Hello everyone, welcome to a special CUBE conversation here in the Palo Alto studios for theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE Media theCUBE and co-host theCUBE, my next guest is Adrian Scott, who is the CEO of SOMA Capital, the head of technology of decent.bet. You can get the idea of what that's going to be all about, but industry legend, star, big screen, good to see you. Thanks for coming in. Thank you, John, it's great to see you. I'm glad I wanted to talk to you because I know you've been doing a lot of traveling, you've been living in Panama and overseas outside the US, mainly around the work you've been doing on the crypto side, obviously blockchain and with the start of decent.bet, a lot of great stuff. If congratulations on a successful initial coin offering. Thank you. Great stuff, but also notable in the industry and an investor in Napster, our generation, first P2P, the first renegade, break down the movie business, but the beginning of what we're now seeing as that decentralized revolution, but you've seen many ways of innovation. You've seen them come and go, but this one in particular, blockchain, decentralized internet, decentralized applications, crypto, pretty awesome. And a lot of young guns are coming in, a lot of older experienced alpha entrepreneurs are coming in like yourself and we're looking at it too. What's your take on it? I mean, how do you talk to people that are like, well, hey, this is just a scam on the ICO side. Is this real? Is it a bubble? Share your vision on what this is all about, this whole mega trend, crypto, decentralized. And I'll also add in addition to what you mentioned, the other neat thing here is just the global nature of it because we're so used to being Silicon Valley centric and having to dig around for funding here and also looking only at talent that would move here. Whereas with this whole new industry, it's very global. There's global teams, international teams and some of the Silicon Valley folks are just struggling to stay relevant and stay in the game. But so that's a fascinating aspect to this new revolution as well. Yeah, and also the thing about it, I love about this market, it's very efficient. It takes away inefficiencies, adventure capital right now and private equity are being disrupted. That's where the arbitrage is, hence the ICO bubble. But there is real legit opportunities. You have SOMA capital, you're an investment fund that you're doing token investments on. The global nature is interesting. I want to just ask you about this because my view is it changes valuation, it changes valuation mechanisms, it changes the makeup of the venture architecture. It makes up how people recruit teams, the technology used and with open source. I mean, this is a first time view at a new landscape. You can't take a pattern match model to this. Your thoughts? I agree completely. And the efficiency you mentioned applied to teams and surfacing engineering talent and the mathematical minds that can handle crypto internationally. The formation of teams internationally online is actually something special as well. So with Decent Bet, our founding team includes folks from the US, Panama, Australia as well, who met up in a Facebook chat group. And that's how they initially connected and they didn't know each other physically before this connection online. And that led to this project, Decent Bet, and ICO and so on. So it's- You created value from essentially a digital workforce. But I mean, it reminds me of like in the old days you'd chat and there wasn't a lot of face to face, but then now there's video gaming culture.  This is now the application for entrepreneurial equations. So this is kind of gaming, the game is startups. So how are you looking at this and how are you investing in it? What are some of the things and what can people learn from what we're seeing in this new gamified, if you will, world of starting companies? Well, I think one of the things you alluded to there is really become visible, which is the importance of video as a medium. And I'm still absorbing and adjusting to that myself. For example, we do video communications, we do conversations at decent bet of the founding team and it really connects to the community and it's so important. And I'm still absorbing it, like I mentioned, because I'm just so used to publishing articles that are very clearly written in detail and so on. We just did an AMA video and ask me anything video in Las Vegas with the executive team and it went for 80 minutes answering the questions that the community had all submitted. And I just try and imagine that five years ago, it's a new way of relating and connecting. There was no blogging, link back for the only thing you can do, a blogging. And then write a perfect blog post or a white paper. And that was who you were. Not anymore, it's more community driven. Exactly, and that video as a piece of it has become so important as a way of communicating the character of the team. Before we get into decent dot bet, I wanted to drill down. I think it's a great use case. And again, it graduates on