a local bank not to be named. That's over 6% interest. And I have worked, I've tried to encourage that bank to refinance that, given the low interest rate environment. e-flight hasn't been able to have enough money to take on all that debt, but they have refinanced, allowed the ice center to pay down debt and the loan of $530,000 is to the ice center at 2%. Now as an aside, when the pandemic hit in 2020, four months I think after the last refinancing and that's what you saw in 2019 that the ice center's debt was like $523,000 and it went up to $530,000. A few months after the last refinancing the pandemic hit shut everything down. The e-flight commission is upon recommendation from the suspended principal and interest payments on all UDAG loans for all UDAG borrowers and have not turned on that switch yet. So all of those borrowers save two new borrowers who just borrowed money within the last couple of years are right now saving their principal and interest, being able to use that to put into their businesses hoping that they can get out of the other end of the pandemic still operating. So the ice center's debt is $530,000. They're not paying anything down on that right now. In contrast, the banks told them we'll suspend your interest in principal payments as well. You don't have to pay during the pandemic but we're going to keep the meter running on the interest.  So EFAT, I think, has been instrumental in helping to keep the ice center viable. In when the town and the village invested that money in the ice center and I was probably the principal advocate for saying, oh, we can't give them a tax break. They should pay taxes and if they ever get themselves considered tax exempt from the legislature, they need to pay a payment in lieu of taxes for the municipality. Now, almost every other not-for-profit that's out there doesn't pay any taxes at all and we squawk about that. We just went through a settlement case with the daycare center down the road about that. But the ice center said, we're not going to ask the community for money and we said, okay, that's great but we want you to pay taxes. So they paid taxes and then there's been three times when the legislature took action. Anyway, the ice center entered into an agreement to pay taxes to the town and to the village. In 2006, for two years, EFAT suspended the principal and interest payments on the loan to allow them to pay down their water sewer allocations quicker. The water sewer allocations were financed. They were at a higher interest rate than the loan was. And I said, well, if they can pay that, you get that paid back to the water and sewer fund which needed the money and you can't give money from, you know, the UDAG Revolving Loan Fund to support operations of the water and sewer system. It needs to be revenue there. So to get that $56,000 back or into the coffers of the village quicker so it could be useful water and sewer, they suspended that UDAG payment. In 2010, we had made a mistake and I'll say me, we had made a mistake in terms of the bill that we were sending to the ice center for payment and move taxes. The legislature had granted an exemption to the ice center for the education tax and we failed to send them the right bill for that pilot payment to the town and village. In 2010, because of our mistake, we agreed to evade $32,000 of taxes that we hadn't really built them for. But we said, you're still responsible for the $18,000 that you owe to the town and the village. The village had received that money from the town and that's a long story, $5,600 was the village tax. So there was $12,518 that they still owed the town. The village agreed once again to suspend their UDAG payment to let them make that tax payment to the town quicker and they did that in about a year and then the amortization of that loan started again. In 2011, at a town meeting that several of us were at, the town presented a proposal to the voters to say we'll exempt the ice center from taxes and we'll agree to pay the ice center's education tax as long as the ice center continues to pay us the municipal tax. The town voted to do that. We had to install that fourth tax rate. So if you look at your tax bills now, you see there's a .0018 tax rate for veterans' exemptions for disabled vets. There's a similar small tax rate for the education tax that we're paying on behalf of the Hunger Mountain Child Center right now. We had to do that for the ice center. So we paid their education tax and then in 2016, I think it was, the state finally exempted the ice center from all taxes. We don't have to pay that education tax on every happening more. And in 2019, the select board agreed not to charge the municipal tax to the ice center any longer. It was only a couple thousand dollars and we said the village is out of business. There's no more police department. We just let it, let it go. I've talked about the ice center having their debt restructured several times by eFUD since 2016 in particular. So here's the ice center who has generated a customer base, sold ice time over the years. They've paid all their bills. They've paid taxes. They've paid their debt and they never missed any of those payments and now the pandemic comes and they're starting to see some struggles. They lost almost all of 2020 in terms of revenue. All their bills didn't go away. They've never asked the municipality for anything. But I kind of scratched my head when I was going through this and I said, I wonder how much money have been given to other not-for-profits since 2003. So I went and I edited all of our today. Between 2003 and 2021, except for the direct payments that we made to the ice center or for the infrastructure, the road and the water and sewer mains being brought down there, and then indirect assistance that I've described which is refinancing, shuffling the deck, helping them to have lower debt payments to other entities so that they could continue to stay in business on our behalf or for our behalf. Since that time and with that very minimal and as I said, I think you can count it maybe $20,000 a year has been provided to that organization that I think does so much for this community. In that time, the town for special articles has appropriated $1,248,500 to not-for-profit organizations through our special article process at town meeting. That amounts to $65,710 every year for the last 18 years. 19 years, it is. Included in that $1,248,500 is $535,000 $535,200 to be exact that's been appropriated to the senior center and $73,500 that's been appropriated to the children's room. And I don't begrudge making those payments to either of those entities. The reason I specify those two is because those two are the only organizations on that list that actually are in town and do something directly for people in the community. Now, there's all kinds of other good not-for-profit organizations that are county-wide and I'm not saying that they don't provide service to the community but these two organizations are, you know, the two that have the biggest presence and I think provide the most direct service to Waterbury residents. In addition to that $1.2 million plus since 2012 the town has appropriated $183,000 to support the general operation budget of revitalizing Waterbury and an additional $264,225 for its economic development director position. And again, I'm happy that we've done that. I'm not suggesting that we should have appropriated less or that we shouldn't do it any longer. What I'm saying is that there's a lot of effort that's been made to help out these organizations. R&W is a definite partner of ours who work very closely with them. They've done a lot of work in the community to try to help encourage and foster business. They run programs that bring people into this community like the arts fest. They help with the auto show. The economic development director's position I think has been invaluable. They did great work through the three-year Main Street Reconstruction Project. And we had additional grant money that we funneled to them to do that work that's not included in this. So having said all that I've come to the end of my speech. The end of my plea, if you will. The ICE Center, if it were up to me at this stage of the game probably should be taken over by the town. But I don't think that there's stomach to do that. Maybe on this board. I'm not sure the community's ready to do that. There are certain things that could be a lot cheaper if the town owned the facility and ran it. General liability insurance in particular that is the first thing that pops to mind. But I think that if we want this organization to continue to exist we really need to do the things that I've suggested here. And why? Because there are a handful of persons at the ICE Center. Four or five people who are on the board. They've been on the board since the 1990s. I don't know how much they raised to help build the ICE Center. They had to borrow $1.2 million in addition to what they raised. They run that facility. They pay a staff. They're doing an excellent job. They're providing an excellent service to the community. If we want them to continue doing it and we don't have to, I think we need to help them do this. The reason why I talked about restructuring debt as opposed to forgiving the debt, which last week I thought forgiving the debt was the best idea. But if we restructured the debt and did what we did for the Stimson Graves Building and for the Seminary Building and said that $530,000 is going to be no principal and interest payments for the next 20 years and that 20 years out, there'll be a balloon payment deal which means you get to renegotiate the terms of the loan. I would hope that at that point it would be forgiven just like those two loans that I shared about a little while ago were forgiven. But the reason I don't think we should forgive that now is if the ICE Center in its current governance structure of not-for-profit board of directors volunteer people if they can't make it. And then some of you have served on boards for 20 or 25 years or more and you know it takes a lot of energy and a lot of time and you've got a professional staff here to help you with a lot of things. The people that are volunteering to do that job they've got a couple of paid staff mostly part-time people they've got volunteers who are doing the work as a treasurer. You know, it's a big effort. If they go under, if EFUD wants to play hardball with them and says you know what, we're turning on the loan and we're going to start charging you 2% and we're going to, because the suspension of principal and interest ends on January 1st. So say no action by the EFUD commissioners at their meeting on Wednesday the ICE Center will owe almost $2,600 a month to EFUD for that debt. They're already paying their debt to the local bank and they're continuing to pay it. But I know, even though I haven't examined their books I know they don't have $2,600 a month in excess right now to pay that loan. So if those folks go away there's two things or three things that could happen. The bank and the EFUD would talk about what's next, maybe it gets sold and it's used as a warehouse or some other use that's not an ICE Center that's a community-based recreational facility. Maybe it could be sold to a for-profit entity to run the ICE Center that is looking to target as its customer base high-end hockey clubs and organizations that are trying to get kids into playing junior professional hockey high-end, and I don't remember the name of them but they were often stowed a number of years ago. If that happened, we could probably get that buyer to pay off the debt to the EFUD and to the bank and could have the facility but then it's not a community-based facility any longer it's not doing what the people that founded it want to do. So in case the ICE Center board of directors gets to the point saying we just can't do this anymore we need to sell it, the town doesn't want to take it over as long as we've restructured that note then whoever buys it is going to have to at least negotiate with the community and I would hope to pay that $530,000 back to us. But if you want the ICE Center to remain as is a facility that provides huge benefits to this community without really costing the community anything I think you need to do what I need to do what I'd recommend you to do. I'm going to stop there I know that I've put a lot on the plate I know you can probably give me 100 reasons not to do what I suggest that you do I can only give you one reason to do it and that is I think it's the right thing to