It's 7 o'clock and I will call to order this Monday, November 20th meeting of the Wadbury Select Board. First order on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Do I hear a motion? Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? I would just add conservation to our appointments after we have the faster preparedness committee because we have an athlete. Okay. Anything else? All right. We're first voting on the amendment to the agenda. Everyone who doesn't say aye. Aye. Aye. We will close. We have exceptions. We have the addition to the agenda. So this is voting with the addition that we just passed. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. The agenda is approved as amended. And the consent agenda are the just minutes from the last minute. Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Very none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. The agenda is approved as well as the consent agenda. Now is the public session for the meeting. Anything not on the warned agenda can be brought to our attention. I ask that you try to keep your comments to three minutes. If possible. And we're glad to put this on the agenda in the following meeting for the discussion. Any comments? Mike. I just want to say I didn't have, I just got back into town recently. But I want to acknowledge the passing of both of Waterbury as well as Vermont legend, Ken Squire, who in motor racing, he's a NASCAR Hall of Fame broadcaster in Vermont. His family's owned WDV for over 90 years. DEV is an institution in this community. I can't mention the times on Saturday mornings when I would listen to music to go to the dump by how I chuckle a little bit. And Ken will be sorely missed. He did a lot of things for the state. He was an ardent supporter of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, which people will be surprised to hear with motor racing background. And also Vermont adult basic education. There have been a lot of tributes in the times of artists and a lot of media. But I want to thank Ken and the Squire family for all the service they have done for the town of Waterbury. Thank you. Thank you. Now one of the other things that was noted was how a dynamic role WDV played during the tropical storm in the rain. 30 years. 30 hours on the air. That was impressive. Ken Lee will be missed. Other comments. Let's move on to the appointments. One is appointments to the library commissioner. Anna Black. Is Anna here? I don't see Anna here. We have Anna's application here in our packet. She expressed her interest in joining the library. I believe we have the library director here in the comments. Here we go. We're just entertaining your candidacy for the library commission. Yes, I am helped. Would you mind just coming forward and letting us know why you're so pumped? Yes. Hello. Anna Black is here a couple weeks ago about the conservation commission. I mentioned that if anything opens up in the library commission, then that happens. I was pretty excited about it. Basically I love reading and love libraries. We live right across the street. Questions from the board? No, I feel like you manifested this moment because I remember you saying that. I'm excited for someone to do the answer. While we're here, are you also still interested in the conservation commission? I am on the conservation commission now. Oh, you're already appointed about that. Could Karen just speak quickly to what this appointment is for? It was just for me to have the background of what we're acting on today with this appointment and what the status will become. Anna, if you choose to appoint her, would be appointed until March. At which point she would have to run for election. There will be two seats available on the ballot. In March one will be a one year unexpired seat and the second one will be a two year unexpired seat. Michelle Baker would be subject to those same terms. It should be a regular IDC too. They're unexpired. Oh, there may also be another full one. I have some notes about that. Somebody will have to run for election. Yeah, you could be right there. I just wanted to clarify what we're acting on today. So this is an appointment until the first Tuesday in March? Deanna King. Deanna King, you're right. Deanna King's term will be expired. It will be up in March as well. So we have three candidates. In March. So you're still interested? Yeah, absolutely. The appointment will only last until the first Tuesday in March? Yeah, it's a good trial period. And an opportunity to potentially make some stickers. Good. If there's no more discussion, do I have a motion? There's a point. Anna Black in the open position of the Library Commission. Can you read it? Second. Moving seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Congratulations. Thank you. Next on the agenda is the appointment to the housing task. Mary Ellen M. Manson. On Zoom. All right. There you are. Would you like to just give us a couple of moments as to why you're interested in joining the task force? So I just saw that you were looking for somebody and that part of what they were looking for was someone who's a landlord and or short term rental owner. My husband and I have both. You know, I was looking for someone who's a landlord. I was looking for someone who's a landlord. I was looking for someone who's a landlord. I just recently about a year ago built a new three or a triplex down in South Main Street. Building affordable housing is not easy. And I know that for a fact, but I also know that we do need more housing. But I just feel that with the knowledge I have, as far as being a landlord, having the short-term rentals, we have both commercial rentals and. Regular residential rentals that I. Mm hmm. Right. Question from the board. Okay. Well, it does seem like it's a good fit. And if there's no more discussion, do I have a motion? I make a motion to approve M. Lamston for the housing task force. Second. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. What's the next meeting? No, I got to move to zoom. 21st. So yes, December 21st. December. 21st. Third Thursday. So it's the 21st on zoom at 6 p.m. For you and anyone else who would like to join. I'm listening. I'll get a link somewhere before then, but that's fine. I'll take base. All right. Congratulations. Thank you. Next on the agenda. We don't have the second appointment for the task force. The next appointment is to the natural disaster preparedness committee. Candidate is Matt Duggan. It's not here. Would you mind coming forward? Welcome. Thank you. If you wouldn't mind just telling us why you're interested in joining the task force. Not to sound too much like the teacher I used to be at UVM, but I tried to explain it all on the cover letter. So I'm not putting you on the spot. Anyone have questions about that? Because I'm not coming at it from a disaster preparedness perspective. I'm coming at it from a social science perspective. And I kind of tried to lay that out so that you'd see that I'm kind of thinking about upstream and how to bring people together and build more communities so that we can address some of the problems that I saw when I was volunteering this past summer. I'm not sure how to do that, but I do research. So yeah, that's why I asked the question. I'm really curious what did I leave out? Well, I mean, I think it's in line just from my own perspective with what the committee is about. It's about organizing volunteers so that we are prepared to set forth better than we have been. But there are others that have been more directly involved and they have more questions. Why? I know. When I'm qualified, I would say I was struck at interviewing all of them by just going back to several minutes, the folks we have in the community who are willing to step up. So I would say it's don't mistake the lack of questions as a lack of engagement or appreciation for our candidates, for our committee to spy. Sure. You have a very extensive background. Yeah, and don't mistake my lack of one. I mean, I can talk all day long. When you're in academia, that's what you do, and then you bore it. You don't pay for it. But we're not doing it. We're not doing it anymore. But thank you for saying that. But it's really important that you would be great to communicate the message for preparedness. Any further discussion? Do I have a motion? I move to appoint Matt Duggan. It's Duggan. Thanks for asking. Matt Duggan. It's really a toss-up. The Natural Disaster Preparedness Committee. I'll second the motion. All right, moved and seconded. Any further discussion? No, my only reservation is the gender make-up of that committee, which is nothing to do with any of the applicants. But I am just going to say hello. I would not do anything to address it myself. Okay. Well, I don't think he's going to do much about that one. I just felt like I had to say it. It's all men? Yes. That's so interesting. Because women are taking over the world as they used to notice it. And they're all for it. So that's fine. I think a lot of the women who were originally, not to make it, but a lot of folks who were originally helping out were gravitated towards the crew. Yes. The committee that was formed right after for other different positions. So I think some of the folks who might be interested are over-extended maybe at this point. But that's good to keep in mind. I went through today the list of what I have for volunteer hours as part of the FEMA reimbursement for the people who assisted post-flood and substantially majority of the hours were done by women. We'll share a different time, different seasons. I just have to say I'm fascinated by your video interface. I've been trying to figure it out since I got here. How do we have... It's the hour rule. So that's my... And does that track... Yes. Yeah. When it works. Yeah, okay. So we'll take up all your time. Yeah. But... That's all. That's what you said with me. We'll vote. We'll vote. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's enough. Any more discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Congratulations, Mr. Dugan. Thank you. And thanks for all that you both do. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. You're now rendered out. All right. And next on the agenda is the appointment to the Conservation Commission. And this is a late appointment, so I don't know if they have the paperwork. Oh, here it is. Malachi Brennan. Good evening. Sorry. Did I catch the name? Yes. All right. If you wouldn't mind just letting us know why you're interested in joining the Conservation Commission. Sure. So you probably haven't had much of a chance to familiarize yourself with my materials, but I've studied trees and forested communities for a lot of my life and also just kind of selfishly getting a lot of relaxation and kind of moved to this town for outdoor recreation as well. But I spent a lot of my professional time now kind of focused on climate change issues and environmental issues that I'd like to spend a little bit more on my personal time and time involved in the community doing that as well. Kind of getting to know the area a little better. Mm-hmm. All right. Questions from the board? Have you had the opportunity at all to listen in or attend any of the Conservation Commission meetings now? Not live. I went back and looked through some of their agendas and just kind of tried to get a sense for what they do. Mike, which law firm do you have to work for? It's called SRH Law. It used to be known as Stunt Kill Saunders. Okay. Because it sounds like it has a lot of replicable things to what the Conservation Commission does. Yeah, yeah. I guess I call myself an environmental lawyer. I think that's pretty accurate. That's what I spend most of my time doing. Thank you. All right. Once again, it does appear that we've got a good fit. Any further discussion? Hearing none, do I have a motion? I make a motion to approve, is it Malachi? Yes, that's right. Malachi grant for appointment to the Conservation Commission. We discussed terms. Yeah, maybe we should just find out for a term of what? Well, there's an open C that ends in 2027 and an open C that ends in 2026. Do you have a preference? I guess I don't have a preference. I don't want this out here. So I'm going for the long haul plan. We're going for the longer? Yes. Okay, that's 27. So that change newly noted in my motion? I'll second. Moving seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Thank you very much. Okay. Now, I think we're done with appointments. Yes. Okay. Next on the agenda is the restorative justice. And I'll just note that we had Lieutenant Winn in talk with us a couple months ago. And when asked about concerns, he mentioned that there were youth that were up at all hours of the night that he was concerned about, asked us to consider wagering ordinance and or putting up cameras in public areas, which we have not acted on. It is in our parking lot, but we thought that there should be some further consideration of this. And part of that consideration was about what's happening with restorative justice in terms of youth and public safety. And so we've been able to contact the director of the restorative justice center in Montpelier, as well as Jane Willard, who's been serving on the panel. So if we could have Carol Platt go forward and explain how the restorative justice is working. And then also you can call on Jane and others as you see fit. Before we continue, just for the record, I want to make a note, and I think it just came out wrong, but when the Lieutenant was here, he didn't suggest cameras and loiterboards. There were just parts of tools that he offered as things that exist could be done that we could talk about. So I just want to, for minutes or record, it wasn't what he was trying to tell the town to do. They were just, as we just asked about options, there were things that he mentioned to be a possibility or something to think about. Good point. Thank you. Clarification. So Carol Platt, I'm the director of the Justice Center in Montpelier, and we serve the whole western and sort of southern part of Washington County. And we have our own panel that serves Waterbury, so it's all volunteers from Waterbury. Jane is one of those who's been on the long hisses, I think. Ten years. So in terms of whether it's going well, I would say yes. So we get regular referrals from our partners, from our state police, and it's an opportunity, especially for youth, to identify what they understand the harm to be by what they did, the actions that they took, and this is all pre-charged, so it hasn't gone to the state's attorney's office. Sometimes the cases go to the state's attorney, and the state's attorney might send it back to the trooper and say, why don't you try a restorative process? So it comes to us either way. And then really the panel implements this process where people are asked to address the harm, who's harmed, how are they harmed, what do you need to do to fix it, how has your community impacted, and what are you going to do to make sure something like this doesn't happen again? So it keeps it really local. It's non-shaming. They end up with no criminal record if they complete the process. And the other thing behind it is if they don't complete the process for whatever reason, then the trooper can still refer to the state's attorney's office and say, yeah, we tried that RJ thing, and it didn't work in this case. And then the state's attorney can make a decision about where it goes from there. So Jane, do you want to speak to some of the benefits