great work there. I want to ask you about something that I've been fascinated with because obviously our generation, we grew up on open source when it was second class this and now it runs the whole world as first tier, first class citizen in the software world. The role of the community was really important in software development is that kept a balance. It kept those governance, those consensus. These are words that you hear in the crypto world. And now whether it's content and or ICO, the role of the community and certainly areas it's out of control in the ICO side, people are cracking down on it certainly. Like you see Facebook and Twitter trying to do something but you can't stop the wisdom of the crowd. The role of the community in this crypto decentralized market, ICOs and whatnot is super important. Can you share your thoughts and color commentary on why the community is so important? How do you deal with it? Any best practice either through scar tissue or successes, share your thoughts on this. It's totally become a factor and it's 24-7, right? So when you are running a crypto project you need your community management team to be there in the community channels 24-7. You need to have somebody there and they need to be at a certain level that they can handle the challenging questions. And we've definitely had moments where we wonder, we have people who try to create FUD potentially and bring up stuff and bring it up again later and whatnot and we need to be proactive. So when questions come up, we're there to be able to explain, okay, here's where you can see this on the blockchain. You can verify it yourself. And sometimes it happens when the team is just about to get on a plane and be out of internet communication for a while. So it's a real challenge and there's being the voice of experience. So talk about how you guys connect because obviously being connected is important for the community access but also with connection increases the service area for hacks and you guys carry in five burner phones each book, how you handle email. How have you guys dealt with the whole, there is a lot of online activity, certainly people trying to do some spear fishing or whatever tactics there are. Telegram has been littered with a lot of spoofing and whatnot. So all this is going on. You've got to have access communication but there's a safety component that could have really big impacts to these businesses that aren't tokens because hacking can be easy if you don't protect yourself. We really like Signal app as a communications medium. There's a new one starting to grow now called Threema which is pretty interesting. Telegram is just a real challenge and it's unfortunate because it's now become this metric. That investors like to look at the size of the Telegram group we don't actually have a Telegram group for Decent Bet and we've used Slack. We are going to be rolling out a internally hosted Slack replacement soon based on Rocket Chat. We really like Rocket Chat. As you mentioned, there are spear fishing. We do see that and one of the nice things is a few years ago you had trouble convincing a team to take security seriously. But when you have team members who may have lost $10,000 in a hack or more, there's no question that this needs to be a priority and everybody buys in on it. So that is one net positive out of this. Let's talk about Decent Bet. A fascinating use case. It's in the gaming area, gaming as in like betting. My friend Paul Martino invested I think in DraftKings, one of those other companies, I figured which one it was. In the US it was regulatory issues outside of the US where I think you guys are, there's not as much issues. Perfect use case for tokens in my opinion. So take a minute to explain Decent Bet, what you guys are all about and talk about the journey of conception when you guys conceived it to ICO. Yeah. Decent Bet was founded about a year ago by the CEO, Jetta Daya Taylor, who developed an interesting idea and plan. So the neat thing about Decent Bet is first of all, you have all the benefits of the Ethereum blockchain in terms of verifying transactions, verifying the houses take. Additionally, what Decent Bet does is distributes all the profits of the casino back to the token holders. 95% goes as proportionally and then 5% is awarded in a lottery. So there's no profit for any Decent Bet entity. It all goes back to the token holders. So you use the token to play by gambling but you can also use the token to convert into house shares for a quarter and participate in that. So the house always wins. That's a good model, right? Yes. So you can become the house through the tokens. Exactly. So the model we use is our house is your house. Don't bet against the house. All right, so talk about the, so I love the gambling aspect of it. I think that's going to be a winner. Tech-involved, ICO process, bumps, learnings, things you could share with folks. Yeah, so on the technology, one of the neat things we are doing is we do offer a slots game, which is a primary component of online gambling and casinos, a pretty dominant piece of the