do for the benefit of this community. So there's a lot there if you want to talk about it now we can do that if you want to just let it go and come back to that as we go through our next meetings and budgets that's fine too. I appreciate you listening and I hope I haven't offended anyone with my recommendations but there they are. Thank you. I'd like to make just one comment on behalf of EFA there I'd like to thank Bill for his for thinking recommendations I think he's always given us good guidance and I think these recommendations are the result of his 34 years of experience here in Waterbury and I for one think they are the things that we need to consider to make a stronger library and I would look forward to working on them with the select board to implement them and things for the future of Waterbury so thank you Bill. So there's a couple things I think we got kind of unpacked and this is a lot I think for obviously a single meeting. Has the discussion with EFA been had already about the idea of the merger let's separate that from this idea of forgiveness and I think so this is the beginning of that conversation. I mean that word has been tossed about from time to time the village's preference when the village dissolved would have been a merger we tried that at least six different times in the time that I've been here and it failed and it always failed over the police department and ultimately when the village gave up the police department and just said we don't want to have any more general government responsibility to do that quickly and efficiently the dissolution of the village had to happen and because the village had some of these other assets the UDAG fund, the community development loan fund things that weren't part of the water and sewer system including some of the land that we talked about the dissolution of the village and creating EFA in its current configuration was the quickest and most efficient thing to do but no they haven't talked about it I'm not trying to put anybody out of a job commissioners but for me, the person who sits here we still have way too many boards than we really need in this community and from my perspective a merger at this point would be I think almost painless and I think also very transformational and the reason I say that is that the main the main responsibility that EFA has is to operate its water and sewer system the entire political boundaries of EFA are already served by water and sewer the only places that there's any place to grow, to develop outside of the political boundaries of EFA they've spent a lot of money over the past two or three years on engineering studies one is to, you know, upgrade the water line up on Route 100 that goes from Howard Avenue down past where sunflower natural foods is or whatever there's a one inch water main there that serves those places there's no fire protection there there's the opportunity to expand the water system greatly there George Pierce has got some significant expansion plans for Ivy Computer where the summer theater area used to be in fact as an aside I got an email from Jamie Stewart of Central Vermont Economic Development Corporation wondering if we would submit a letter of support for one of these veggie grants that Ivy Computer is trying to get because they'd like to grow a little bit faster than they are organically now but I don't have that letter tonight but why should EFA be making decisions about how we're going to expand the water system out in the town? That should be the town the town's planning commission the town's select board do we want to grow? How do we want to grow? Where do we want to grow? Same with Route 2, you know there's water that's been extended down Parrows Spun Shop I think maybe I know water's available there on the other side of the road where some common is there's water available there I believe they're customers we've extended the water main there that area could be the sewer system could be expanded there to allow some more dense development to happen in a place that has you know the topography that could handle some development so more town the more town planning commission has reached out to EFA which has the ability through its charter to sell water extra-territorily we already have the water the more town Tuxbury Fire District number one 100 customers on the other side of the river they have their own water system but they get served by EFUD EFUD actually does their billing for them and does the maintenance of their system for them they're looking for potentially some sewage to be put over there so that they can develop economic development, get some more dense development there we've got a wastewater treatment can here that has the capability of handling 510,000 gallons a day and since the flood we're bailing 260,000 gallons a day there's capacity available but not in the village because there's no room left in the village it needs to be outside of the political entity of EFUD so would elected officials from EFUD be the ones that are making these decisions or should that be better of a town responsibility that's how I feel about it we're not going to solve that tonight we're not going to decide whether we're going to move forward to that tonight but I think it makes sense to at least talk about it I have so many questions but one last thing the other thing I think and don't get lost don't lose sight of the fact that I've suggested that for the investment of $600,000 of federal arpeggio to give to EFUD so that they can deal with that mobile home park and get a good water system in there that EFUD would transfer to the town its revolving loan funds and the blue stone building where the restaurant was they just sold that building there was $108,000 loan to the blue stone that loan was paid off today so the balance sheet that I showed you for the UDAG fund if you have looked at it last week the fund balance is the same $1.7 million but about $2.3 million had been all loaned out and there was less money available now that loan was repaid so of the $1.7 million of assets only about $1.1 million is loaned out if the town wants to think about doing work for housing we lend money from our CDBG fund to the Ladd Hall project the village lent money to the Ladd Hall project we've lent money to the village into the Stimson Graves building the town lent money to the seminary building we've contacted down street you were invited last year Mark and I think you actually went on the tour through the community we'd love to have some investment the state is starting to try to push affordable housing and the only way you're going to make affordable housing nowadays is going to be with multifamily units you're not going to make affordable single-family houses out there so getting the town to be in control of the revolving loan fund allows that money to be talked about and planned for uses by the entire town and it can be used in the entire town as opposed to how there's a lot of opportunity here for everyone and I know I've taken up too much of your time now but if you've got questions that are burning, ask them tonight but this isn't going to be resolved tonight so there's a long process to get there I agree with a lot of your premises bill I've always been for simplification of our governmental entities I think sometimes we have way too many decision makers and it creates paralysis I don't want to take jobs away from anyone but I think sometimes streamlining things is a good thing as I think Mark says there's a lot of compartmentalized here we're definitely not going to make a decision one thing I do want to hear from I would like to have the Board of the ICE Center come in here and we should have a conversation about I think some of the proposals that you make are very reasonable I think the ICE Center has been good stewards over the year it is an asset and do we want it to become I know I was involved in my former job with the North American Hockey Academy up in snow and you look that's no longer there I don't know how a hockey academy it may work on a very short term but I don't know if it's a solution I'm hoping that it's not a solution I think having a community based recreation facility that has a mission to provide recreation opportunities through ice skating and hockey to the local communities is what they wanted when they when they started this process 25 years ago and that's what they've been able to deliver if it wasn't for the pandemic I wish I could turn the clock back on the ICE Center because none of us and when I say none of us I mean there are so many boards that were in place back in the early 2000s and the village trustees and even the water sewer commissioners never really looked at it as this is somebody this is a group of people from our community trying to make an investment in our community for our community and I feel sad that in the early days the things that I said and recommended really put hurdles up for them and made it much more difficult than it needed to be but they persevered and as I said they never missed a payment on anything that they've ever owed the town or village when they were properly built and if it wasn't for the pandemic you know I probably wouldn't be sitting here making these recommendations but it doesn't mean that it still wouldn't have been the right thing to do because I think that they need the more cooperation that they get from us the longer and the better they'll be able to continue their mission and not burden the community with it and I don't want to be in a situation like Stowe is in where they took over they rebuilt the Jackson Arena they made it a year round facility but what's going to pay for itself that Stowe taxpayers are pouring a lot of money into that facility I don't want to see that happen here and I think there's ways to do this that won't cost the taxpayer anything except some of their federal tax dollars and Congress has already decided to spend that and they've already sent most of it out to us so we've got it in our hot little hands right now and we should use it wisely I think before we start thinking about all kinds of other things we could use it for we should stabilize that facility and make sure that it continues to exist and is not a burden on the community going forward but I do agree with your second premise it's not having it totally forgiven that having it forgiven with say a 20 year term because of things drastic probably going to do who knows what's going to happen and I don't want to forgive that debt and then not that I believe the ICE Center folks would plan to do this but let's say in three years we don't have enough volunteers coming in to help us we've been doing this for 25 years we're going to sell it and then somebody buys it and we're out and about so I'd like to keep the half a million dollars I think we're at the point where I think this is a big conversation I'm wondering if we need to I don't have a special meeting we're going to have to I mean I think I expected with how things played out that there would be a conversation about EFUD merger with the town at some point I think there was a lot of reasons even prior to the pandemic that made sense but there were assets and conversations surrounding the assets at EFUD and how that would work I think a lot of things have changed since even obviously two years ago I don't even know if we should go up to the rest of the board with questions I think if we take all of this back and start to unwrap it ourselves and have meetings with you it seems like it's to the point of maybe a special meeting I don't know if EFUD is meeting this week we'll discuss this I'm assuming it would at this point they have a meeting this week and none of the EFUD commissioners did have no heads up any more than you had to this I think that's important to know where EFUD stands on this because if EFUD says we're not interested I know this is a merger meeting I don't want to put EFUD on the spot I'm not a merger meeting on a joint meeting I don't want to put EFUD on the spot to have to discuss this in this joint meeting but I think there's a lot that probably does make sense here but I fear that it's a we're already behind our agenda items if anyone who has questions on this before we move on I don't really mean to rest this part of it but I would kind of respect everybody's time I think it's time to and I would just say thank you for being very thorough also unless they're on Zoom the Ice Center knows nothing about this proposal it's not a new share with anybody I mean I think we can certainly come up with