that you noticed with you this morning? Certainly. I don't think that we have had a large number of youth in the program. And I think earlier on many of the referrals went to the diversion program. And so, and their primary population was juveniles. But of late, we've had some very serious cases. And the beauty of the program is that the person, we don't say offender, we say responsible person, and the person who has been harmed, we refer to as the affected person. So in the case of the juvenile who may have offended, and I can see the need maybe for an ordinance, if the offense is not a charge or whatever the term is, I have a little concern about that. But we've always hoped in the restorative justice process that we would get direct referrals from the troopers in the area. Basically, because we can invite the trooper, the parent guardian, the responsible person into the process. And so there is that opportunity to say what happened, why it may have happened, what the outcome could be. And we've often not, we read the affidavit if it's referred to us from the state's attorney's office. But actually it's really, really important for us to hear it from the person who maybe has been affected by noise or whatever it is. We have on occasion had troopers participate and it's been incredibly valuable and very meaningful. And certainly the juvenile and the parent guardian has information. So the process, I think, is the best chance for the community to be involved. And I think for, there would be a less likelihood of re-offense. People get to tell their stories. All of the people involved get to tell their stories. And then when an agreement is made, everyone has input, primarily the person who has created the harm. My question would be if it's an ordinance and Carol has drafted ordinances for the city of Montpelier. I haven't drafted them, but I have contributed. Oh. And said it's okay to put restorative justice as an option in your ordinance. So I've done that, but I've not drafted them. Again, I would not want to have to be the trooper who would have to determine what would happen in a non-compliant agreement. I'm sure the kids will all talk if there's been non-compliance and no real consequence perhaps. There would be some administrative cost that Carol would administer. And again, if the fee is not attainable, there could be a sliding fee scale or the panel could determine how that would play out. But again, if we took on a lot of cases and I have no idea because we've not had any of these referrals because it's not a lawful mischief, for example. It's an annoyance. So it's kind of a slippery slope. But the panel is paying for it. If there isn't a motivation for the person to do it, then it's voluntary, right? So there needs to be some kind of motivation. Typically, the motivation is I don't want to have to go to court or I don't want to have to pay the fees or fines that are associated with this. So that's the consideration, really. The transformative piece, from my point of view, is troopers have the opportunity for community cruising and really connecting and relating other than having to issue an ordinance, for example. So ideally, I would think that in troopers' choice that if the ordinance is passed, that there would be some conversation in advance before it would be necessary to enforce it. Questions? A common question. I'm not going to show my age, but back in the day when young people did something bad, they were sent to a farm and they had to do some work. And a lot of times, they didn't want to go back and do their hard work on the farm, and that took care of it a lot. But that's, you know... Yeah, I guess we do that as punitive, actually. And not terribly effective. But back in those days, it worked pretty well. I just want to speak to what we refer to as community engagement rather than community service. So from my perspective, having done this for a really long time, community service is viewed as free labor, right? So that is also punitive. And when we talk about engagement or reconnecting to the community, this is an opportunity for a person to name what their community... what they think their community looks like, whether it's their family. We had a case last week where it really was this person's family that was so important to them. And so re-engaging, reconnecting with the family is the most important part of that restorative agreement. And we really focus almost entirely on that, right, in the agreement. So however that person defines their community, you want them to develop a sense of belonging. And if a person feels a sense of belonging in their community, they're less likely to offend against where they feel, you know, like they belong. So that's like the advantage, which is why having the local folks serve on the restorative panels is important because Jane can say, oh, yeah, I live on this street where you did this thing that, you know, was a real big problem for us. And so they're making a human connection and that works. That kind of somewhat answered my question, because to me, what you're suggesting, this is almost a formalized community service with a way to get some results that works for the community as well as the individual. Not everyone is asked to put in hours, right, to do service hours. Not everybody does that. Like I just said, the last week, this person we saw, she was asked to schedule regular check-ins with her family members, right, to sit down if they can't, if they don't have time, they can't have a meal together, but to find some way to check in with family members. So it's not, it's this idea of giving back is not really the point of it. The point is to have somebody feel like they have a support system. They're engaged and they have, they're building support around themselves. And I would also say that we've had many, many occasions when the responsible party says, I've been unbelievably disrespectful to the true work and I want to make a mess. And I always hope that that message gets relayed because, again, I think that that's such an important part of being community. So I've seen that happen. One person, one guy, decided to bake brownies for the True Freak advantage. I'm asking too. But I guess my question to Lieutenant. Oh, no. I'm Trooper Rankwart. I'm standing in for Lieutenant. He's on leave and Trooper Murdoch was on a special teams activation all day long, so I'm a stand-in today. But I am the former next shift worker. Okay. Okay. I think we get to some of your cases. Very well done. Yeah. So I guess my question is, the ordinance, if there was no lawful misdove, I can see where you could issue a citation. But if it's like a noise complaint that really isn't, it's probably the whole cost to issue a citation. How do you think? So with any ordinance that has to have teeth. Excuse me for interrupting. Would you mind coming forward? Because we can't catch you. We're already the one who works. Thank you. So with any law ordinance that exists, it has to carry teeth, right? That's the first component of deterrence. But that being said, what justice looks like and what rectifying the situation looks like, there's no cookie cutter solution, right? We don't arrest our way out of crime. We don't cite our way, we don't issue tickets to get our way out of fixing people from speeding. There's a, there's more than one approach to get it done. If there's an ordinance, there would have to be some type of consequence for the behavior. So if it was a noise ordinance, maybe there's a fee associated with it. Lawdering, I don't, in this state, we don't necessarily have a law order and statute. We do have a noise in the nighttime statute, which is a misdemeanor offense. And typically those are reserved for the most serious of noise violations. But certainly if we had a noise ordinance within the town, that would allow us to address maybe less severe cases of noise disturbances and refer them to restorative justice. So again, community engagement leads to, community involvement leads to better results, right? If you feel like you belong, you're less likely to cause an issue in the future. Hopefully. Hopefully, that's the best way to get by and then you usually get a better result. I agree. And have you been involved with referring an individual to other restorative justice? I think within my first year, we had some juveniles that had let a quarter potty on fire. And I had made a direct referral to restorative justice in that instance. You know, the criminal justice system is, it's a long lengthy system, right? I've been doing this for 13 years. Once you're in the criminal justice system, it takes a long time to get through and then out whatever your consequences are. But when it comes to, it's a principle of punishment when it comes to policing that the most effective results are those that are swift, certain and severe. Severe is not always the best result. But if they're swift and certain, where we have kids, you did something wrong. The consequence for that, let's teach you why it was wrong. Let's get you to buy back into the community and have a better result. The harm you caused to this, to this, to the company that owns the quarter potty. They cost this amount for them to replace it for the choices that you've made. And I'm using one example. But if instead, you know, we push them through the entire criminal justice system by the time that there's a consequence or a realization of wrongdoing, there's so much time that's elapsed. I doubt you get the better result from that. That's the linear experience. Because they forget. I barely remember what I had for breakfast. I think with the direct referrals, they're much more expedient because they don't go through the court. And I believe your conversations with the state's attorney has been that could you just please take care of it? We're not, you know, our courts are clogged, et cetera, et cetera. And if there is compliance to the agreed upon agreement, then there's no, you don't get a punitive punishment. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think of the question. We'd like to express my support for restorative justice. It is my belief that kids, when having violated their community's trust, are severely punished. They are definitely more inclined to re-offend as adults, feeling like they've been pushed around by the system and forgetting what put them in the system in the first place. The reference of being sent to the farm, we definitely used to do a lot of things we don't do anymore. How long did you have to stay, Mike? I spent my time on the farm. Did you go to the farm? That's where I was going. I guess my biggest question, my biggest follow-up question, and this is for the board, are we of the mind that, and having meeting with restorative justice and having had police sit with us now on two occasions or three now, is it two or three? Multiple occasions. Are the mischief that we're experiencing in Waterbury from youth enough to elicit a response where we need to start talking about referring people to the justice system at all, or is it just a nuisance? May I answer, or my opinion? I don't know about ordinances and getting really niche and specific, and maybe we do, and that's something I think to have really serious conversations about, but because the incidences were very, they weren't always noise, they weren't always, there was a lot of vandalism. There was severe violence. There was really, there were hate symbols included in that vandalism, and it is not just being out late and playing a lot of music, which for some people feels very serious, so I don't want to take that away, but it was causing deep harm, both physical, mental, emotional, and financial. So whether it's creating ordinances, I'm not sure, but I think it's having these conversations to say that something is not well with some groups, and it's not just kids, but that happened to be it. I was young people during that. Those incidences, something isn't going well and they need help from someone to move in a better direction and for the community as a whole to feel more connected and safer, and so I think the connections, having the conversations, having the troopers know that we support this type of avenue are talking about how do we push more in the direction of RJ for when things like this come up. I think it does necessitate the conversation from my, even just my personal experience, but then also from what I've heard as a board member. So for me, I'm always talking about how do we help involve more restorative justice as we go forward and how do we help support the troopers who are answering these calls and let them know what our priorities are and hear from them what their experience is. Yeah, if I recollect, when we were talking with Chuck Wynne, Lieutenant Wynne, he was saying he wasn't sure if he had a role without an ordinance. Right.  They did it this far as to act, right? So it creates an avenue for us to engage those types of quality of life issues that we can address directly. Otherwise, I mean, for me to just stop a group of young kids that are out just being kids who are essentially walking down the path of a Fourth Amendment violation. Right. Right. They have the freedom to move just as anybody else. And that's my concern. Is that we ordinance our way into a Fourth Amendment violation. Yeah. What would be, like, a high-level bar of offenses that this can carry? And the second question is, we keep on just referring to all youth.  Are those... I assume that type of candidate would be a good person for restorative justice as well. Oh, yeah, we take people of all ages... So it's not just an candidate. Youngest I've ever dealt with was nine... a nine-year-old. And we do a little bit different process with somebody that young, but I've had 80-year-olds, honestly, in the program. So what would be the higher-level kind of things, like, would you deal with...  