action. But if you are going to do a simple slots game on the blockchain and wait around for blocks to be mined, you're not going to have a great experience because you're going to be waiting around more than you're going to be clicking that button. So what we use is a technology called state channels, which allows us to do a session, kind of on a side channel, so to speak. And through the state channel, at the end of the session, you post back the results. So you get the verifiability of the blockchain, but without the delay. So that's a major difference. That's off-chain, right? Yeah, it's kind of- It's off-chain. Yeah, it's kind of- You're managing the latency of the chain so you still experience and then get to preserve it on the chain. Exactly, yeah. In terms of the ICO experience, we initiated the ICO end of September, ran for a month, raised more than 52,000 ether. So very productive ICO process, but with actually some interesting details. So the ICO structure limited the amount that a particular address could purchase in the first phases to $10,000 worth and then $20,000 worth with the idea of getting the tokens into the hand of people are going to potentially use them for bedding, not just- More the merrier for you. Yeah. No one taking down allocations, big players. Exactly, not just for the whales take all kind of things. So that was an interesting structure and different difference. And that worked well. Yeah. All right, talk about the dynamic of post-ICO. Because now you guys are building, can you give an update on the state of where you guys are at with the product, availability, how that's going? Because obviously you raised the capital through the ICO, democratize it if you will through clever mechanism, which is cool. Thanks for sharing that. Now what happens? Now what's going on? Yeah, I mean, I think we're doing pretty well in terms of hitting milestones and showing progress compared to a lot of projects. We released our test net with slots and then sports book at the beginning of January and mid-January for sports book. And we also did some upgrades with our wallet. We released that for some enhanced usability and handling during high peaks on the ether network, Ethereum network. And then also our moving to main net. So we did some newer versions of the test net. What's the main net coming? Main net is coming out end of April. And we're on track with that. Great, awesome. Congratulations. Congratulations, great job. 52,000 ether, great raise there. An awesome opportunity. SOMA Capital, you're investing now. What do you look for for deals? There's more money chasing good deals now. As we can see, there's been a flight to quality obviously. Great global landscape still. What are you looking for? And advice to folks who are looking to do a token sale? Big thing, we look for our real projects. So, and there are not that many out there. So we do look for a real use case that makes sense because there's a lot of folks out there just sticking blockchain tag on to anything. So it, and it's not just- Like Kodak for instance. Yeah. Kodak's the prime example. Yes. So there are projects out there doing interesting things. Guardium is doing some neat things in terms of 911 response and opening that up and creating an alternative to government services. There's work coin, which is- Did you invest in Guardium? Yeah. Yeah, in Guardium. Yeah, in Puerto Rico. Okay, great. Great project. So very interesting. I was recently giving a talk at university in Guatemala and the students there at business school really resonated, it really resonated the message there to them about, okay, government 911 is maybe not the ultimate solution for getting help when you need it. Well, I think there's a lot of this AI for good concept going to blockchain for good because you're seeing a lot of these easy low hanging fruit applications around these old structural institutions. Yes. And that's where the action is, right?  Yes. And the other thing we're looking at is not just blockchain. So I really like talking about the field more as crypto and I have a little video I did on calling it kind of decentralized crypto-enabled applications or platforms. So beyond blockchain, we have DAGs, directed acyclic graphs. One interesting- Like Hashgraph. Yeah. Hashgraphs are DAGs, isn't it? It's kind of a DAG, Hashgraph. Yeah. So I'm not a huge fan of Hashgraph. One that I do like is called Gould G-O-L-D which is, again, thinking beyond the blockchain because we get so tied into blockchain, blockchain, blockchain. What does beyond the blockchain mean to you? Thinking beyond the blockchain, what does that mean to you? So the proof of work process, the mining process, the creating new blocks process is one way of doing things. But we have all these other things going on in crypto like the signing process and so on. You can use those in a DAG in a different architecture than just this mining new blocks mental model. And so that can be used for different use cases for publishing, for group consensus and so on. And so Gould is an example of a project where it looks like there is something real there and that's a very interesting product. Advice for folks that are looking at token raises because, again, we've said this in theCUBE many times. People know this is my, I'm beating this drum. You've got the startups that see an opportunity which is fantastic.  