this again in another meeting and more in the weeds on it we're going to have to get further down I don't even know how to start discussing the forgiveness of death that is in our debt right now it's going to be like death and I don't even know how to like appropriate and speak to that if everyone's okay we're going to move the agenda forward I'll date on the status to search for Zoni Nevin yes so we were hoping to have an interview with the next candidate who is administrative tonight the planning commission after the gentleman that was appointed by the select board back in early October he resigned after a week and a half we re-advertised the planning commission interviewed a couple of candidates and nominated a candidate at their last meeting last week and the expectation of staff was that that person would be here tonight to interview with the select board Steve Lott's speech and I met with him however last week to just talk about some of the administrative and ministerial duties and although we had advertised for a range of $21 to $29 an hour the expectation of staff in particular was that we weren't going to be hiring anybody at the top of the range unless it was you know really once in a lifetime candidate the person was well-qualified is not educated as a planner but as a geographer but has worked as a planner and his own administrator for about 20 years I think and looked like it was going to be a good match I talked to you a little bit at the last meeting and emailed since the last meeting about the difficulty in the labor market and what wages are doing anyway I said this is likely what we're going to offer you I can't put an offer in writing until the select board actually points you because this is the only position that I don't get to a point as a town manager when I presented him orally with a compensation package he said well I need $29 an hour firm no negotiation that's what I have to have I said well kind of don't give us much wiggle room to even talk if that's your attitude said I'll see what I can do he and Steve went in the other room and talked and that night he sent an email saying it's clear that you're not willing to pay what this job demands I'm withdrawing from consideration so we're back to the drawing board again and Steve is continuing to try to do both his job and his own administrator's job you know I'm disappointed at that during the interview even before the person kind of presented his ultimatum I was a little bit he was a very strong willed kind of driven personality and I'm not sure would have been the best but anyway but even so I'm just letting you know that finding people have been the zoning administrator here for four or five years and although we tweaked the job description to give this new position a little bit more responsibility to do some of the planning work you know she was being paid you know barely $21 an hour and to go $29 immediately just doesn't seem like it's in the cards at least for me so that's it I want to I put this in this spot on the agenda just so the D-Flight commissioners could hear it as well because there's likely to be some turnover in water and sewer staff over the next year or so and I'm just kind of letting you all know that it's just a very difficult labor market now it is an employees market that's a challenge I have a question do you know how we worked on I know that you have worked on this but I'm curious to know a little bit more the compensation comparison for similar jobs I've got the VLCT salary survey that just was published in it just came to us in hard copy for a month and a half ago so it's information that was probably compiled and finalized I would say in June before the real kind of steep slope up in the inflation rate and in pressures on wages the range that we had was quite wide because we are trying and as Mark put it you know if we could hire somebody who might be able to step up into the planners commission into the planners position when the time comes for Steve to retire it would be nice to have that flexibility so it's a little bit different job description than the pure zoning administrative that we had before but I was not in a position that day to promise the guy that I said well see what I can do and if he came and interviewed and you know kind of blew your socks off and if you had said sure look A.M. what he was that's one thing but he didn't allow the opportunity for that when I said boy that's going to be kind of tough he just decided see you later so we're back to 13 growing mentality throughout this country that's become in my opinion worse than the virus itself that and for several reasons I won't get into what I think the reasons are people believe that they're worth way more than probably really worth the working world these days so yeah this type of thing is rampant everywhere I'm sure the business owner in this building tonight that can attest to that I mean I stopped at the the Irving store in Stowe yesterday on my way to Canaan and I had to get gas and I went inside and bought a couple of donuts and there's a sign on the door for just cash register attendance $15 an hour on the long stand behind the Dunkin Donuts counter and you know we've been hiring people to work on you know our highway crews and stuff like that within the past couple of years that you know $17 or $18 an hour and it's it's a tough deal and I'm not disagreeing with you Chris it's just that's where we are and if we're going to mention that it's also important that cost of living is really high multiple jobs, full-time jobs and side jobs it's hard to pay I'm not suggesting that it's not worth it I'm just saying there's pressures I'm not disagreeing with you but to your point outside of this municipality the governments have overspent and undervalued we haven't got the return on investment for our money and has driven up the cost of living for most people to the point where they're just they can't keep up anymore so it's a bigger discussion than we have today I think we can right now any other business for the joint session while we're all here together yes and you're not going to want to hear this either but um at the end of 2022 I will be stepping down as our manager um in March next year I will have been here in Waterbury as municipal manager for 34 years I started my career in Pylon Pond um 40 years ago next October and um I've loved almost every minute of my job here there's a few seconds in there every once in a while that I can think of where I didn't have a good time um but this has been um tremendous opportunity for me I feel honored to have served here this community for this length of time it's been a wonderful community to live in I continue I will plan to continue living here I'm not planning to go anywhere um but since the flood in particular there's just been you know it's been pedal to the metal for me for a long time and um I've got grandkids now that I want to spend a little time with I've got an elderly mother who my sister and brother have taken care of in Massachusetts that I need to spend a little bit more time there my wife has an elderly father in the same situation um and although there are many challenges and opportunities for professional satisfaction ahead and I think I laid those out in the first hour of this meeting I think that's always going to be the case and if I wait until I think that there's nothing left for me to be able to do it's never going to come so with the reluctant part um and with a head that has had lots of conversations with my wife um I think that the time has come uh I would recommend that um probably the board's contact uh the Romaldia cities and towns allow them to help you with the recruitment process um if I were you I think a reasonable goal would be to have somebody uh hired and able to come on board sometime maybe November next year um I will be happy to work through the end of the year with whoever that person is and if the town and EFUD if it still exists I'm hoping that maybe it will be on its way to being out of business but uh if the town and EFUD want to continue some relationship with me and the ability to use your skills you think I may have that's something that I'll always be willing to talk about with you but for now I think um the time has come for me to let you know that um I'm sorry to have to tell you that because if I know it's uh it's a big challenge the final thing I would say and again this is something that you all have to decide on yourself and the voters have uh have a big say in this as well but I would recommend to all of you if at all possible even those of you who have terms expiring in March that maybe you ought to run for another term and if you have to resign somewhere down the road but um asking new board members to come on with no experience about how this municipality runs and operates and what's important and then have that person have to be involved in the hiring of a new manager would be somewhat difficult I think so I would encourage all of you to consider running again for a term if your terms are ending and I know you know there's at least probably three people on both boards that have terms that expire every year but if you can read up for at least another year or so that would probably be best for the community not sure it would be best for you but for the community it would probably be best so anyway with that I'm going to put my mask on and shut up I was going to say I guess it's time for me to put it for sale sign up because if we gain it on hire we don't even get to the street God help us with the town manager last year but it's well deserved though sorry to see you go Bill but why am I going anywhere yet for that at least he needs Steve thank you for hearing us that notice I think that obviously helps us realize that we're going to have to find a replacement so I appreciate the time you're giving us are there any other joint business before we let the e-fund folks go I don't know I understand that you had put a prescription against applause during this meeting but considering Bill's long service to the town would you have a round of applause for him thank you very much I don't know here are no other business I was going to entertain a motion to adjourn the e-fund commissioners meeting at this time no watch let me know your football I think you're proud of that second that motion I'll make the motion motion made to adjourn the e-fund joint portion of the meeting all of the papers say let's go thank you very much thank you for coming in tonight we look forward to working with you on Bill's thank you thank you thank you alright moving on step forward to business I know how many people are here Friday we can't move it if we want to I know there's a lot of people that hope to speak Friday I don't know what item A and B is consider the graphics for an anti-racism inclusion banner that we voted for it's a discussion of graphics I don't know do we have it I guess we just do it so this was a banner that we moved forward two meetings ago maybe and now this is just the graphic so this is exactly the wording that was voted forward do any of the select board members have a comment on it yes I don't know the last version I saw had words in the background and we could all see it is this one clear of those exactly what you see and then was there a reason that the colors green and yellow were used instead of the library colors orange and white I am uncertain who chose those colors good question kind of a pounding in the face in my opinion the colors that we use for most of our programs are software so can I ask a question let me just go around put the select board for the public if that's okay I concur yeah I haven't seen this yet we don't have a color book for a waterberry I think we do have a we do have a a brand with colors which is typically this white and orange and I don't know what else okay did you just want to just change the the colors of yellow and green to the white orange or just white I mean if I made you take this how you want it but the first look at that it's self accusatory sorry to say that I don't think we should go down around discussing the word I'm saying the color scheme that's the first thing that hit me is like holy cow if we can use something more neutral this is a select board meeting we are discussing if we can use something more neutral that kind of allows you to read the words as a whole instead of the same as Vermont yeah I know that there is a I think we should make a decision tonight on what it looks like I don't want to go down the road of extending