It's kind of leaving a mile, but, you know... Yeah, it's very quality. I don't think it's... No, no, no. For pre-charge cases, it's really a lot of, you know, the lower-level types of offenses. The more serious... Offenses are typically not sent to us pre-charge, but it doesn't preclude those kinds of cases coming to us. It depends on the circumstance. Actually, that's an unusual one, but we actually have a program with Montpelier Police Department to address those types of violations. We have our first case going right now where these people... This young woman was referred for excessive speed, and rather than getting five points on her license, she has to take the Vermont Safe Driver program class, and then meet with the Restorative Justice panel to talk about what she learned through this six-hour class. So we do take those, but that's not typical of the case. But, you know, we've had a lot of DUIs, but that's not pre-charge. So we're talking about the pre-charge is different, so when we get the probation referrals, we get lots of more serious cases, including we had a case... I think it was the Waterford panel that saw the death result in case, someone was hit by a car, and we saw that as a restorative process after that person served their sentence. So... it's a range. Thank you. How is your program funded? We get funding directly from the Department of Corrections primarily. So in your... your particular center covers the southern half of Washington County? Okay. And you've got six members on your panel? We have some new... and we were trying not to overwhelm the process, so we've been kind of taking turns. Not more than four. Three or four will show up as volunteers. But I think there are five or six on the Waterford panel right now. But the Waterford panel also typically will serve Watesfield and Warren cases as well. So... we have three panels in Montpelier that meet one in Northfield and one in Waterbury. So we have a lot going on in our center. But we're always open to talking about taking referrals. So in your opinion what would make it... what would help you get more referrals to make Waterbury a safer place? I know the troopers here do refer to us, which is not typical around the state. Not every... I don't think every county is... We've got a unique relationship here. We've got troopers specifically assigned to Waterbury. Which is different in many other communities. Where we're primary partners for some communities, but we're not always present. We're not always able to be present. Can you require referrals to people in the police? What's that? Do you require referrals to people in the police? No. We take direct referrals from select board members, from schools... I was actually thinking about a recent dog bite in an alley. We'll take referrals from most of the different places. The thing about getting referrals from other sources though is that it depends on the situation again, what the motivation is. If there's a motivation, if there's going to be a consequence, then that person's going to have some motivation to do a restorative process or... It happens sometimes that people just are willing to say oh, I own that and I want to do the right thing. But there needs to be some kind of motivation behind that. It would be totally voluntary if I were a referral fund. I'm going to say it's voluntary, but there is a little bit of coercion behind it. If you're on probation and your PO is telling you go do the restorative process, you're probably going to do it, right? Because you don't want the consequence behind that. But we do tell them it's voluntary. So if you choose not to do it, just let us know and you can go the other group, whatever that is. But we explain all of the reasons why they might want to do it. I think we've struggled a little with finding meeting places and we've discovered that Wesley United Methodist Church is one of the few sites that doesn't charge. So we've been a little cold. Or maybe it's just in. And occasionally we've used the library, but we do need to be in a place that offers some privacy as well. And I also think that we are going to need to expand our community connections. If indeed it's community service, we've primarily depended upon the Senior Center, the Wesley United Methodist Church and the food shelf. So those are sort of more around the community service and it's not as much community connection. And that's why I'm thinking that the community might do well to in regard to having an offense within the town. Having conversations perhaps with Tom or Bill Woodruff, Alex and Tuscany and Bill Woodruff have helped in the past and it's been a good convention. So in a very different kind of way. So I think that we just need to expand all of that a bit. Especially if we have a lot more cases. A lot of work it's done in the Montpelier Cemetery by people who are required to do some engagement. We've got a lot of need for help in our Cemetery. Grass cutting? Especially if it's young people. As long as there's some supervision about giving them a project. Whatever it is. The other thing I just want to focus on too is that like Jane was saying, we really give the people that come in front of us agency in the process. So we talk about doing with instead of two or four. So the restorative agreement gets created. We ask the person who's responsible for the harm to make the suggestions about what they think they should do. Which is really helpful because that kind of it's not educating them it's them doing some self-discovery around what they understand the harm to be and what they think is important. And that helps them build empathy and see themselves and their community in a different way. So it's a lot like magic and it is very transformative when people get together and they feel supported and they feel like the people, the strangers because they're meeting with a group of strangers and the strangers sitting there with them actually act like they care about them and they do care about them because they volunteer. People like Jane volunteer because they want their community to be a better place because they care about the people that live here. There's also a confidentiality piece that assures them that the information shared stays in the panel. The exception of course is when there needs to be a sheet documenting hours for example. I don't think we ever require that a person say what the offense is but they might say the program they're coming from. They don't even need to say that they just can go to a place and say I want to do some work for you and can you sign this document for me? I was going to ask you kind of explain a little bit of it as the and you had mentioned it before with community services free labor have you found it to be more effective community service or a more community-engaged service? Rather than mowing lawns? I never talk about it as being service I would say it's community engagement and then I encourage the panels to have the conversation around what helping a person define what their community is or what community they think they've impacted like I said last week we met with this young woman and she it was all about her family is her community right now that's the place where she gets the most support so that's where she's doing some engagement is the community so it's really you know it's really up to that person and what's important to them and you know sometimes they struggle with figuring out what they should do so they'll get some suggestions but it's really a conversation one of the opening questions in the introductions is tell us a little bit about yourself and about yourself and what are you really good at what do you really enjoy and so we have that piece in our heads and so when it comes to the connection what is it that you might be passionate about doing to help and it's fascinating but at least they're invested in what they think that they would like to contribute that's the magic piece for me is when we start the whole process we really want to know about you we want to know what you love to do but you're great at it Mike can you please have a work with the youth build program my name's something I used to be a mentor in that program it's kind of for troubled youth it gets them, they have a program where they do a lot of building kind of like habitat for humanity and it gives them some skill training but again it gives them a lot, they work with a mentor and gives them some self and we kind of program where you know especially maybe a little bit more serious case might be able to build so what we do is we in each community there are resources and so what might end up on a restorative agreement is that somebody go to this place and investigate what happens at a place like that where they might want to be involved we don't we don't create those kinds of programs you know we will send them toward resources but we don't actually do that work if they wanted to start a restorative process over there then they could contact me and help them set that up but yeah we really and this is why having the local people in the community being on the panels they know what the resources are and where they might send somebody to sort out where they might want to do something for themselves and with youth especially a parent or guardian has to be involved which is really important because sometimes the parents also need some guidance around you know how to best help their child and so when they're in the process things get revealed sometimes that can be helpful for the whole family Thank you I do want to say my question is going to be how can we help support and I think you named a couple of things so I want to express you can always reach out if you are having trouble finding space we might have some connections or business owners or people that have space who can connect you with or things like that that you think we might be able to help with we might not but it's another avenue to be in touch with the community I think I'm so appreciative that you're serving the town and it's so great to hear that and our troopers are a part of that as well I think it's really it's such a huge service and I agree that an ordinance would really be helpful to me let's just start so it's an avenue anything in particular officer in court that you think would be helpful as part of that ordinance without taking time and looking at something really in depth I don't want to speak to something that would be knowledgeable just thinking about next steps if there's a sample ordinance that you have experience with there's two ordinances in Montpelier that name restorative process and it's the dog ordinance and then there's a public drinking ordinance and so the restorative process is named at a certain place within the dog ordinance I don't know exactly where it is I mean we do those cases every little while not a lot of them but those are the two places that I'm sure of the public drinking one not been successful so far folks who are getting those citations are unhoused and have no mailing address and most of the time don't have a phone that works so there's no way for us to be in touch with them so as much as we'd like to help it's it's not been that's not been a helpful process yeah all right well thank you again for coming we're going to keep close eyes on this and see how we can help you move forward appreciate it thank you next on the agenda we have the Watery-Skirt Park Coalition we're going to come forward so if we have a presentation can I work it out with the technician do we have a bring a chair can you join so you can join on the zoom and screen share I can e-mail it to you really quick I can't do that either I don't have e-mail on this can you join the zoom I wish you told me before I wish you told me before we are we are we are while you're working on that wouldn't mind introducing yourselves we are Mike Rossi I'm part of the because I'm going to get busy so again I'm Mike Rossi part of the coalition Waterbury-Skirt Park Coalition here to present to you tonight what we're going to present my name is Belle McDougal I live in Waterbury Center part of the Skirt Park Coalition got two other people up there my name is Jake my name is Jake Lavel I'm a Waterbury Center resident and part of the coalition as well right and up on the screen Mike do you have, oh is he after an agenda Tammy Hi I'm Tammy Bass I live up in Waterbury Center and I too am on the Waterbury Skirt Park Coalition okay who's your other member we also have we also have Jake Seymour with us and Jake is the professional skate park consultant that the coalition has hired all right and I'd also like to welcome Tara Tara is a new member of the coalition as well and I see that she's on zoom as well thanks joining us Mike's getting connected any of you want to lead off I can sure I can get started while Mike is doing the computer so good evening everyone thanks for having us I was going to do the introductions but those have already been accomplished so Belle, Mike, Jake Blavilt and I are part of a nine member waterbury skate park coalition to give you a little background and obviously we're here this evening to speak to you in regard to the plans for building rebuilding the Hope Davy skate park this evening our goals for the meeting this evening are to provide an overview of the skate park development activities the conceptual design plans and budget the roadmap and schedule for design and construction maintenance, fundraising safety and security and we ask and would really appreciate it if you if everyone would please hold their questions until the end of the presentation excuse me we hope to be answering most of your questions throughout the presentation so if you could just hold them that would be great and one other goal for this evening would be to get a conditional approval of plan continuing this roadmap of activities that the coalition has been working towards how you doing Mike I guess I can continue so we don't lose time here the next we have a slide deck that Mike is like sounds like he's working to get that up there so I'm going to just speak in regard to the the overview of the skate park development activities give a little history of what's been transpiring as most of you know the Hope Davies skate park was deconstructed this past October we really we being the coalition and a handful of volunteers came out on a Sunday and it went very well with the help of the town as well with town trucks we took the whole skate park apart we prioritized Hope Davies because of the safety for safety reasons it was getting old that skate park has been there for 12 years if you can believe it or not and we decided to put our focus into Hope Davies one for decommissioning and two for rebuilding as well loved and used skate spot as I said 12 years it's been going strong and we just really do not wish to leave a hole both in recreation and or physically at Hope Davies without a skate park so we're looking to rebuild next spring as soon as next spring to get a new concrete skate park in place of what was a wooden skate park wooden skate parks only live a certain amount of time 12 years was a pretty good run for the wooden one that was at Hope Davies but it has come to an end so we're looking to increase the surface area of the actual asphalt area that is currently there is 4,000 square feet and we're looking to increase that area to 6,000 square feet this would be to increase the size of the skate park by 2,000 square feet and to continue to allow for a basketball court to be there which will continue to be 2,000 square feet we the coalition has met with the WREC committee along with WREC director Catarina we've met with them numerous times it's been a pleasure working with all of them and they have given us the backing for our goals for this expansion along with town goals that we've been working in sync with in regard to the master plan i.e. parking as I mentioned the basketball court will remain we feel that's very important as well as an ADA path and horseshoes all that goes on at Hope Davies and so we feel that this is just in sync with the master plan and would hope to be able to just increase the square footage it brings us out into the grass 40 to 50 feet roughly we've learned a lot in the last four years that the coalition has been together we've educated ourselves and learned a lot about concrete skate parks as you know we're working towards a larger skate park hopefully down the road but we have refocused on Hope Davies but through all the four years of our learning and experience really has helped us put together what we feel is no pun intended concrete process of going forward with this so moving on to the design and budget I give you Mike so this is the conceptual design that Tammy referred to so we had Jake Seymour our contractor for the skate park design put this together we worked with as Tammy mentioned the committee and the REC director to kind of simulate what was in the plan the master plan with the exception of the idea here is enlarging the play surface in this region so here's the firehouse just to orient everyone and then basically the way it used to be is the skate