Let's pivot, throw the Hail Mary, put blockchain on it, crypto and get an ICO or get some going. And then you've got these growth companies that are either self-funded and or growing that have decentralized kind of feel to it. It has an architecture that's compatible with tokenization. So we see those three categories. Do you agree by missing anything in terms of the profile and which ones do you like? Well, I think one thing that we need to look at in each of those cases is decentralization actually happening in the project and are people actually thinking about decentralization because it can be scary for a traditional company because if it truly becomes decentralized, you're not controlling it anymore. If you're based on control, then it's incompatible. That's the real Hail Mary, right? When you give up that control, if you give it up. So we have examples coming out where Ripple is running just a few nodes, Neo is running a few more, and things that are not really decentralized and they're saying, well, we're going to be. It's like we're going to be in the future. Yeah, that's always the question. Will they ever be? If they made their money, Ripple's done well, but I mean, what's the incentive to go decentralize? Yeah, so if you are creating a new project, the benefit from this architecture beyond the money is to think about it in that decentralized way and figure out token economics that work in that context and that paradigm. And that's really where the challenge is but also really where some of the benefits can rise because that is what enables truly new ways of doing things. Talk about the dynamic because obviously I live in Silicon Valley, I've been here 19 years, going on 20. You know, I moved from the East Coast and basically if you weren't here, this is where the action is. If you're in the sports of tech, this is where all the athletes are. That's now changed, as you mentioned earlier when we started, it's everywhere. Now also there's jurisdictional issues and the US, one guy's told me, the US is turning into Europe, all these regulations. It's not as much free capital as you think. We certainly know that, SEC and others are putting the clamp down but structuring the token is a concern, right? Our consideration and a concern. So, you know, US entrepreneur, what should they do in your opinion? And if someone's outside the US, what do they do? What's the playbook? What's the, or my playbook, what's the best path right now? Believe the US. Move out of the US. Tell my wife before kids, see you later. But that's, that's religion. Come and check out Panama. One of my friends is building a blockchain incubator, crypto incubator. I mean, I think if you- What's it like to move out of the United States? Give some, I know you just recently went to Panama for this, but what's it like? I mean, is it scary down there? I mean, is it entrepreneurial friendly? What's the vibe? What's the scene like? Take a minute to explain. So I've actually been out there 12 years now in Panama. One of the neat things, you want a place that has an international outlook, an international perspective. So you want to think in terms of a Dubai, a Singapore, a Hong Kong. And so Panama has some aspects of that. It's not perfect, but it does have that international perspective, thanks to the canal. So it has, you know, 100 years- It also has the Panama Papers, which is a negative blowback for those guys. So it's a safe place to do commerce, in your opinion. It is a nice geographic base to do international commerce. So you don't necessarily want to rely on the local jurisdiction, but in terms of a geographic base that is US time zone, US dollar, no hurricanes, it's a very interesting place. Yeah, whatever he goes with the hurricanes, we know that. Yeah. Final thoughts, just overall perspective.  We've been around the block, both of us have. I mean, I kind of have these pinch me most like, Dan, this is a great entire, which I was 22. I mean, do you have those? What's it like? How do you explain this environment? If people ask you, hey, you know, what was it like in the old days? You know, when you had to provision all your own stack and do all this stuff. It's pretty interesting right now. What's your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I think we're going through an interesting moment right now where we are getting to a point where the forces of centralization are coming against the forces of decentralization. And that includes from the regulatory and as well as the business side. And so I think it is important as we look where to dedicate our efforts to really find ways to increase the decentralization as a factor that encourages creativity and entrepreneurship. Yeah, it really is a personal. I think it's a great environment. Decent.bet, make your bets. Any updates on how to get tokens? What people can expect? A quick plug in for Decent. Yeah, check out our website. We've got links to exchanges. The token is currently listed on Cryptopia, HitBTC and a couple other exchanges. And yeah, please check out the test net. Please check out the white paper and just learn about how this protocol works, this platform works. And I think it is very inspiring as a structure that involves structure. Thanks, Scott, here inside theCUBE. Soma Capital also experienced entrepreneur himself, technologist and has been through the ICO process, head of technology at Decent.bet. We'll be checking it out. It's theCUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier here in Palo Alto, California. Thanks for watching.