that to the next meeting around color so if the words on the right match the Vermont font and then would you want all the everything white without or water green and orange or is everything in white I mean how would a blue look if we're saying it's about the town colors I don't know what the town colors scheme is but I don't know I think whatever the town colors is I think the next on the call he was but he may have lost power too I think we could just say I can't remember when that was in terms of like outside consultant years ago gave us some kind of color scheme and font Laura correct I know Nick's working on this so maybe he could regroup with Laura she's a graphic designer sure I'm just trying to think how we can move forward we already made a motion to approve the banner this is just the look of the banner I can't imagine we'll need to make a motion again to approve the color scheme I think it's just going way overboard to think that we need to vote for anything else I think it's Nick works with Laura if the question is we're looking for board feedback I think the feedback sounds like it is make sure that it falls into whatever the look and color scheme of whatever water is supposed to be using of course well do we do we dare to just leave it at that and expect that it's going to be yeah I would say I'll make a motion to approve the design as is with a modification that the colors match the town's colors yeah and that's as simple as that I personally don't think we need a motion I think that we give the feedback we've already approved the banner so I think we just give the feedback that we expected to have the color and font choices that match whatever has been approved for the town branding I think the Waterbury-Vermont part is typical and I just would request that the rest of it be all either the same color using the colors I think that's fine and all we're doing is giving the feedback I think okay thank you so we're moving on to the discussion of the local mask as everyone knows most people might know that the governor previous to the governor's decision or I'm not sure if it's a militant or whatever that is considered towns were not allowed to enact any kind of mask mandate because there wasn't a state of emergency and anyone can correct me if I'm wrong there so now they have authorized towns to be able to put forward local mask mandates that's the discussion that we're having tonight we received a copy of what the local mask mandate might look like which I think came from the Vermont League of City of Townsville yeah yep so basically what the governor is allowing is towns to enact local mask mandates that are active for I think no more than 30 days without renewal this is in response to towns requesting that they be allowed to do this which previously they were not allowed to this is an example that was was this from the Vermont League of City of Towns or Vermont League of Townsville offered kind of a template on the town of Spill but we're discussing this tonight and then I amended this from that so it's not exactly the same as the stores I think it reads a little bit better I I don't know if everyone can read this I'm happy to read it out loud yeah so it says whereas Governor Scott signed into law asked one authorizing the legislative body of the municipality to adopt temporary rule requiring individuals to wear a face covering while indoors and locations open to the public whereas a high rate of community transmission of COVID-19 is occurring across the entire state of Vermont and whereas the Water Brace Select Board recognizes that COVID-19 remains a public health hazard in Waterbury and in surrounding communities and believes wearing a face covering by the general public while indoor spaces an important means of reducing spread of COVID-19 now therefore be it resolved that the travel establishments located in the town of Waterbury open to the public shall require staff customers and visitors to wear a face covering or a face shield over their noses and mouth while inside the establishment within six feet of others face coverings or face shields shall not be required for children under the age of two persons with a disability which prevents safe use of a face covering or a face shield a person for whom a face covering or face shield would create a risk to workplace health and safety a person who is physically exerting themselves during work or athletic endeavor and persons eating and drinking inside any establishment that serves food or beverages each establishment is individually responsible to post signage at the entrance to the premises and at other appropriate locations stating staff customers and visitors are required to wear face coverings or face shields this resolution shall take effect immediately and shall remain in effect until the select board amends, rescind or suspends this rule by action a properly worn meeting or if the board fails to extend the resolution as prescribed by law which I stated earlier was for 30 days the resolution shall be nullified when the authority grants by the state through the law expires where the law is repealed by the state so that is what we're discussing this evening yeah so this again was copied from Bill or modified from yeah what I took was what the town of Stowe was going to be considering tonight and just changed two words to make it you know they had customers and they had visitors in parentheses and I think that you know you want for staff for example it's essentially it's not something that I wrote out a whole clock I took a template that has been provided by the LCTs and it's fine tuned by the one municipality and I fine tuned it for them that's all with that being said I am a business owner in town that has a food and is eating and drinking establishment so I'm going to recuse myself and hopefully speak up the half of my business and my restaurant I'm going to be handing the meeting over to you and I will take my place in the public and I thank you Mark Chris before we go to the public do you mind if I say I'm very short absolutely I think I just want to clarify that this isn't a most something that us as a board related and our offering up as a group we haven't talked about this or considered it it's because it was created the law by the governor and then we were asked to discuss it up meeting so it's not that we as a body are proposing this mandate we're here to discuss it and talk about whether we think it makes the most sense for the town and I just wanted to clarify that in case that affects how you want to speak or talk tonight thanks Chris so Danny is this just considered a discussion then and not this isn't a public hearing as to whether or not this would happen I mean we in theory cannot vote and put it off I think or we can vote the public the public does not the public certainly has the right to make their voices known to the select board members either here at this meeting or you know call and email them what have you as Danny said some board members asked for this to be on the agenda given what the legislature has approved and rather than sit here for an evening and talk about whether we want to do anything or not I thought it would be helpful to have something that actually had language that could be adopted if the board wants to do it the public does not get a vote on this this is not a meeting this is not a proposed ordinance this is the select board has some very narrow authority granted to it by the legislature to address this issue and can make this particular rule there are some communities who have I believe put it into ordinance form the city of Burlington I believe is adopting it as an ordinance and is even proposing fines but that's not something that's being proposed here I'm just the messenger I'm just trying to get something for the board to be able to discuss so the two paths are no action and we just move on as is or we vote to adopt this policy right or you can say well we want to adopt something but it's not a fix and you amend it and you either do that or have a future meeting so with that being said I want to set some guidelines here for speaking as you know we've had a change on the time frame to two minutes first I'd like to know from either Danny or somebody who's a computer buff a question was asked to me earlier about how people on zoom would chime in on this they can raise their hand okay it's difficult to have eyes on both sides of your head we should probably hold today because I'm running into the air yeah good suggestion and you'll have two minutes I know it's difficult to stick to two minutes stick to two minutes and we'll certainly understand if as long as you keep it within a few seconds after that we'll let you finish up but I'd like to start I'd probably like to maybe we can have people queue up on them yeah let's okay so I see the first three here like Gary Dillon to speak first and then we'll go to somebody on zoom and then back do you want me to come up there yeah I would like you to do if you would yeah I don't think I'll take two minutes I think if whatever I wanted to do something you could put out a recommendation saying we encourage people to wear a mask mandating it certainly as this is laid out makes absolutely no sense you're saying to people you can go into a restaurant sit with a bunch of people you can go into a bar sit with a bunch of people but you can't walk past somebody in a store without wearing a mask that makes absolutely no sense to me the science really just depends on who you listen to and for those people that are not vaccinated the governor's been right right along for those that are not vaccinated they're on the fence whether or not they should or should not get vaccinated to now say you have to wear a mask they're going to say what's the point getting vaccinated I've said the same thing I've been vaccinated I've had a booster shot and now you're saying you still have to wear a mask unless you go into a restaurant or a bar and sit next to a bunch of people this makes absolutely no sense and I'll yield my 45 seconds thank you okay Carol your turn go ahead thank you you hear me okay last name please Carol McNair MCNAIR ready are you a resident of Waterbury I am Waterbury Center thanks so we have to get COVID under control to protect our most vulnerable people which includes our children and I'm a teacher and I've had firsthand experience about how COVID is currently affecting our children and their learning students are missing school because they're close contacts and needing to quarantine or they've tested positive for COVID and usually it's been one to two weeks of school that's being missed for children and unlike last year we had some online options for kids we don't have those in place this year and so kids who are at home are often alone they feel lost they feel isolated and often scared if they have parents who are working they are all alone and I think that what we need to remember is that last year we wore masks and last year I had no students in my class having to quarantine or be home because of COVID and as soon as we stopped wearing masks our cases have risen incredibly high and I feel like we all know that kids have to be in school it's for their mental wellness it's for their learning and that I feel like as adults that we just have to step up put a piece of fabric over our mouths when we're in public places that we often don't have choices to go to like the grocery store for the greater good of our children and their emotional needs and just to comment on the last speaker I think going to a restaurant or a bar is a choice and people can choose not to go there if that doesn't make them feel comfortable but people have to go to the grocery store and when they go to those places they should be able to feel safe thank you very much and thanks for everybody keeping this civil it's an important role model for our children thank you Carol okay Elizabeth I think you were next then the gentleman after that I have a feeling y'all aren't any more thrilled to be here than we are you've been put in an unnecessary position one you never should have been put into the governor knew that this was a hot potato and he was happy to pass it on our legislators did the same they didn't want to deal with the headaches they knew would be the result of mandating masks especially after assuring all Vermonters that getting vaccinated would eliminate the need for masks and get us back to normal but they are really good at moving goalposts aren't they so the hot potato is now in your hands my hope is that you will