park was here and then you had the basketball court right about here 2,000 square foot was respectively so what we like to do is swap such that the basketball court now is closest to the firehouse and we expand the skate park surface to about 4,000 square feet so it goes out into the grass and it will also accommodate the ADA path we moved the there's a baseball storage area trying to get my cursor to work here so I think there was talk to move that behind the backstop here so that wouldn't be in the way this parking surface is probably not going to happen the way it's rendered here because I don't think we want a impervious surface all the way out into the grass like that so that's my bad for not telling Jake Seymour about that I think this would be gravel if it did expand or engineered grass if there was an expansion of the parking surface but yeah I think that's probably all you need to say about that nice rendering again it's consistent with the master plan with the exception of expanding the play surface there the parking the parking and the play surface the way we are going out into the grass alright so onto budget here so the table here I won't go into each of the line items this is basically a construction budget for a skate park that Jake Seymour has put together for us about 132K worth of materials and labor is all cooked into this those costs for line item and then what we also have is a little buffer here for the design, the permitting and site prep and we're still working through what my next slide talks about what that might look like but that's about 40,000 extra dollars to get through those stages so the total estimate is roughly 173 we have raised about 97 so far 55 of that has just been recently pledged by a single donor so that's great Blauvel Banks Jake Blauvel here to my left he's been running this great skateboard event or snowboarding event at Bolton it raises roughly 61,000 that goes up every year so maybe that number is going to increase but that will be nice so the delta when you add up what we expect to raise by about March is about 61,000 and Bell is going to talk a little bit more about the fundraising activities and also I just want to make part of these parks what a lot of the parks do is they reach out to the community and they look for in kind donations for either materials, lodging I know my son's coming home from college next summer and we're going to put him to work on this thing possibly I think just some community donations are always helpful when we get into financial aspects so next is the roadmap and the schedule for the design and construction and working with again someone who's done this quite a bit Jake Seymour if you have any questions about maybe some of the sequencing and some of the logistics around some of these steps I think Jake will be able to answer them but basically the hope is to improve the conceptual design here for one or more of those elements that we showed by December so next month and then finalize the design and get an RFP out to skateboard construction contractors by January and then select that contractor by March turn it around permitting and compliance right now my understanding is there's a stormwater permit that we have to talk to the town Bill Woodruff about whether or not that's needed depending on his thoughts on the matter and then the conditional use permit, the DRB a hearing we've we'll skip before those folks present our case again and see how we do through that that's where on the schedule for December 6th and then we finalize the budget by March 2024 do some site prep May, June and construct next summer the middle of the summer, June, July that is the goal I think one of the things I do want to bring to the forefront here is so it's not miscommunicated is when the RFP goes out it'll be the RFP from the town because the town will own this asset so we are also asking some coordination with the town to help basically put your letter head on an RFP that we will write but I imagine there's some contracting, bonding there's some other stuff that we need to make sure is in that RFP so it's done legitimately and the contractor is legitimate that we select and is capable in all that so moving on to maintenance and fundraising I'm going to hand it over to Bell okay so what I wanted to do is go over on what we might be expecting for maintenance costs the information that we have been working to get has been by talking to other skate parks and facilities managers at three or four skate parks in Vermont and basically they confirm that although we won't need much maintenance in the beginning in the first three to five years we'll have to do annual maintenance with a sealant on the surface and we'll have to look for small areas that are opening up in the cement I have a few pictures there for examples that I took last weekend in Portland, Maine just to show you guys what we're talking about and sometimes there's tagging and graffiti and you have to spend money to remove that and it's basically it's like a vapor barrier product that you would put on the surface so that the paint doesn't get absorbed into that permeable surface the other expenses relate to just routine park maintenance with garbage removal landscaping, mowing, weed whacking and that kind of stuff which shouldn't be that different from what we've had except better the good news as Mike said is our short-term fundraising is going really well we have $42,000 in our forward bank account there are a fiscal agent for fundraising and we have $55,000 in pledges from donors who wish to remain anonymous at this point and so we hope that that grows what we hope to do is what we plan to do is kick off the capital campaign in January and hope to raise around $60,000 by June 1st and the way we hope to do that and we really haven't even started doing this yet is to reach out to our community our local businesses in our town in Stowe and in our region to see if they'd like to contribute to the park so we also will be working hopefully with Tara who's there who has some expertise in social media as well and online fundraising campaigns and we hope to do part of the strategy is to match the pledge donation funds is to do some matching campaign fundraising through that the long term fundraising is really about how to sustain the park and generate the revenue to offset the expenses and most of that based on the folks that we've talked to in Manchester, Vermont and in Burlington and in Ludlow and Brattleboro to run many camps through the recreation program with the kids and usually they charge anywhere from $300 to $500 per kid per week so that can generate some revenue did that make sense Roger $500 per kid per week that's a lot but I'm not saying we want to do that we may make the camps lower but I'm just saying the numbers I've put up there let's see the other opportunity for revenues would be holding events there, skate jams and hopefully an annual fundraising event as well sometime in the fall slide 7 is about the oh that's online it's about safety and security over the last couple of years we've started up a dialogue with Lieutenant David White a couple of years ago I guess he's moved into a different position but he was the captain in middle sex there and we talked to him a lot about any concerns that he might have down at the River Road Park location and then more recently I talked to Trooper Ryan Regler about his thoughts and his experience there and other recommendations that they might have everybody agrees that we should probably have a high resolution security camera so that we can have data if and when we need it they also recommend that we check in frequently to have a good line of communication and that they do routine pass throughs into hope dating regularly as well there is some lighting in the parking lot there so I'm not sure how much optimized lighting that we need to do there but down at River Road that was an issue because there was no lighting down there optimize your signage make sure that you let people know there's a security camera in operation Ryan recommended having your rules and policies when the park is open that it will close at dusk an emergency contact number and then they point we also are aware and talked with them about the intergenerational use of this cohort of people who enjoy skateboarding you have younger people, families older folks all using this space together which is nice and often a deterrent so that's great and usually there's a very high level of respect among the people that are there skating and sharing that space together so that's a good thing there are many issues as you probably know for the last 12 years we really have not had any major injuries at that skate park there's been no 911 ambulance rescues and to my knowledge so that's a good history to look to not that things won't happen because they do but be aware that our past has been good the other thing that you think about when you design a skate park and jake might speak to this is that you design a perimeter a safe perimeter area where skaters can remove themselves from the area where they're skating they can rest, they can watch it's important to create space for that and we hope to have some seating so that people can watch and be safe and out of the fray jake is designing a park that has good flow and generally speaking what we'll see is a decrease in noise from the ramps we had on those wooden ramps we had metal ramps that were louder then concrete is very smooth very quiet generally speaking so that's also a positive for the changes that we're hoping to make and then on the signage we'll make it clear although it's difficult to enforce as everybody knows but there's never any tolerance for alcohol smoking vaping anywhere on park property so otherwise, Mike is there anything else on that you want to add? No, that's it kind of jumping into a little bit of time for Mike's local that was a really cool one okay any questions? yep, yep so my first big one is just a few months ago I finished the Hope Davies study and that took a year and you relocated so why the big pivot two months later to stay here? I think, yeah, there's two things one is we took down the park because it was unsafe we don't have a park in Waterbury right now and I think what I was seeing and I think everyone will share the same the coordination and the amount of work that needs to go into getting the river road all those pieces together and coordinated it seemed like that was several years out and we were really eager to replace the park you know, we have some money now we have some momentum and we have some space so it just seemed like the path of least resistance again, we're not we're not taking off that other park off the table we're going to see how this park does I think that's the if anyone else has any input that's the idea I think too that with the flood it was a little concerning because in the last 10 years we've seen it flood frequently and the area that we were given is not really it's still in the flood zone so there would be a lot of expense to the engineering for that as well it's a bit daunting that kind of dovetails to Tom's question to mind is that so you're pretty much dismissing the river road site because to me I'm concerned long term with there's two parts what's, you know the cost becomes exponentially more and you know I have no problem if you guys think the way you go because the flooding could be an issue but long term I think us as a select board would have that concern what your long term goal is are you looking at developing multiple sites and how sustainable would that be for the town to run I can't answer that right now but I think what you open to you seem to we're not taking it off the table that's what I've gotten sense as a select board we're kind of concerned with all sorts of services that come before us and how much can taxpayers afford so that could be detriment by taking this river road site down for a few years can be afforded I understand kids like I have fun I would love to go back to the site plan in the budget I guess just one thing I did pull out the plan and actually think what you have it looks like aligned to at least this draft of the park study that we adopted I'm looking at which had 14 additional gravel parking spaces I guess the budget has outlined that we saw that you're raising the additional 60,000 for what site work and other work is that covering just to construct the park itself seeing that the basketball is a different place or would you be asking not to be a municipal expense along the parking I guess I'm curious in adopting like this what would be a commitment from you all in the coalition and what would be a town ask to that end I would say the town RFP I don't commit town staff to anything often at the meetings I would just want to make sure Tom and town staff was comfortable because there are as you acknowledge requirements around what a town RFP is and if we're doing that person one of the ideas for us swapping the parks or the facilities the basketball closer to the fire station is that you wouldn't need to do any work there you could use the existing asphalt service for basketball we thought that would be good and then we're not 100% sure there's $40,000 to build out into that grass and we are presuming that cost or assuming that cost again we're going to look for the community to maybe donate some of the materials maybe some of the excavation we don't know exactly what's in that we haven't really done a lot of detailed elevation work out there where we're going to know learn a little bit more about how much we have to put beneath this park because usually it's about six inches of gravel below your concrete slab and then your features are above that so but just to answer your question our hope is that we wouldn't be asking the town for money to do this expansion our fundraising contemplates that Katerina I would just like to add to that that the Hope Davy master plan does talk about the parking so the parking is not part of the coalitions plan either and then the ADA path that was referenced is also part of the Hope Davy master plan not the coalitions proposal basketball is not part of the coalitions as I understand it you would leave the space open and then it would be up to the town to get some partition work between the park and the basketball court so we need to think about that a little bit which could be a great spot for viewing there's a couple options there stadium seating there are some instances where it's going to be a little there's a gray area who would provide funding to just out of curiosity why do you feel it's important to double the size of the skate park I mean a dog park up in Burlington how many is it 25,000 square feet and that's a proper legitimate skate park 4,000 square feet is very small so the 2,000 square foot park as is right now is incredibly small and any idea of how many skaters that accommodates and how much the proposed one would accommodate at a time the one right now due to the features accommodates maybe 5 at a time 4 at a time so I'd say double that at any one time that many skaters can be skating and then twice as many can be spectating so you could have 20 skaters that easily I'll tell you as someone who skateboarded on the ramps that previously existed it accommodates 2 well you're a big guy 4 children kicking Gary so I have being the immediate neighbor a fire station and I had a good conversation yesterday oh god microphone up here we had a good conversation first I want