I will go ahead and call the village of Essex Junction Board of Trustees meeting to order for Tuesday, November 10th. And do we have any agenda additions or changes tonight? No. Oh, you have been rehearsing those lines, Evan. At trustees, any other agenda additions or changes? Hearing none, there is no need to amend the agenda or approve the agenda to be as amended. As such, we can move on to public to be heard. So this is a portion of the meeting in which if there is somebody who would like to speak to the board about something that is not on the agenda, now is the time to do so. And to make sure there is ample opportunity, we will take a brief 30 second pause for those who would like to speak to raise your hand if you are using Microsoft Teams, if you are calling in to please state that you would like to speak. And the time will start now. Alright, so nobody has raised their hand, nobody has spoken. And just as a reminder, if you are not speaking, please do make sure your microphone is on mute. The background noise can get quite distracting at times. So please again, if you're not speaking, please mute yourself so that that way we don't have any cross conversations. As nobody from the public wished to speak, we will go ahead and move on to the first business item for tonight, which is a presentation of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission or CCRPC's annual report. And I believe we have Mr. Charlie Baker here with us tonight. And Charlie, we appreciate you being here. Yeah, thank you very much. And thank you for putting me so early on your agenda. I really do appreciate that. And you got our report in your packet. And this is a really a customer service call for us. For those of you not too familiar with the Regional Planning Commission, we are an organization created by the municipalities enabled by state law to serve the municipalities in Chittenden County. So this is really my opportunity to count a report of what we did with the village and see what feedback you have for me to improve our services to the village or to the county in general. I'll review the report real briefly. The first page gives you some background just kind of about what the Regional Planning Commission is, the board makeup. Oh, thank you, whoever's sharing that. And then the third paragraph talks a little bit about real generally how we leverage your municipal dues to bring in state and federal dollars to the county. And then at the bottom, we have your representatives on our board. Thank you, Dan, who's a very active member. And we do appreciate Dan's service on the board and Robin and Chelsea on our committees are always active and helpful. So thank you for the appointees there. On the second page of the report, we start talking more about things that we specifically did with the village in the last fiscal year, a lot around water quality, emergency management, brownfields, and a lot of data collection is pretty typical for us at the bottom. You see traffic counts and things like that. Any questions on the specific services or comments, feedback for me on the specific services that we provided to the village? Since I do have a couple of questions. Yeah, yeah. One of the things that I'm curious on the stormwater CCTV project, is there an impossible timeline at this point as to when we may get results? That is probably a question that Chelsea can probably answer better than I can. Yeah, I'm not sure of the exact status of it. So I think, yeah, you may have results around now, but I haven't heard, I have not heard specifically about that one recently, Andrew. Okay, I'll follow back up with them. And then another question on the the traffic counts. Is there like a rotating schedule as to when those are going to be redone? And I only asked because I noticed that there were some from the 1990s and early 2000s, which has been a little housing change a couple of times around the village. Some things have changed in the last 30 years. Yeah. So a large part of those are kind of on demand. So when we get asked to do traffic counts, we'll update them. There are some things that we work to be transit around more of a cycle. So yeah, if you have a specific location that you're hoping to get updated, let us know. You know, let let the staff know too, so that we're all on the same page about what we should do. But yeah, so we kind of really try to be responsive to what the