understand the added burden the mask mandate will place on the business owners of our town it's one thing to recommend that people wear a mask anyone who wants to needs to or should wear one should but forcing a business owner into the position of having to play the bad guy as it relates to both their employees is honestly just adding salt to an already very deep wound our businesses have suffered enough and our citizens are weary of conflicting information and forced compliance allowing business owners to encourage customers to wear masks rather than forcing them to do so keeps those owners from having to enforce what they know to be and at worst unenforceable and at best difficult to enforce mandate allowing business owners to encourage customers to wear masks rather than forcing them to do so also prevents them from having to play sides when there is a conflict between patrons and prevents them from possible lost revenues a mask mandate will cause further division and animosity in our town that's already divided and for what most are wearing masks of their own volition I urge you to respect both the intelligence and the rights of the citizens of Waterbury the business owners and other Vermonters who enjoy bringing their business to Waterbury please do not pass on this or please do not pass on this hot potato to our business owners say no to mask mandates thanks who's next on zoom Denver Denver your turn hi everybody my name is Denver Wilson I'm a resident of Denver I have family in Waterbury and I do business there I have a bachelor's of science degree in electrical engineering technology and I worked in the field of scientific research for 10 years where I was shoulder to shoulder with scientists performing behavior on pharmaceutical research and no science I've done a lot of independent research on this topic and I want to say that masks work but only in the sense of aerosols that we inhale or exhale how much I can cite well-designed studies that show an N95 stopped about 40% of exhaled aerosols cloth or surgical masks were about 10% you may say that's better than nothing however these peer-reviewed published articles also showed that considerable concentrations of aerosols accumulated in poorly ventilated spaces probably like the one you're all in right now regardless of mask use, period that means if you're in a room with someone who's infected with COVID the mask is not going to prevent you from being infected you'll be exposed this supports why mask mandates are not associated with slower infection rates I urge the board to take a cue from Heinzburg Rutland Morrisville Stowe and note that regardless of the effectiveness of masks people are already asking the mandate is unnecessary thank you for your time thank you Denver if you could come up and just stay your name and for your problem good evening my name is Bob Wool I'm a resident of the very city I'm here tonight because I've spent money in this community I mean Vermont's rural so you have different places in the little cities I'm dying to have spent money here I was a full-mon mass EMT general as well my thing is the select board member said nobody brought this forward it was just a discussion and that's what it was warned as but your town administrator just said that several board members wanted him to bring that there's also a misconception of I was at the state house that day that legislature passes you're not passing a rule or a policy you are passing an ordinance you better read what the state told you that you're going to pass it is going to be a legal ordinance so just to clarify those misconceptions the thing is I'm not anti-mask and I read the Lancet New England Journal of Medicine like that other speaker said the efficacy it can't stop influenza it ain't stopping this you took your mask off for an hour and a half hypocrisy this protocol at hospitals we don't wear masks all day long you have little kids wearing these cloth masks it's ridiculous it's a virtue signaling thing if you really wanted to follow science this correct procedure my thing is business we have freedoms in this country businesses can put up a sign it's their patrons I don't like when government is getting involved in this it's a slippery slope and again you are passing the law not a rule not anything who's going to enforce it again everybody's passing the buck people that might have interactions with your business this is causing and again we're so far into the game Barry City passed on this and the mayor and the council were clear people want to wear masks they wear masks businesses have the right to put up a sign and if you don't they can have your trust passed we already have laws with us and again it's getting more divisional and again if you are going to impose a mask you better cite the data of the efficacy you better cite the negative from breathing a wet moist rag in your face that's all thanks for coming thanks for your comments just to clarify the town administrator did not say that several board members asked for this specific thing to be on here several board members asked for the issue to be on the agenda so I presented something that they could have a discussion about nobody on the board asked for any wording it was a discussion I provided the wording to have the ability to talk about something that was real so just to clarify you know if we were going to have a conversation about it had to start somewhere and you just put that pin in the starting point did you have something to say Danny I know we had two folks already so I don't know what's up to you do we want to start with Waterbury residents or do we just want to let it I think if we can hear from several people here tonight because business owners are not necessarily Waterbury residents but they're a big part of Waterbury and I think those people should be heard as well as anybody so I believe is it Sue wants to speak next Sue go ahead thank you for coming can you hear me okay yeah I'm Sue Minter I'm a resident of Waterbury center and I want to just thank you all for your time and dedication tonight it's hard for me not to thank Bill Sheplik for his incredible service and I also appreciate as one of those people 25 years ago that helped as a planning commissioner with the road and the ice center I appreciate those comments but I'm here tonight really to just express my strong support for requiring masking in public spaces I haven't read the details of the ordinance you're considering but I want to emphasize that from where I sit we are at a really serious moment in this global pandemic and we are really as a state at a tipping point because what we do now as individuals and a community is going to affect the future course of this virus and the more opportunities we give the virus to spread the more people it will infect and the more mutations that will evolve and the higher risks will likely occur so that is exactly what is happening right now in Vermont the virus is infecting more people and more people especially the majority of whom are unvaccinated are becoming critically ill and succumbing to the virus so our question now as individuals in a community is what do we do do we watch this happen and do nothing or do we try new strategies do we learn lessons from what we have seen working in the past I believe the goalposts of the virus are what's moving not politicians because we have never been in this place before and I personally am becoming very alarmed by what is happening so we have to ask ourselves what is our personal responsibility and what are the responsibilities of you our elected officials and our community and our destiny two minutes are up Sue thanks appreciate your comments I'll send the rest of my comments and writing thank you anybody in here would like to speak this gentleman first and then you and then Yale but we'll jump back and forth select board members thank you for your time my name is Paul Valoran I am resident of Barry town however both of my parents worked in Waterbury for many years prior to the pandemic I was a 2020 candidate for the Vermont Senate I will be running again in 2022 I'm here before you today not to talk about the efficacy of masks that's been documented very well to be very minimal at best the University of Waterloo has images to prove the lack of the efficacy I'm here to talk to you about the human cost of wearing masks children have been mentioned before so I'm going to mention them again there have been studies at Browns University that have proven that children born during the pandemic have seen precipitous drops in the IQ rates and what I mean by that is the average IQ rate of a person is 100 that includes everyone in this room that includes everyone in the United States in the world children born during the first half of the pandemic that I average IQ dropped to 86 in change and the second half of the pandemic dropped to 78 in change for those of you who are unaware anyone who has an IQ under 85 cannot pull the majority of any real jobs in fact it is illegal to even join the army this is significant damage to our children this is unfortunate damage we took actions that we thought were correct come to find out we were wrong that's why the previous mask mandate once lifted the governor said he would never impose it again I believe there is good science there have been good studies to prove that the dangers of continuing to push mandated masking is far more than the benefit that we might extract from it so while I believe that everyone needs to make an educated choice it is your decision whether or not you want to wear a mask if a business owner wants to require it that is their right it is not the place of any governing body to force something that in theory and actually there is a good argument that does more harm than good to be pushed on the people of its towns counties or states I yield my time next up is Amy Amy Lebski no Amy I'm here can you all hear me I'll be quick can you hear me yes we can okay great so I just wanted to say quickly that mandates are burdensome and at their essence discriminatory so Stowe Morrisville and Barrie have already turned down voting this evening or this week mask mandates that will drive business out of Waterbury and into those towns for people who would prefer to shop or support businesses where masks are not being mandated again as it was already mentioned a mandate does hold legal implications whether or not you all want to use enforcement this go around or not and that is discriminatory and to hang a banner over your town that says that racism has no place here you can't then enforce or try to uphold mandates I'm a mother of BIPOC children I always worry about them and how they'll be perceived in the community one of my children cannot mask so to think that that child could potentially face legal and or other repercussions for their inability to mask is unfathomable and my concern is mask mandates today and vaccine mandates are even more incredibly discriminatory as they disproportionately negatively impact BIPOC individuals indigenous communities and people of color so if those are communities that you're trying to unite in Waterbury as it seems like you are based on the first half of your meeting and some of the other things on your agenda then I would definitely encourage you XNA on the mask mandates last thing COVID is endemic it's here to stay we're not going to get rid of it we're going to have many mutations and luckily the Omnicron mutation is much less virulent than the most recent variant of Delta so it's going to only get better as we go on like and correlation and causation aren't always the same just because the kids were already masks in school last year doesn't mean that that helped suppress COVID right because here we are all vaxed and COVID is on the rise right so the virus is going to run its course there's going to be variants we can't be living in and out and under through mandates Thanks Annie you're talking to us unfortunately okay the gentleman in the rear here and then we'll be next so I think probably I might I think the board maybe you will stop comments at Tony after that's another 15 minutes and then we'll have a discussion amongst ourselves so go ahead sir my name is Pat Farrell I live in Waterbury I'm on the DRB so I really thank you all for how difficult this is tonight I understand that over the past our months in Waterbury I've seen masks no masks by folks businesses that mandate others that don't I haven't seen massive outbreaks closed businesses or residents fighting over masks seems to be going well why change