to go back just from what I just talked about is that down to the ice rink it floods we're talking about a concrete skatepark so posing it off shouldn't be that difficult I mean everybody else functions we clean up the softball fields people clean up their houses but beyond that I think if you build in Waterbury Center even though you're saying that this other park is still in the back of your minds it becomes further back and that's based on experience with everything that ever happens when somebody says we're going to do this and this is only temporary it's never or rarely temporary so that's one of my concerns but the biggest concern is what we have been experiencing at the fire station for the last 12 years and that is and it's by a small percentage certainly give you that but it's the disrespect of some of the people that are there it's parking it's parking in our parking spaces even though there is signs and when we've had and I try and keep only the officers to talk to people because I don't want everybody doing it they've got a pushback you can't park here this is for the fire department well you don't have a call right now so I'm not moving my car so this is ongoing and when you just talked about having these big events we're going to have even more parking there and it's just an ongoing pain for me because I get all the emails I get the phone calls and I can't always go running up there you get emails and phone calls from my members saying I talked to people they were parking in our parking spaces and they didn't want to move people are parking there that are using correct and even a month and a half ago when I was up there I had to go do something and there were two cars parked there and they were at the skate park and they were adults what kind of a collaborative agreement do you have with the horseshoe gang that comes down where do they park they park around to the left hand side on the grass the grass was designed to have parking so you don't let anybody park there no if we have a call where are we supposed to park so how many parking spots do you have there so would you like to see the parking expand to accommodate some of the other activities that use that space well if when they have soccer because my granddaughter plays soccer so we go up there, we went up there a number of times the entire green grass area beyond the paved portion out and around to the left is all designed for on-site parking so is that what you're saying more on-site parking I would like to see nobody parking in the parking lot so but people need to use the space so where do you want them to park on the grass where everybody else parks so you would advocate for expanding parking as well no the grass oh no I get that but they still have to be welcome to park somewhere else so do we put a signage there is signs I think if we help communicate a little better and advise the skaters say something about a sign saying skateboarders please park past here do you think that would be helpful no and I say that based on years of experience and if what works for soccer is they actually have a person standing there saying you can't park here now I get that you folks can't be standing there all the time I totally understand that and it's not everybody I've gone up there a number of times and there's cars parked out on the grass what do you think the solution is then I think that the solution is that you folks explain to people that potentially the skate park is in jeopardy of not being able to be used or to some degree like that why should the fire department have to scurry for parking spaces when we have a call because people don't want to they're going to go skateboard they're going to use energy but they don't want to walk 15 feet so I'm hearing a lot of negativity towards the people that use the skate park that's how we have been treated with the fire department we've had graffiti we've had trash we've had to shut off the power outside the station because people continue to use the power there and we've had a lot of people talk to us with disrespect so that is how we have been treated and I'm not opposed to people I think they might feel disrespected as well potentially because we asked them not to parking where it says fire department parking I mean my retirement I don't know obviously there's some fences that need to be mended here and I think they probably do but I do want to say that every time I have approached somebody I've been very professional and very polite and have been treated less than that so it's not like we're going up and we're starting an argument and I've been very clear with my officers do not start out in a negative way just walk up and ask them if that's their vehicle and could you please move it and they still get pushback I would just say we certainly will need to take us into consideration moving forward with this and maybe there is a signage issue obviously communication issue I was just going to say there are two parking lots I hope they be that do not include the fire department's parking lot with ample parking for the amount of people who are going to be skateboarding at this potential skate park it shouldn't be an issue as Chief Dillon pointed out to walk a few feet to the skate park in the future when it is built I think it's not a big ask of skateboarders or anybody using the park not the park or fire park there are two parking lots if you put a sign up skateboarders park here I'm surprised that you got that's some bad apples there I'm not doubting you it's a small percentage I'm sure they're usually proper to people I think and there is a sign that says additional parking with an arrow going out onto the grass and soccer uses it all the time softball or kids baseball or softball they use it well I just wonder about improved signage adjacent to the park as we move it out I certainly think that would help it's not to hurt a little more specific as opposed to just saying firefighters only help direct the skateboarders that way well it's not just skateboarders it's everybody that uses the park the skateboarders want a park next to the skateboard park people that are playing softball or baseball or soccer there's a lot more vehicles and they know they're going out onto the grass here or they use the two parking spaces but people that we have the biggest problem with are the people going to skateboard and they're adults they're not the kids so is there a possibility of really creating instead of being muddy grass it's kind of a low point there what if we created a better defined parking area that has skate park signage because if and when surface expands it's parallel to where they would be parking so they would be right next to the skate park so theoretically they wouldn't have to take firemen fire fighters spots so maybe we can do better signage and just define that space better that would be helpful and I'm just basing it on the last 12 years of our experience and again a month and a half ago my experience well I'm glad you're not talking about security because I think you know if you feel that there's interpersonal stuff that can improve and we can identify ways that we can improve it that's good and I thought maybe you would have security concerns about lighting or other my concern is to help your park users that doesn't impact me it may impact the neighbors with lighting I don't know that we need to put more lighting in there but I was wondering if you thought we did well lighting and parking I'm sure will be also addressed by the DRV process and if they're further away we likely will have less garbage left at our back step I'm hoping but we've had to pick garbage up especially when it's raining or it's really sunny out during the summer and kids will want to sit underneath the entranceway to our station because it's in shade and then they leave their garbage there so we end up picking up garbage there's no garbage there and they still leave it that's annoying but it's not insolvable it's not insolvable except it hasn't been solved in 12 years this is the first I've heard of it you've never spoken to me about it I've never knew who was in charge of this now we do make a progress make a progress from time to time we have equally a number of parking problems in front of the fire station I would just be interested to see if these problems continue next year if we weren't to put up a skate park and it was to be completely empty if trash is still being left and people are still parking in those spaces I just don't know if it can all be blamed on skateboarders that's a good segue can we perhaps go to the slide that had the timing for the RFP right here it's a good question but it's the people that were engaged that were at the skate park and they parked their cars there so it's not like we had to go looking for anyone we're at it so on this slide it's empty now it's been empty now for a couple weeks maybe a month so this has the town the town is glad I had an RFP in January but as of today are 60,000 short so how do we issue an RFP in January if we're not fully funded that's why we're here to talk about these things I don't know it's a good question I guess I didn't know you had to have fully funded projects, I guess people wouldn't bid on a project that they didn't have funding they would, the vendors wouldn't necessarily know but it's hard to ask a vendor to do work repairing a bid if we might not go forward I think just particularly if it's coming out from the town I get that out of that concern for sure I'm sure there are local vendors who can call and say give us a rough cut I think you have to do that yeah I think there are I think that is reasonable expectation from the people we've been working with because most of these projects I know Lando just did this Tammy has Tammy I would just like to interject there at a meeting recently that we had with Catarina and Tom we spoke about that if we fell short of monies coming due to start construction and Tom mentioned that the town has a I believe it's a revolving grant of some sort or a loan that is given out to grassroots groups and he suggested that that might be a possibility for us to talk with the select men about as well so the our utility district has a loan fund but I'm not aware of it being used for a project like this one thing for the select one to think about and something other towns have done many times is if you've got a local organization that wants to get a project off the ground and they're reasonably close and you feel like they can fill the fundraising gap over time as you can you can fill that gap and essentially give them a loan the challenge that oftentimes arises is the organization then completes the project they don't have a lot of incentive to fundraise so you've got to have a lot of trust you've got to have a lot of faith in that organization's ability to over some whatever period of time to pay it back I don't offhand know about the I should know but the loan fund through EFUD I don't know offhand if the criteria if community organizations like this qualify we were we wrote the loan terms about a year ago but it's all been businesses that have applied some non-profits but they've all been EFUD customers yeah Alyssa sorry well I was going to go to UN REC committee and I'm also going to ask is there a planned VOREC application for the town as of now for this grant cycle I don't know we at our last REC committee meeting we did discuss that that I will be writing a grant that focuses mostly on accessibility in the town or ADA accessibility so there is a current planned application for this grant cycle because I guess just to name and the pastor have been a town VOREC application at escape park so I didn't know if there is an opportunity partner or it strikes me this is something that's maybe poised for implementation so clearly I haven't been part of those conversations but seeing as fundraising is a barrier and just wondering if there's ways to or maybe again ADA trails there would be a different component of the work as you highlight that conclusion from it so it sounds like there is a planned application from the town that might support aspects of this work but would not fund escape park work directly is that correct could it because I don't know if you explored it or not but you know they encourage if it's one area to include multiple products in that area so Miss Pally can do multiple things included in the track so right so this VOREC grant has five different pockets one of them being flood mitigation so I'm trying to focus areas of the town that were flooded this July which are mostly dark row and dark row also has some ADA accessibility issues so my attempt is trying to thread that there's flood mitigation that's needed at dark row in addition to ADA and use ADA through other parks tacking on other recreation ideas sort of makes it a little bit bigger of a grant that's maybe not as connected but the coalition have talked a lot and if I am able to throw in some other things I'm more than happy to do that but we're just trying to keep more or less of a clean out of the patient if you will and then your fiscal agent is VOREC and would that be an avenue because a non-profit can apply with just you know a lot of support as a co-applicant or a lot of support or what it might be from a municipality so that might be an avenue as well for a VOREC grant through that yeah if it's a full application I guess I will say like as someone was on the VOREC review committee for obvious reasons but just to say like I think as a select board member selfishly I would want to prioritize a really strong application from the town like Katerina is talking about that being said there is an implementation bucket with a $50,000 minimum for projects that could be implemented in the spring so I guess like per Dan's point non-profit organizations are eligible as a grant reviewer getting multiple applications from the same community that aren't connected can be a little bizarre but I think if there was a strong really compelling application as it's like more remember I'm also certainly not going to sit here and say like the town has you know the monopoly on applications but I guess I just in full candor my thought would be like I really hear Katerina's rationale around flood and that also lets us date back to July for expenses which would be really great for the town but also there is a separate bucket that maybe is eligible to this project and I would just say the piece I would ask because that does require a town sign up at the time would be like is it you know full application and again if both sides are like willing to do that I'm certainly willing to help support that in ways I can but wouldn't want to see an application you know that wasn't quite all there and how competitive is that well it was redesigned this year I mean kind of they took a year off because what we found part of the reason there is so many buckets and like I'm not speaking for the perimeter but like there's a huge spectrum of they've now created a whole development category acknowledging that you need planning and comprehensive park study and some of the work we actually as a town have invested in doing to say that we like now have you know like an ADA map there's more money than a million more dollars than there was last round and there's different specific tracks so it could decrease competition in the tracks but there's just no way to know how many people are going to go in each one so it's a heavy lift of an application but it's a minimum