it mandating something because you can is a really slippery slope personally I'm tired of hearing it's just a mask it's the least you can do to care about the community it's not just a mask for me when I'm forced to wear a mask I hyperventilate I get sweaty I get confused my body reacts and my blood pressure increases I've been unable to donate blood the last two times because my pressurings are so high while wearing a mask I had to remove my mask at the doctor's office so my blood pressure would go down so they let me leave it's not ever just a mask for me and while we've gone out of our way to support as many local businesses as often as we can for the last 18 months if this board decides to mandate masks our household will not spend any money in Waterbury still in South Burlington have already voted this measure down so our place is for us to spend money without going that far focus on education, ad signage strongly suggest, really strongly suggest but please do not mandate thank you okay moving right along Amy what's your last name can you hear me what's your last name Amy Hornblast what is it Hornblast I sent an email to the board members so you can find it there can you spell it H-O-R-N-B-L-A-S thank you go ahead Amy it's getting hard to breathe I can't breathe where did those quotes come from they come from a study that looked at the physiological effects of wearing an N95 in intensive care unit nurses in order for these nurses to participate in the study they had to pass a fitness test they had to make sure that no one participating in the study was pregnant had arrhythmias, hypertension poorly controlled asthma history of panic attacks or claustrophobia and or seizure disorder even still one out of the 10 nurses dropped out after 30 minutes because you could not tolerate the mask this study found that wearing an N95 for an entire 12-hour shift the problems increased over time CO2 levels carbon that's carbon dioxide levels became significantly elevated they had perceived exertion was increased so it was harder for them to work they had perceived shortness of air and complaints of headache, lightheadedness and difficulty communicating this study is cited by the CDC on their worker safety website which I also sent to the board members so that you can read what the CDC actually has to say about wearing things like N95s and dust masks they say that an FFR N95 user is always going to experience some level of difficulty breathing this is what the CDC says when people say that masks are safe and that there aren't side effects they aren't citing sources they aren't, they're going on some sort of faith-based faith-based science I would say blind faith-based science if people are not looking at the reasons behind these suggestions and are just blindly following them that's not science that's also not how you do public health policy public health policy has to weigh the benefits and risks yes so thank you I would urge you to do that there are serious negative health impacts that are very well documented that need to be considered in weight, thank you for your time thank you Amy, what's that Rob? I said that's a good, that's a very good reason to keep people out of the hospital and wear your masks so that you don't have people overrunning the hospitals you just went completely opposite of what she did just with me what a nice, what a nice hey people come on Gail you are next come on up you don't have to sit down jump up and down as long as you look into the character I'd rather look at the select board we appreciate that my name is Gail Brown and my husband and I have owned the cold hollow sire mill for 22 years it'll be 23 in February the last several years, the last two years in order to survive what's been going on personally with our business and our employees through all this I have chosen to maintain a high vibration and that has not been easy the key element to doing that has been to live in a place of no judgment no judgment to my employees to my customers to my neighbors to fellow businessmen and women whether they want to wear a mask or not whether they're in fear or they're not in fear water buries the crossroads to so much that this state has to offer and we have a chance here tonight to be the change that we want to be to be the change of no judgment to others to not police our neighbors to not finger point to someone who can't wear a mask or who doesn't want to wear a mask I can't I can't fathom wearing a mask the seven days a week, 70 hours a week and 90 hours a week my husband and I work in our business and be a criminal and be fine if I don't do that I don't have this ordinance so I please ask you to be the change with no discrimination and judgment to live in a high vibration and to help this community begin to move forward with a higher frequency no judgment no discrimination and please vote no I thank you Thanks Gail We still got some time left nobody on the line This gentleman was first and then Rick Blake and then you too My name is Jim Sexton I've been very heavily involved around the state for about four years mostly I fight for pro-life in 2A in the Constitution last four months I've been going around the state going to school or meetings I want to thank each one of you because you've been very attentive you've been courteous and professional you have been listening I have been to many meetings where they completely disregard the public so thank you all for that I really appreciate your professionals A couple quick points Most of the stuff I've been doing in the last four months has been helping parents fight against the mass mandates in schools My friend Amy explained I've been helping kids physically and mentally and psychologically This gentleman over behind me here just made a point that most of the people in the hospitals are unvaccinated and that's where we have to wear a mask That's not true The last four or five weeks most of the people in the hospital have been vaccinated and are mask workers 70% not one of the masks you are wearing protects you look at the packaging laugh if you want look at the packaging cloth mask cannot protect you the mask you are wearing sir it is printed on the packaging not for PPE personal protection not one of these masks are protecting you or anybody else so it's time to stop it it's certainly time not to criminalize people who are choosing to breathe who are choosing to visit your city, your town whatever it may be to spend their money here I live in that situation I don't want to brunt anymore you know you've heard these business owners thank you much I do want to thank you for your time professional on that appreciate everybody take the mask off pretty much said what I wanted to say but I want to give a little history about last year when you guys passed your mandate before the state passed their mandate so before you go any further Rick owns the mobile up here so the minute you guys passed that mandate my phone ring every day every morning I had to defend myself against people that said I was discriminating because I may not wear a mask I didn't make somebody wear a mask myself and my employees were put on the spot every single day that wasn't fair to us we had to call the cops several times because people were fighting in the yard people were damaging other people's vehicles over this it's not we're not the mask police and I don't believe it's your job to pass this it's the state's job to do it and if you guys pass this all phone calls are going to you guys they're not coming to me because you guys are going to own it I'm not going to own this not this time around and none of my employees are going to suffer like they did last year it's not fair to us and that's all I got to say thank you Lyndon, come on up and then Rob and then I think we'll call it a night on the comments I'm going to read a statement it takes about 2 minutes and 15 seconds to read my name is Lyndon I'm a resident of Waterbury I hear when I'd rather be doing anything can you speak up a little louder can you not hear me? either that or turn around my name is Lyndon I'm a resident of Waterbury I'm here when I'd rather be doing anything else because of the potential radical criminalization and impoverishment of people and businesses being discussed and brought to bear down upon us based on coercion of medical products and our simple ability to breathe as each individual sees fit or going about the business of life I could pour through the many harms of masking which have been duly recorded from tribal particular inhalation and chronic inhalation of carcinogenic chemicals used on masks like ethylene oxide and synthetic fluoride things you really ought not to be breathing in at all to fungal and bacterial colonization to psychological harms which are many to sociological harms which we are living in part right now here at this meeting or the immediate harm of having to work harder to obtain oxygen as the oxygen levels inside a mask drop below a rush of safe levels within seconds that's 17.4% by the way they're incredible in efficacy as they simply create jets of air pushing out the sides and top as anyone with common sense can tell you but my main message tonight is a human one it is simply wrong to force, coerce, find, impoverish, stress and divide people a person must have autonomy over their own body this is fundamental as a woman this is a recurring theme in my life bodily autonomy a subject I've always had at the forefront of my mind because politicians involve themselves where they should not and that has come to discussing criminalizing your neighbors and the local economy and making life ever more contentious divided and destructive people must be able at an individual level to decide how they can breathe which I can't believe I have to say I for one have a hypoxic condition in my tissues it's a strange inflammatory disease that I am not happy divulging to the public but I am doing that to define myself and others I am always in some level of discomfort ranging from a 4 to 10 on a pain scale I'm like a barometer for how much oxygen and acid is in my tissues because it hurts and burns and causes scar tissue as areas struggle and I can tell you masking does me harm that is not anyone else's business it's not your place to be coercing me into struggling or penalizing a business owner for not forcing me to struggle it is wrong for me to have to even discuss such things with you or anyone else it is up to me and any individual to simply go about their business I am privacy and autonomy privacy and autonomy we've got to be fair to everyone I wish you could let us finish can I use the 45 seconds you'll let me have another person we would also just stop at 9 o'clock for the health operation center I'm on a call with the governor every two weeks and so I'm here to provide the facts today there were 78 hospitalizations 21 were fully vaccinated that's 27 percent a third in the hospital were fully vaccinated pre-delta the highest case count was 52 in the hospital so we're up quite a bit we're averaging about 70 to 80 a day 25 are in the ICU today four of those are fully vaccinated we're seeing about one to two hospitalizations for pediatric children every day before the delta variant there were zero the governor generally uses his smallest number which is about 20 percent fully vaccinated in the hospital that ranges from 20 to 68 percent daily 12 hospitals today reported elevated higher medical surge indicators two hospitals with no ICU beds only nine available statewide and a new VM has stopped elective surgeries so Amy's point about wearing a mask in a hospital with an N95 I 100 percent agree we want to keep people out of the hospital we're hurting hospital staff who have to wear this my wife, my mother-in-law or both hospital staff they both care for COVID patients we forget that master hit there to protect others I have three kids under four that can't get vaccinated there's a lot of people out there that don't have children and don't realize that there's still a lot of people that need the added health and protection of masks so we still don't know the long-term effects of COVID I have a 27-year-old co-worker he was otherwise completely healthy before COVID he got COVID health and two years later is still serving long-term health I'd also point out that I'm a military family and that's a picture of a man wearing a mask in a desert with 150 pounds of material thank you, Rob okay, we're about 923, 922 he was also ran you forgot him real quick, two minutes thank you, hello neighbors my name is Brandon Zalino I'm a