of $50,000 it could be well worth especially I don't know if you said somebody does have that but it could be well worth looking into to see if it's and that's spring 2024 funds for yeah for beginning work in the spring and maybe the patient track is where you would want to go because you've got you know your planning but it is due to some 15 so what do you think if if you know what's your take on the original question if we did have only 75% of the money in our coffer would you you know is that a non-starter it's not something I can do on my own I don't know that authority would be something this way we have to consider we're moving into the budget season so it's not the end time the real issue for me is you know not just the last year but the last two years what's your fund raising history and you realistically fill that gap and I've done this in other projects in other places but it's always been tied to something that the visibility could own and had a state and if the fund raising wasn't there you know you built a building you're building a mortgage in essence in this case it's a little different I guess I'm also curious to rational as to why it would need to be a town RFP I certainly understand you need town sign off but I think of like going to the development review board you as the state park coalition can apply as the applicant and the town can sign off as the property owner that is a model and so I guess also just thinking about like staff time and resources which is actually more of my like is there the coalition or forward could issue an RFP I'm just following most of the models that I've seen are usually when the town gets involved and make sure again like the bonding and all those details are sound versus just someone grassroots I don't know all the ins and outs of what you need for a proper contract so we could explore just doing it outside of the town but the expectation is to kind of get a hold of it because you're going to have to ensure anything else with the coalition post construction we contributing in way to the maintenance and upkeep of the park and or possible having you know additional side liability coverage for the skaters the liability coverages I know the town has but sometimes supplemental coverage doesn't hurt I know that from knowing enough insurance agents I think our coverage is pretty comprehensive like an umbrella if I were you I wouldn't want to be holding insurance because that opens you to liability some lawyers are going to say well they get an insurance policy let's go after that but I think including insurance in terms of the long term maintenance responsibility to the park did you have any plans or contributed offers I mean we've always kept up as best we could the other skate park so we have a whole lot of volunteers that plan that you presented was the long term is to offset the maintenance cost right yeah hopefully we'll raise enough revenue to cover the expenses and person power we can always come up with somebody I'll acknowledge that we're going way over time here and I apologize for that I should have allowed for more discussion on this to my mind there are two concerns here one is sort of the conceptual design of this and the expansion from what was approved in the overall of the plan which to me doesn't seem terribly different and I wanted to get Kevin's take on it from a recreation standpoint are you okay with the conceptual design as it's been presented yes and as is the rec committee I would just say that Hope Davey never, the Hope Davey master plan never mentioned how big the skate park would be it just mentioned that there would be skate park and there would be basketball which is why the recreation department would hold the community for their thoughts on basketball too on if they both should exist there by getting more feedback and the community said we want basketball there which is why the plan as presented today keeps basketball there and experience and are you planning to have money in your budget for the transfer transferring the basketball court into where the park used to be where the skate park used to be yes yes I have to figure it out but yes that is the plan I realize we're not there yet I'm just like seeing how far the planning has gone and I don't know if you've considered the parking question whether grass is sufficient or whether more needs to be done there yeah the parking is in the master plan certainly an ongoing consideration I think it depends on how much money is in the budget we need to redo the basketball court that's what that's what it's asking we'll be voting on this there's not money to redo the basketball court there's money to use the existing asphalt and possibly resurface it so that it's a better surface to do that basketball on okay I'm going to have play with the hoop city they're in there it's really expensive it's shocking I guess we'll be hearing more about that the second issue is really how this whole funding thing is going to come together I do have concerns about essentially writing a promissory note for $60,000 I'm not sure but I appreciate everything you've done and wish you the best but I'm not sure that covering $60,000 in the couple of months is really a good bet so that's I think if you asked for some sort of conceptual approval I'm wondering if we could approve the concept and then hold off on the discussion of how the whole thing is going to get financed I think one outcome would be it's a 2025 project it's just a non-starter again for one reason or another we can't really get talents approval until we have cold funding then that's one option is to delay the whole thing when we go private RFP I hope that too so there's a couple of options we could do here seems like the quickest and best option would be to really get the talents support and approval moving into this 4A grant coming up if we could do that there's our budget we've already raised $100,000 which we're willing to put in to a town asset that's going to be used it already has shown massive demand and we've raised $100,000 we just love a little backing for this 4A grant to get 50 grand we're there that's our best option right now we love the support it's an olympic sport right now it's not just pumps anymore not going out there's massive demand for this as long as we can address all of the concerns like parking and all that which I think we can the whole community people come from all around to use this little dilapidated skatepark imagine if we could come up with an amazing state of the art little skatepark so many towns so many towns have really nice skateparks and it's just crazy that neither Waterbury nor Stowe does I think we have we should talk to Stowe too we'd rather have than Waterbury though Waterbury's yeah so maybe we could entertain a motion for conceptual approval approval to approve the concept as shown for the skatepark I hope they be part moved and seconded any further discussion I feel a little weird about it but it's not that I oppose the skateboarder disagree with the concept and I guess I would say yes that's why I mentioned Vorek I think that's what funded ledlos you can look online I think that's how they got the money and I guess I would say I'm willing to do that I want to see the application just because respectfully I would help work on previous Voreks when it was a time of not great alignment and so I would just want to make sure it was a really strong and compelling application I'm willing to meet with someone offline before December 4th to help do that but I would say my they would be I would want it to be a compelling application I thought might be worthy of getting funding before I was deluding Waterbury's chances in the Vorek pool to support it but I think it is a compelling option that's worth looking into that's where we struggled in the last applications we just didn't have proper backing from town and you know better than me that it takes proper time yeah and I appreciate you being here so I guess that's my again like I'm not disagreeing conceptually and I just want to feel like one more we're on the same page so yeah for my thought would be Vorek come back next week or something we look at an application we meet with Cattery now we make sure offline I want to record can I ask a quick question it's a little difficult on Zoom to hear Alyssa are you suggesting that the coalition right there only Vorek grant or that we jointly do come in on this one that Caterina is working on what Caterina shared she can chime in is that she was working on one specifically on flood recovery so that was a different bucket and there wasn't really a lot of overlap so what we were talking about here is potentially there's an implementation category and nonprofits are eligible so it also would be a question for if forward was willing to do that but I think to some of the points Jake is raising you have matching funds and you have an implementable project on the process of being permitted in approximately the timeline which is a very different place from previous years so maybe if there was a concerted effort there that was something the town could align with there are office hours and I will forget to email you so you can look online or please feel free to email my personal email and remind me to send it it's coming up maybe next Tuesday for open forum to ask questions and I have asked this specific question and the answer that I've gotten is that like flood-related applications are treated very very differently so I think it could be a good chance which is why I personally was like pushing it so if you don't find those office hours for that feel free to email me and I'll send you the link for that to answer a lot of questions about the applications and they're really really helpful great thank you any further discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions are you opposed and I'm not opposed for inconception opposed to the fact that either the borough or the I know we're talking about this conception that the committee is going to raise money so that's where by that January date I don't think I don't know if the town is going to come up with that whole fucking money the concept could apply to 2025 also it was just as drawn we're talking about the layout okay that's all as a fundraising member of the Stoke Street Alley Committee so with that clarification I could change my phone would you yes okay alright but make sure you have some apprehension okay thanks a lot thank you everyone that's good sorry can I ask a question does anybody know who that couple was sitting in the back of the house Tamatha and John something passing I can find that maybe JASM I'll get it the daughter's name is Harper and her last name is Zomberison I do know Tamatha just as a side to that conversation with Gary Dillon and Bruno we have heard that I agree and something I know it's just a few bad apples and maybe it's something we need important things to have for parking where firefighters need to be parked and maybe with a restorative justice program we may have heard that a whole bunch but I'm not aware of action to be taken to be super frank no we haven't I think it's a good location for a camera yeah we haven't we hear it a lot put it in the vorac I'm serious I will email and this is one where I will help write what candidly drove me not to in the past I know this is a public meeting but was like the town was doing one they were doing one it was totally separate and I feel like now that I'm in a place that there's a separate implementation budget and say maybe we need to build a kiosk so they're not on the fire permit it says it's a permanent process I don't know if they've done the DRB but if they're on the December 6th agenda they have at least more than neighbors so they have a much more at least moving forward and maybe it can be some resources to help at least worth throwing money as someone who I would say I wouldn't park in the grass I wouldn't park in the grass but I wouldn't park in the grass It's always some problem solving The problem is with signage it's always enforcement there's a sign there it says firefighter parking only if you don't park there Waterbury Center never had a police department we didn't have staff to go out and go and take it or anything else so as Danny said it's just this constant push-pull it's not an easy solution it's an it's an irritating problem there was some irritation there was some irritation we're not going to solve the problem entirely but there are steps that haven't been taken that we can take and try and also if they fully fund and go forward that's a thorn that we can work on the big issue is going to be funding and moving forward with RFPs because that's still going to be a process and Tom you had other questions that probably didn't get asked but we'll take those up as we go forward that's okay next thing on the agenda is the third quarter financial update finally I can be pretty quick here just want to hit some of the highlights no big issues on the revenue side the second line down is the other governmental revenue big chunk of that actually came at the beginning of November so not in this update but at the end of the year we get about $106,000 from ANR which is just the bigger one which is reimbursement for people in current use that nets us well as the state makes us whole so that came in on budget we know that number in advance the pilot number we don't know in advance we budgeted 360 we got $400,000 so that'll be in the final year but that all looks fine huge change in miscellaneous revenue compared to our prior year but that's really where the ARPA funds get transferred from the ARPA fund in here so when do you think we'll know about pilot we got it we budgeted 360 so we're looking good there and next year should be next year several other towns are collecting the local option tax so that pilot funds should grow yeah, more money so that's found money, that's great in general fund expenses nothing huge to look at until the fourth line down which is the flood so there's a hundred toots that are about 125 so some of it's a little hard to net out the response included public works you know hitting their stockpile for gravel and crushed stone we didn't make a purchase necessarily that day we had to refill our stockpile some of it's in labor costs and so really the expenses is we didn't have overtime necessarily we had opportunity lost so we didn't do some gravel road work but the sign up genius has also helped us a lot because through sign up genius there's a lot of documented labor hours and all those hours are reimbursable at 28 dollars and 14 cents an hour and at least anecdotally the FEMA rep has said that that's pretty good proof so there's other, a lot of other hours not logged on sign up genius but there's 30 grand that we did not spend that this community should benefit from so in some respects bring in the disasters is there any literally how do we go to the 90 percent does this apply to this or am I thinking of different FEMA thresholds I don't know there's several different project categories within the details but overall it's not going to necessarily be a hindrance to our budget one of the is the ongoing work of crew covered by the FEMA volunteer we're still paying for Tom Drake's hours which are pretty limited the 2024 budget will have some proposal for crew and to continue some expenses there but are they tracking the volunteer hours so they can charge against that that's different so I don't believe that's reimbursable through FEMA we ought to have that in volunteer hours but you the boards will put you in a lot of time that's sort of what I was getting towards is that any of that I don't think it's reimbursable in going down to work they're going to go home that's what I thought probably not I think Tom's right that the ongoing crew is doing a small kind of Brazilian building that has direct response to the flood so I don't think it's reimbursable and just while we're on the flood I believe in the next meeting you'll have your first formal request for a buyout and potentially that may be it there could be three or four others in the works but we're slowly getting there and it's interesting to think about the property is bought out essentially you get a clean lot when it's done you can't build on it it's got to be it's got to be essentially green space you can do nothing when it becomes whatever you can mow it you can have a parking ride but you can't pave it or gravel it but what's interesting is we could have a situation where we have a union so we could have a small assemblage if you will can you put like benches and trees there you can do that you can put a playground but you can't pave it you can't gravel it as long as we don't put gravel below the playground will be fine you know the challenge is going to be whatever we do it's another item to maintain so we can do that now what's the grand list impact because if it's three or four houses they're not high value homes right now how much should we want to pay for the back machine nothing but they'll be part of the claim we get FEMA money for St. Alvin's in South Burlington so then we'll read it we can send them money I thought we had to pay their time or something like that we did not that was all volunteers the more I learned it wasn't just us a lot of towns that just they came to work one day morning and the town manager said to the public we'll see you in a week or two so there was a lot of that that's cooperation I treated the mayor and his family and they went home with a fair amount of booze I thought I'm sorry before you move on will we get some more briefing on buyout yeah next meeting we can have a session on that thank you going down page one through departmental budgets no no real red flags recreation has spent more than last year and their revenues are above last year and that's kind of the continued trajectory we see there and Katarina didn't mention it when she was here but we did hire a program coordinator we'll start in a week or two okay are you local? she she's local I think she's living with family right now so looking for something a little more permanent but she's here probably fun no real issues on the revenue side we drew up tax transfers I'll true that up at year end despite the flood and some of those costs being bedded in high where their salary and fringe is actually a little bit down from last year but we're down in person fuel is down diesel has come down that's been good salt we just spent a couple more grand which was the first invoice I've seen since March or April we'll be over budget on salt not dramatically I don't think Corrine, Sandstone and Gravel combined we're under budget we'll be under budget by year end and part of that is the flood and that we were diverted from doing our world work so there's the opportunity cost I mentioned vehicle equipment repairs where we budget a lot more in prior years we've had 30 or 40 thousand dollars with that mechanic we raised that budget probably raise it a little bit again next year but no huge red flags we also not in here we had an old vehicle that we budgeted to sell that we finally sold it was nice to get that done talk about the library a little bit and this will also pertain to public works so we'll true up the property taxes at year end but substantially all their revenues from property taxes there's not much else another big piece is our investment fund we budget some investment gains and essentially skim some of the earnings off the top so we'll get that in the fourth quarter library expenses look pretty good overall but something that I'll just hint at and it'll be a little bit of a theme potentially the 2024 budget is if you look carefully at library wages and some of their duties compared to some of the front desk town staff there's a little bit of inequity there so that's something I think we need to address over time so I'll talk about that more when we get to 2024 but in general the library I think does a good job of managing so there's no concerns there cemeteries are a big concern we that's the bottom of the second page we budgeted some expenses greater than revenues this year in the cemetery and they had some they had some donations from the prior year that we're going to spend so we took that money in a prior year knowing that in the future year you're gonna you're gonna spend it and made some additional work they wanted to do and so the cemetery commissioners agreed that if they're over budget this year the difference will come from their trust fund and so I gave them an estimate at their last meeting of how much they're gonna need to withdraw from that fund and they agreed they did some long term maintenance work they wanted to get done the challenge with cemeteries is that we paid 2000 bucks a week to Moho Cemetery and that's not really sustainable I don't think so cemetery is gonna be a topic of conversation in future years part of it is just gonna be how much we're gonna maintain the cemeteries and our standards might have to change a little bit you know Bill Woodruff and I are looking for someone to do it cheaper but we're also saying you know maybe weekly is not gonna do it this year we mowed weekly and trimmed every other week and maybe we need to switch to Moho every 10 days but 2000 bucks a pop is pretty tough I've taken a pretty hard look at the electric the all electric smart mowers where you essentially you let them go you draw a line on a map and they just like the little ones for your house and they dock them cemeteries and they have commercial ones that are rated for large areas and the challenge is okay you're gonna spend 60 grand on a mower that last two years I hope you've paid for itself the issue is we can fix the engine but I have concerns over things like the warranties for the computer and Bob Butler may not be a whole lot of help there so I haven't convinced myself that the technology is there but that's probably our future is we're gonna at some point in the next call it five years I'm gonna ask you for a six figure investment in lawn mowers and we will deploy those at various places and they'll do the job it's not a long term investment for our local option that's a great example that's a great example but I think that's the future I'm probably gonna schedule some demos for next year just try to convince myself better feels pretty tough to consider a six figure investment in a lawn mower for a cemetery versus a roadside mower which you might expect a lot of money but for two thousand dollars a week it may well be worth it people in the cemeteries don't have like these perpetual care agreements I know a lot especially in bigger cities you'll see that kind of thing we might need to look at the rates about what we charge but now there's no agreements like that so the money that is in the cemetery trust fund if you will cemetery is all in one fund, fund 55 I think it is so you don't really necessarily have to take money out of the investment portfolio because there's interest and gains and losses and investment that are already part of the revenue there but to your point Mike there were two cemetery associations in Waterbury there was the Waterbury Cemetery Association which was Hope and there was the Waterbury Center Association which was Maple Street and the Room 101 back it was right after Irene the folks at Hope I mean at the Waterbury Center they couldn't they didn't have enough volunteers so anybody who bought a lot at either of the cemeteries paid for the lot that money went to the town and they paid a perpetual care that went to the association the Waterbury Center Association had about $100,000 and they had it basically in money markets and CDs and people like Ed Brown and Bob Graves and David Graves and other folks who you know that lived up there they all had lots and they took care of the cemetery over time most of the members of the Waterbury Center Cemetery Association lived in the cemetery as opposed to being able to mow the cemetery they were all there and they came to us and said we can't do this anymore and there's a provision in state law the Cemetery Association basically folds its tent $100,000 to the town Hope Cemetery about six years later did the same thing so the money that is in the investment portfolio came from those perpetual care accounts and now it's town money so you've got all that money now and you know Tom is right and John Woodruff's pretty good at kind of keeping up with the Joneses but they've raised the rates for buying lots the challenge now is that there's more and more people that aren't interested in being in a cemetery anymore so you don't even when I came here 35 years ago almost everybody was being buried in the cemetery whether they were cremated or not whether full burials or cremations but now full burials people just get cremated and go have their kids spread their ashes in the woods or at the beach or whatever so there's less and less people looking to buy so it's a challenge John Woodruff retired from this we're going to have to pay someone a fair amount of money to do all the work he does and we have a great deal of association for ever maintain that and it was probably around 2014 or so that the highway department in addition to mowing the rec fields and whatever little highway areas they started mowing watering senate cemeteries but we had a guy until last year who was mowing Hope Cemetery for you know every month $1,400 or whatever it was because he wanted it spread out over time and unfortunately he came to us a year ago and said I'm done, I can't do it anymore it's a little bot mowers it's like a way to go it's like a way to make our future are we still selling perpetual care options we're taking the money from people already well that was true before too it's just the lot right now it's all kind of combined into buying the lot because when you used to buy a lot for $250 $100 went to the town or $150 and $100 went to the association for the perpetual care but perpetual care for $100 or whatever it was that's a great deal too so I don't know what a lot sells for now I honestly have not recorded very many cemetery lot deeds it's a handful in my time here of a year one of them was quite expensive but usually a 2 lot for some reasons like $1,400 and I don't really know how big that is to be perfectly honest with you but it'll list it like double lot but there's not a lot of them bills right and I've done a handful of deeds I have to remember how municipal building operating fund was pretty weird about that beginning of the year because right at the start of the year we had huge invoices with our heating and cooling system most of early part of this year my office was 55 or 60 and Rachel's was 85 and I think in the middle we were okay and Bill Woodruff came close to blowing up the system a few times and just saying time I'm going to get you a wood stove and a window AC and you can make that work but it's been working fine since don't say that out loud we had like $20,000 invoice at the beginning of the year but so far we've been pretty good we're looking for new custodial services for this building we haven't been super happy I'm not sure they've shown up as often as they used to but we'll try to figure that out but overall debt budget looks okay there's a big debt service payment that we just made a week ago that we'll show at the year end on the capital side the capital budgets which will collapse a little bit you agreed to collapse them in 2023 we just had time to really do it in 2024 but the interesting thing on the capital side for example is in 2022 you budgeted $130,000 for a new truck we paid that which was only $111,000 this year this year we budgeted $144,000 for a new truck we've got the chassis which we paid about half of that for we're waiting for the body for six months and there's no end in sight so the chassis to make room we moved to long term storage off of Armory Street so we paid that we paid half the bill we've got in the budget also to issue debt for the full amount so at year end if we don't have the full truck I'll probably issue debt for half and then do the other half when we get it capital fund mechanics work long term but sometimes your capital funds are really strong and sometimes you're really weak and sometimes you're just dependent on when you budget to make the purchase first when you actually make the purchase the ARPA funds I'll move in by year end the first bridge here down on Armory Ave will be done this year the capital road bridge that'll stay in the capital fund supposed to do that bridge as planned we had a gravel road project on planned for this year that they just ran out of time and didn't get to so they're hoping to do a big swath of they really wanted to focus on the bottom of Sweet Road so they're hoping to do that next year and that was again a big part of that was just the loss of time with the flood knowing that the crew had but no big surprises the one change we think I talked about earlier about we had in the budget a pretty substantial amount of cash to buy a new mini excavator we have decided to delay that indefinitely I think part of that was the gravel road project and in past years we leased a mini axe for some time in the summer we did that this year and I looked at the hour and I just wasn't convinced we need to build one because you pay a base fee for the mini axe and you pay by the hour and we leased it for a few months and I would have expected we would have used it 40 hours a week in addition to our own excavator and we simply didn't and so part of that is our road crew was very determined to do specific roles where you know one guy grades and one guy runs the X and one guy runs this machine which tries me a little bit crazy but we just didn't spend enough on the rental to justify buying the new machine so did the flood kind of push them away from doing some of that stuff? the flood did you know they had a week of emergency repairs which messed them up and then they spent all this time hauling because they went through a big part of our stockpile and now of course they're hauling from Southbury which is a major hassle so the big decision we'll have in future years for 2024 we've already decided that public works does not need a new truck we might ask permission at some point in the year to order one in 2024 pending voter approval in 2025 but we're not going to budget for a truck in 2024 we've already gotten that far which will help a lot but our big decision point is going to be do we spend money on contractors to haul gravel and sand or do we buy a bigger tandem axle truck we've always had one tandem axle truck the current thinking is we might stay there but we might want two or three to replace things in the future so the tandems are 225 right now versus the single axle the one time we're buying at 140-150 about 6 more gravel will it haul the tandems can haul typically 15 or 16 yards and the smaller vehicles are depending on which one we have but I think one of our vehicles can haul half that but most are