father in a homesteader living in nearby Warren I'm here tonight to oppose a watery town warrants that would compel the wear of the facial coverings and criminalize the free breathing of air in public buildings such a mandate is built on a multitude of presuppositions first, there's an articulable problem in the need of a solution second, that this policy would serve as a solution to the problem and third, with the benefits of this policy away the costs I would argue that the answer is no to each of those presuppositions and my natural inclination would then be to bolster my contention with data and examples I could talk about the distinction between respiratory droplets and droplet nuclei as explained by the World Health Organization I could talk about the scientific studies that deceptively report relative risk reductions or absolute risk reductions I could talk about the metrics used to compile data and how these can be defined to return desired results but tonight I resist becoming mired down in the tangled weeds of walking us tonight, I would urge you to consider the more fundamental implications of what it is we're doing here every action that we take in the name of fighting COVID-19 sets precedent and pushes us farther down a slippery slope here, we are not yet confiding people against their will to quarantine camps as they are in Howard Springs, Australia but this is no longer as dismissible an idea as it once was the same can be said of vaccine passports I urge you to ask of yourselves what precedence we are setting with this mask policy, consider that we have been urged to act as if we were all sick until proven healthy, we have been urged to act as if hypothetical harm of questionable and unmeasurable likelihood is actual harm consider that while we don't all subscribe to the same meta narrative that informs our understanding of the world, we all love our friends and family and generally don't wish to harm others and yet this policy would use the state's monopoly of power of force against those who disagree with it and would pose actual measurable harm to them in the loss of their bodily autonomy as well as their liberty and finances depending on enforcement and penalties. We have come a long way from two weeks to flatten the curve and the goalpost seemed to continually shift I don't believe that this policy will stop the goalpost, I think it will do the opposite I urge you not to pass it. Thank you. Thank you. All right people. Now it's the select board's turn to make comments and considerations so who of you would like to go first? Mark, do you wish to come back to the table at all or are you going to stay reduced? Okay. Yep. Go ahead people. Okay. I am not in favor of enforcing this mask mandate. I think it's left up to each individual business if they want to reinstate themselves and I don't think it's the business of the time to reinstate it and if you don't like what the business has in place, don't shop there and don't slander them on social media like front and porch form. That's not what it's for. Thank you first. You know I might not prescribe gender norm stereotypes. I'll take off my mask now just because I feel like people could hear me better. I'm very conflicted by mask mandates. I'm probably not for overall for a mask mandate. I listen to what the experts say both for and against. I try to think of myself as being a pretty critical thinker. Masking I think is a good thing but I also think it's a personal choice that people take. I think every business can say you need to wear a mask or you're not welcome in my business. I have even spoken to several business owners who want to go nameless. They basically felt that their businesses were more served by following CDC guidelines and you know the state does not have a mask mandate until the state has a mask mandate they probably don't want to. They have stated that their employees are going to have a name for why customers have the option not to wear a mask. Why don't I? These are all personal personal choices. I think people, you know employers have the right to ask their employees things you know everything I know when I was an employee I didn't get to do everything I wanted to do. I just don't think as much as you know I have a 101 year old mother in law who's very susceptible. I have a 96 year old step mom who I'm very concerned I wear a mask usually and I have since infection rates have gone up indoors I have worn a mask and if they be acceptable or not you know they work or not I think it's my little part to do that but I don't think it's something that we should enforce on everyone I think it's going to affect the business owners I think some of the business owners want a town mask mandate because it just I think is really kind of indicated it just makes it don't go masked I don't think we should be doing that I think we're going down a real slippery slope and I think we'd be a lot better off not enforcing a mandate everyone's personal right I think it's a great thing that you wear a mask again I'm wearing a mask when I go into Shaw's now I wear a mask in a lot of places that I wasn't this summer and that's my choice again I think business owners have that right now to say we want to enforce total mask mandate and I think we go down a slippery slope requiring a mask mandate because what we're going to do is create more conflicts more fights in stores that's something I just don't want to see and as much as I think as I said master I think are a good thing I don't think the pound should be mandated thank you yeah I am inclined to pass on a vote tonight and not vote in favor of a mandate not because of theoretical slippery slope arguments or more emotional based reasoning but because our town is doing really well our town has not shown transmission or severe illness rates that other towns have and based on the information that I have which is limited based on what the state and CDC are putting out our town seems to be doing very well and it doesn't seem to make sense for us right now at this point I think that's where I'll end I do want to echo what Katie said there are business owners we've all said this it's up to the business owners but we can say it in here and then not follow through with that yeah we want to be respectful of those businesses and make sure that we're separating them in person online etc we're talking about choice we want to respect theirs so that's really important so you're sitting the closest to me are you going to flip out if I remove my mask this week thank you I appreciate everybody coming here tonight and weighing in on this issue I think that after living in this community as long as I have being involved in the select board for coming on nine years now the issues that I've been through as a select board member with the community involved with very contentious very important things decision making that this town has had to go through I've come to the conclusion that we're a bunch of pretty smart intelligent people here and you know we've been going through some rough times here recently with other issues you know we're muddling through it I think we're all starting to coalesce around the fact that we can look towards each other and count on each other when things really get tough I think that it's not the board's position to dictate what people should be doing with their businesses and how they should be operating and how people should be conducting themselves amongst each other I think we're smart enough after two years of being through the COVID already we've gained enough information and and on both sides you know I mean it's getting to the point where you don't really know what the truth is anymore but I think that we've all learned enough through boiling down all this confusion that we have made good choices in this town and I think it's the business owners and the residents opportunity to continue to do those smart things to help each other get through this because let's face it if our businesses fail here through either people fighting or you know Rick told me the other day when I was speaking to him not only is he having difficulty finding help but he's also having more difficulty finding product to keep on the shelves for people so this mandate would just be another or could be the possible final nail in the coffin so I agree with the rest of the select board I'm glad we're all on the same page on this and if you can tell me if this would be the right motion but could we move to table this indefinitely or what is the right procedure to bring it back over to the legislatures for fear that they would you know go against the wishes of I'm glad they put it in our hands as a local town legislative body because I think we need to have the choice to do what we think is right for ourselves so one thing to table it indefinitely is buying if you want to propose adopting it and then voting it down that works just as well reminded by saying something Jordan I'm not a board member I don't get a vote and I appreciate hearing all of what the folks have said who feel that it's not the right thing to do and I respect that and I would vote not to have a mandate I respect that and live by that I'm not advocating for a mandate I would however ask all of us to understand though that there are laws and rules that there are very few laws and rules that are unanimous when they're adopted we live in a country in a state in a town I hope where the rule of law is respected and obeyed and if a town decides that it's in their best interest to have a mask mandate and you choose not to go there that's fine and it's within your right if a business chooses to say you need a mask to come in my business and you choose not to go in there that's fine and that's right and I respect your decision but if a business does say you need a mask to come in here I would also ask you to respect the business owner's right to decide that's what's best for them and not go in and define people who are trying to protect themselves and their customers in the best way that they see fit I do not deny that it's been divisiveness about this issue and many issues over the past couple of years but we cannot pick and choose the laws that we obey we should not and if you oppose a law that's great you should work to overturn it I respect that but if a law is adopted if a business owner says please respect them and do what they ask or don't go in and make a scene and say this violates my rights be respectful of the people who own that property and who run that business thank you one other quick comment you can speak Katie for what it's worth Friday morning I came home from northern Maine I've been up stumbling through the woods for six weeks I was listening to a radio program it was a scientific radio program about the COVID and I heard something that kind of stunned me a little bit they said that if you took all of the particles of the COVID virus that has infected all the people on the planet brought it all together packed it all up you could fit every bit of it inside of a soda can that's how minute nano these particles are so it's been my thought that these haven't worked for some time but that's just a little tidbit of information that kind of floored me when I heard it that those particles are really not small go ahead Katie I was going to ask Bill if we need a motion if we do all we want can we do we need to take action if you don't take action if you don't take action I think the tabling idea is the right way to go if it needs and if things go out of whack can we need to bring it back up you can't I think they just say no action was taken right no action all right I think I think we just did thank you all for coming thank you for coming in it's been tabled we chose to do nothing so everything so it means that things are back to the way they were there's no mandate and so thank you Mary City did the same thing you're not ordering it's under law by the way I got you over five long weeks and you're all going to die some day like this that's a medic now live your life thanks thanks for good comments Bill thank you for being here can we break this picture we still need to finish our meeting we can move all the conversation out of the hall okay in the meantime thank you all for your time we appreciate your coming thank you for your time thank you um so the last thing on the agenda is just the training can we move the discussion out of the hall can you move your discussion out of the hall thank you it's good to be training with Mary yeah so initially we had talked a couple weeks ago about