three to five so 16 is a lot to our knowledge there's no I've never in my life seen a tandem axle truck hauling a trailer we're looking into whatever options we can figure out there too if there is something like that but that's an awful lot of weight so we'll try to figure that out over time I think part of the challenge that we always have whether you buy the tandem or get contractors some contractors are more expensive just to be unsure the metrics change a little bit but if you do it yourself and if you commit to doing it yourself it's better to have a tandem but then you have a guy that spends 10 hours a day just driving and he doesn't do any work there's nothing to get done so hiring a contractor might be more efficient in terms of getting some actual stuff it's always a balance so we'll try to figure that out that's going to be a tough conversation I think for a while but no red flags in 2023 in a way is a blessing because we won't spend our capital budget necessarily because we couldn't get reimbursement above and beyond our floor expenses why are we just going back to finding the zoning why are we so much under I know what we knew Steve was leaving and we knew the whole Davey expenses were there and I know you said some of the base expenses were less what was the significant we were vacant for a while but then we also had a company that had $25,000 budgeted for the bottom luxury right so we're spending that now so that money will be probably entirely at the door by the end of this year now that's grant funded we haven't shown our expenses yet I mean Mike's position was vacant until he started right which was maybe September yeah yeah yeah any other questions for the board thank you thank you budget schedule budget schedule I looked at a couple past years and tried to do some reasonable planning at least to the time but at least the dates my thought was for the 12-18 meeting and so the Friday before that I will send to you all a complete budget packet tax rate tax money all the goods so when you go through the departments we've got a pretty good understanding of where we're at and if we're at 2% tax increase and you're all pretty happy with that maybe the review changes a little bit versus if you're at 5% and you want to know how much we need to cut so I just thought to get something pen on paper I know typically you meet every week in January which I think is probably going to be necessary but I think this basically gets us there some agencies historically will come in but I'm not always sure they need to for example the solid waste management district and the senior center both told me there won't be an increase in their funding request and if there's no increase I'm not sure they need to come here a letter might be just fine I mean we can have them here if you want but if there's no increase what I don't have on this schedule is I'm beginning right after Thanksgiving to talk to the state police about that contract so that expires June 30th so even if they demand a very large increase it's only half the year but for the last three years that contract has been almost perfectly flat so we know in those three years the cost of policing has gone up comparable to the rate of inflation so that being said they've got every right to ask for a pretty substantial increase I'm hoping they're pretty community minded and they like this model and I think they benefit from it too so I think they won't ask for something quite that high but I'm not expecting them to ask for a zero just a couple things like I mentioned I think the cemetery will be a topic of conversation greater than it was last year we did a preview of RAC a couple months ago talked about the program coordinator so I think we can probably spend a little less time on that one the ambulance service will be another topic of conversation but our operation could be dependent on what happens with this whole thing to give you just a brief preview of the ambulance this year they're paid at $26 per person per capita rate that we've agreed on there's two credits in that bill one because we own their building and two because we pay for the dispatch service fee if the ambulance service were to break even this year if they're necessary per capita fee would be $48 so $26 is not sustainable we're not going to have a budget proposal that brings you to $48 in one year which would be $125 grand something like that but they're not on a sustainable path they've got funding to build their new building but it's operations that hurt them so they're doing better some grants and some of the work the COVID clinics and the food clinics for example are sort of found money and helped them out a lot and I think they've got a pretty good strategic plan to try to bring up revenue but in the end part of that is going to have to involve the town in a pretty meaningful way so I just want to preview that that's all I have for the schedule if there's any particular topics anyone wants to focus on just let me know and we can pivot thanks for our Christmas gift in advance I know you said that when we interviewed you or soon after you were hired I'm taking it as a gift regardless the sentiment is a gift any questions and just by collapse more collapse than this yeah so what I'm thinking for the capital capital funds from last year what I'm thinking for the capital funds is one fund for highway and highway equipment potentially potentially a separate one for fire a separate one for recreation but we have I think five now so going from five to two or three we've got to finalize all that so we'll be off obviously the first for the holiday and then meet for weeks are we planning on the first is a Monday so often we've just moved to the following day Tuesday but here it is the 8th that's the first day is that a better option for us Tuesdays are generally tough for me the one day at least until April and in my wife's not running okay the only note is this kind of listed here is the following Monday but there's four weeks there's four there's four more Mondays I'll throw a wrench though Monday the 15th is MLK Junior Day I don't know if that's a holiday that all this is closed or I don't remember I don't know what expecting it never was we had a change but I don't know I think we added MLK and took away president's day in February isn't that isn't there a holiday in February yeah we took that one away that's what they've been doing we had it we in fact had the third Monday in January off let the line perfectly open to have a meeting yeah I mean I don't I should have I forgot about that eight holidays so much easier to come to work is this a good second for me to just share a couple of things that I thought I might be asked there's been 18 ballots for your thank you for the charter change it's the charter change charter 13 of them have been returned and today I did receive Patrick Farrell's resignation from the development review board I do think that that seat will be popular yeah opening it well it opened today really when he retired really retired retired so I'm telling you that now because whatever night we decide to do that I think you probably will get a fair number of people interested what are we going on it's the charter charter 13 of them have been returned and today I did receive Patrick Farrell's resignation from the development review board I do think that that seat will be popular are you opening it well it opened today really when he retired he retired so I'm telling you that now because whatever night we decide to do that I think you probably will get a fair number of people interested when did Patrick's term expire 2025 you do have two alternates on that board so I don't know whether I'm not asking for discussion tonight I was just giving you a heads up that it happened so how we want to go from here is very active I think Mike was telling me today that Joe Wartsbacher has been very active because Patrick has been unable to attend but Joe is now on the natural disaster preparedness committee and indicated to me at least verbally that he was not going to seek reappointment on the development review 2024 so yeah we usually do those after town meeting so would the normal turn of events be that would be offered to the alternate? I don't know maybe in Bill's history here Tom has some history here so the vacancy goes to them first Patrick's term expire 2025 you do have two alternates on that board so I don't know whether I'm not asking for discussion tonight I was just giving you a heads up that it happened so how we want to go from here is very active on that yeah I think Mike was telling me today that Joe Wartsbacher has been very active because Patrick has been unable to attend so but Joe is now on the natural disaster preparedness committee and indicated to me at least verbally that he was not going to seek reappointment on the development review 2024 so yeah we usually do those after town meeting so would the normal turnout of that be that the offer to the alternate? I don't know maybe in Bill's history here Tom has some history here that the alternates have been appointed so the vacancy goes to them first I don't know I got I don't know it's a purpose for a procedure but I think that's been I was on board and we had alternates usually the alternate would move up I think that's I discussed that with the conservation commission might they not consider alternates first as having such a large board and having problems with quarrels so you could then still have a lot of worker bees but have some alternates who could do stuff and yes I feel like this should be a larger conversation okay perfect timing so but to resolve MLK I am available and at the same time I just think about the message outside like we sort of moved before the July right but having MLK during the day it just doesn't display like an investment in the holiday and I don't want that to be what we portray to the community so I think it would be who us to I don't move it on a different day that we work the first week of the month not that I want to but I'll just put something out here to consider and you can tell me it's airbrained we're for board once and how we do the budget we took a Saturday we went through the entire budget we had regular meetings and it was an experiment they tried one year that they loved they loved well you know if we were to launch they preferred that versus four or five weeks in a month hear me out we do the Saturday and the only one meeting Jesus yeah I think what I give you on the 18th will dictate to some extent how much time you want like I said if you're at 2% it's a different review process than 7% yeah so take it till the 18th or where I will not be there I don't know I'll be in a different country so do we want to do a Saturday is that correct I'm just saying I work for you if you wanted to change the schedule I also need to give work proper I won't be there that day do Saturdays even work for you I work on Saturdays but I can of course tell them that I need time off and it's November so I should that's proper notification okay but at this point do we feel like just leave it until the 18th and then see how much work is actually going to be needed and if I can get you something before the 18th okay alright next meeting I don't have a lot on there as of yet Brian Boyce planning to come tonight it's a good thing actually as it turns out we're going to have a talk but has he expressed that he would be available on the floor yeah I think he'll be able to be here on the floor and how about our note taker is she going to be available because she has an important duty the following day yeah I don't think you should change the meeting um and I don't wish to be here until this time if I come I would like it to be a brief meeting if I'm coming to it so far it's ending up to 7.30 we'll have you asked for buyout training oh yeah and we'll have a buyout request yes just a matter of signing and notifying the paperwork so we should be there well you'll need me for that right I think they're doing it in advance they need to submit something we'll figure it out I thought you meant you needed it notarized we have some information beforehand on the buyout I'd like to add a discussion on short term rentals pick a time I just spoke after our guests yeah I think you wanted to guess for how long do you think buyout request needs to be scheduled for um for now it's just one individual property then you take very long 15 minutes we can mail down times Roger I just I don't get super controversial at this point it's the people who I've talked with buyouts about if they all took buyouts or a grand list impact of 6 or $700,000 it's not huge you get one new home both in Waterbury Center and you're even from that perspective there is chatter at the state house about getting a bill that would reimburse for their lost grand list somehow which would be nice and there's no there's no local share to the buyout the state is covering the 25% we currently pay which is nice because it's tough to lose your grand list even if it's small and pay 25% of the buyout cost but there could be in total conversations with 4 or 5 property owners about buyouts and then there's one other one who I don't know if there's a select word role here but he's going to seek to raise his home a bunch of people are working on raising utilities but one person wants to raise the entire home since this is more next meeting can I recommend we continue on since we saw a big chunk on our agenda for tonight sure why are the just a quick question why are the cameras and ordinances crossed out you told me to address those tonight with the restorative justice piece I say we told Karen too she's being a seer she's being a seer she's being a seer we can unstrike through that unstrike them I don't I don't I don't imagine cameras are still on the table outside of a security camera at the skate park based on previous discussions same thing with loitering I think noise stays has been brought up a lot and we haven't gotten back to it necessarily but that was my take but I can't do it pretty unresolved on ordinances after this presentation not in a bad way but not only in like the dog bite etc but I don't I don't know we're going to take on a loitering ordinance in this town or in the next two months I guess that would be my what time pricing is our part of it what does our appraisal schedule for that was my question I'll have a memo on that next week next meeting about that and some related funding is that an agenda item? yeah so what is it? it'll be re-appraisal on our part don't forget that part where I wanted to be early yeah I understand you could have a tap out time and I may do that that's a fine alternative it will likely be ordered to re-appraise next summer there's a process by which we can challenge that but in the end we'll probably just start the re-appraisal shortly thereafter when we contract it out we think there's a team of local municipal assessors who can collectively get it done for us it's a multi-year process I think we've got enough money in our reserve to pay for it which is always helpful but yeah it should start next year we'll have to make the commitments in the plan next year it might not really start boots on the ground until 2025 anything else about the next meeting? we'll start I move that premature public disclosure of pending real estate transaction places the town of the disadvantage so in a seconder session okay a little seconder all in favor say aye aye are you opposed? are there any extensions?