potential of board members being available in the late afternoon Mary Gannon had scheduled had kept tonight at seven o'clock as the time that she might be able to be here when I was talking to her about maybe we could do it in the afternoon she said well she had a meeting at two o'clock and she had another meeting somewhere else later and it wasn't going to work and then by that time several of these issues started coming out so we weren't going to have enough time anyway tonight so your next regularly scheduled meeting is on Monday December 20th that's holiday week Christmas week um maybe people don't want a meeting close to the holidays Mary is available on the 20th if you'd like to have her come and have kind of a one issue agenda which is the training I think she's able to come in the afternoon if you can do it she's also available on Tuesday December 14th or Wednesday December 15th so the board had indicated that it would like one more opportunity for this training if you still appeal that way I think it's either December 14th, 15th or 20th and if it's none of those three work out you've got to push it into February or March I can't do it on the 20th but I'm happy to do it on the 14th or 15th are you talking about four o'clock though or whatever they decide the board's pleasure is I believe she's available if you want to have it I can also do probably do the 20th I'm probably going to be leaving for I might be so I might be online but for in-person training like that I probably should be there for that I think that would be December 14th or 15th the 14th or 15th those happen the 15th is preferable I have a Rotary Recreation Committee meeting between five to six but I could beg out of that the 15th is preferable I have the hockey games the 15th, 18th and 20th so the 14th would win for me so I told her I said asking the board will probably end up with two this day two that day so right now why don't you just call 14th can you make it to 14th Mike? yep I could make it work you're strong who would have to be I have rehab 2.30 in the afternoon so I didn't think it would be that early it won't be any earlier than 4 okay that's what I thought so I could do it for you so 14th at four o'clock how long? I think it would probably be 6.30 and we'll try to make it the only issue I need to check on okay and then no meeting on the 20th? yeah it sounds like several I could make a seven I just couldn't do anything before but that works I think if we can you know if I'm starting to work on as much as I'll be getting the information if we want to have this training on the 14th and then just kind of target the first Monday into January to kind of start that sprint we can do it you can happen to hear Village 5 Monday in January so you get an extra whole week 3 o'clock 2-1 do you don't think we should meet on the trust me I'm not trying to throw enough a meeting in there but this is a pretty big conversation yeah that if you want to try to do that and I don't know if you want to meet alone we could just meet and we can meet individually because some of this is so hard to discuss and watch in a meeting so what I was asking was do you want to meet just as a select board and not include date and flight commissioners or are you looking to try to find a date or a public board I think it depends on what their meeting is like this Wednesday and I don't know how much but they need to unpack because obviously in the end of the day they won't exist as an entity right I know but how that plays out is significant we know we will exist either way so I think there's a lot of question marks of what they are going to do to either decide they want to move forward and they can do certain things like you talked about without art you know they could vote on how they manage their debt prior to any kind of murder and I think that's something that they have to take out and the fact that I recommend that you be structuring that as opposed to forgiving me completely like I think that will make it easier for some of them to consider that I still think it's I mean obviously if the board has an opinion on specifically that should off give it the bill or the e-flex commission or center to me so we can relay that we think that that is a direction we're going to end up that it's potentially it's an asset of e-flex currently that we should definitely think about so yeah I mean I think do we have time to have a conversation ourselves on this and then any questions that might arise that pertain to e-flex no in another meeting any questions that might arise that we would have for e-flex they could either address them at a joint meeting or do we have time after the diversity training we might be able to actually run I believe the training that's after the board the training I think it will be I think it will be two hours with a break so I think that that would be from like four to six 30 and it would be done and if the board wants to talk about this afterwards you certainly could do that but it's the board's choice well I think maybe we can have two of us meet with you and just talk this through in more detail so we can be more knowledgeable on it we can get an update on that meeting on what you've already discussed this week and we can also look at the meeting minutes or watch the meeting and then obviously our direction will decide they want a new from their side that's a good idea that's a good suggestion because the e-fund commission is also a five member board so it's potential that each board could appoint two representatives to meet and try to talk about things when they were two boards of three a water commission of three only you have one can this really be done without going to the voters this seems like a pretty big like obviously e-fund, I don't even know how e-fund works fully in terms of like their decision body and if they ever have to go out to their user base but for us there seems to be decisions that we are required to go to the voters and this seems like I mean obviously there's assets there's lots of just voters left out of this I wanted to understand that part I believe the law would allow the select board to make decisions about appropriating our whole money without having to get a townwide vote I would not recommend doing that I think this is something that it's a process and the select board ultimately put things in its budget or if they feel even more transparency is necessary you can't put special articles in they could be discussed and talked about I'm not suggesting that this be done without public input and that $600,000 that's being suggested basically it's almost like the purchase of e-fund right if we want to represent it is that like you're suggesting we appropriate $600,000 to e-fund only if the merger would move forward no no no I didn't say that so you're suggesting we do $600,000 for the water system whether or not yes the merger that's I haven't talked about that with anybody I think that ultimately is the best outcome of this but getting that the merger system in the mobile home park upgraded in public ownership completely is a good goal the ARPA money can't be used for surface transportation so bridges, culverts, roads you can't use the ARPA money for that you can use it for water and sewage but how does it restructure so you have the ability to sub-grant if you will that money to the entity that does have that responsibility so the $600,000 going to e-fund what I see that as is the quick proposal for getting the evolving water plant which if the loan is restructured they are about even value you give them $600,000 so they can deal with the tech mobile home park that is their daily work that's their responsibility that's their mission is to provide water it happens to be you know outside of the political boundary to be found which are your responsibility there's no fire hikings in that mobile home park you can you can get you can get you can get the you can get the you can get the you know good water supply distribution system for those customers and fire hikings which is a benefit so you can give them $600,000 and e-fund which is whether e-fund stays in existence as a water and sewer district going down the road I'm thinking the owl it's not a good thing for that to do e-fund e-fund under their current configuration as an utility district being in control of a revolving loan fund that's used for economic development and business development that's much better so one of my main concerns or wants is that we get input from stakeholders like e-fund and the ice rink and then additionally the public so I know it's hard to schedule meetings and figure that all out so I don't know how to meet that work that's the way this is not necessarily something that has to all be decided by the top meeting you know the the arc of money until 2026 to have to spend that money there's plenty of time I'd like to be around while you're meeting there's a little bit of a clock go ahead Pete do I have a conflict of interest because I work on another board that purchases ice time and things from the rink or work with them okay when you said something about having two board members meet with him to get more into the weeds on this personally I don't want any of us board members to be out of the loop on this I'm just trying to think how we do it because I think it's hard sometimes like tonight was an almost impossible situation this is the first time we met a while back to talk about the transfer of land and it was like literally at the end of the meeting was like at some point if I probably that's the last time I even talked about this I think that we have to especially someone as big as this and since you're a vice if you want to be part of the discussions with Phil in that level but I think there has to be some work that's done outside of meetings on this there's just too much and you can share notes right and then we can I can communicate out on a one on one basis as far as I know but I think we have to do it that way I just don't see how we can do this a special meeting but there's literally just there's some stuff here that I just don't think needs to have been in front of the public just to talk through all of them just shorten them not cut out what I mean there's someone that we talk about hiring somebody that there can be plenty of conversation just to better prepare the board for decisions that I think we just have to do on this there's just a lot here so I just think it makes sense that we just have to set up some meetings outside of we're allowed to do what we need to do it this is an important decision and any board member to communicate with Bill and myself or other members individually on this to try to work through this this is a weird scenario that Merger didn't have years ago and now we're working our way through I had an internal debate with myself about do I just kind of do what I did tonight and share it that's why I wanted it to be a joint meeting or send it out early and I wasn't trying to keep people in the dark but I also wanted to kind of say it all at once to everyone understanding that there's a lot to unpack there's a lot to understand and anticipate everyone was going to say yeah this is the greatest idea I've ever heard all together tonight but I felt if I sent it out in advance A it would have required not doing it tonight and then we because I wouldn't have time just something that's been percolating in my head for a while but I also didn't want to send it out and then have individuals all coming back with all their suggestions at the meeting I just needed to get it on the table to say there's things that we have an opportunity here my ideas aren't necessarily the best but at least it's a place to start a conversation since it's not our you know that debt isn't ours we put some of that on us on any decision on what to do with that debt on you that has nothing to do with you but debt has nothing to do with you well it's E-FUD it's E-FUD's revolving loan account right that ultimately came from Ben and Jerry that's the beginning of that was money that came and created this revolving loan fund I think if we all have an opinion we should give it to E-FUD which I am planning to do after this meeting I just think that there's a conversation surrounding the merger of the two entities there's a whole other conversation around what to do with their assets which is that revolving loan fund is one of them I'm not saying it's the wrong decision but it is a weird pressure for us I think a lot of us at least myself focused on that conversation a lot of thinking through