municipality asks for. Great. And sometimes it also it also goes around if we're doing a like a study of a particular intersection or something, then we'll do counts at that location, right? So it also depends what studies are in the pipeline. And this this year was a little bit of a weird year. We didn't quite get as many asks something about some virus I've heard about kind of really impacted a lot of things, including not that we couldn't do counts, but the counts aren't really may not be useful, right? Like traffic was so different this year. So, you know, we kind of have a lot of questions about the value of what we're doing with counts this year. And we'll see, I guess, after was it today or yesterday's announcement of a vaccine, maybe things will be a little bit more normal next season. So yeah, any other questions or feedback for me on this work? Not for me. I'd rather trust these do in the first page. Feel free. Okay. But I'll flip the page to the third page. There's just a little section that talks about what is in the really the VTrans Capital Program and in our Transportation Improvement Program, you've got the One Wetlands Project and the Crossing Connector, which at least we're hoping starts construction next year. And you guys may have more updated information than I do on that. But really, we'll be glad to see that move forward finally. And then the next section, you see what's in your in our work program this year, which is that Land Development Code rewrite. We're not actually working on that yet. We kind of ran out of staff resources. When we were looking at this in the spring, we're going to relook at this in January. And if we can fit it in this fiscal year, we will get to work with your staff on that. And then the last section, which goes on for a few pages, has a lot of different things that we're involved with countywide, things like the legislative forum, which actually I'd appreciate some feedback. We've been trying to do that early December, every year. We're having some conversation with our executive committee and board that maybe there are not a lot of topics for FY21, or I'm sorry, in 2021 for the legislature in terms of agenda items that we necessarily have. So I'm kind of curious about feedback. And we're almost thinking that maybe we don't have one. We're obviously not going to get together in person the way we always have. And maybe we try to create a couple other opportunities for some more focused discussions. We're always interested in Act 250 getting improved and certainly affordable housing issues. And I'm not saying there are issues, but the last legislature actually checked off a lot of things on this list that we have last year. So I'm sorry, was there a question there, Raj? Yeah, I guess I don't mean to interrupt you. I just wanted to be curious, going through this section with all of these regional activities, how is it, how do you go, I think you were starting to get to that. How do you come to these specific projects under these headings? And it sounded like you were describing that, so I think I might have raised my hand prematurely. No, no, that's all right. Actually, I probably wasn't going to cover that specific question. So I think a lot of these come about, well, let me say the bureaucratic answer is we kind of decide every spring what's going to be in our work program for the following year. And a lot of that is based upon what municipalities ask us to work on. And that ask is probably going to go out in the next two weeks. And you'll see, we refer to it as our UPWP, our Unified Planning Work Program. You may hear that acronym thrown around. So if there is an issue that you'd like us to look at or get involved in or more involved in or less involved in, that formal requesting period is a good time to ask us. And then there are other things that you raise a good question. How do we get involved? Like racial equity is the next one. We've had something in our regional plan for a number of years saying that it's actually one of our eight key strategies to achieving the goals of our regional plan is to improve equity in our region, which we added in 2013. But to be honest with you, it has not been a focus area. This year, you can, what's going on nationally and in our community. And I know you guys are also having conversation in Essex and the village around this topic. I think we're feeling, well, I guess, let me back up. In 2013, we started working on this in 2014, 2015. And it felt very lonely. So we did not have a lot of partners working on this. And so kind of faded. Now it does feel like there's a lot more momentum and a lot more partners involved in this work. So I'm a lot more optimistic that we can make some more progress in this area. But Raj, to answer your question, most of almost everything is somehow rooted in our regional plan, town plans. Sometimes there's topics that the state interjects onto us. That was a case a couple years ago when they asked every regional planning commission to do a regional energy plan. Yeah, that was something that the legislature voted on. And, you know, at that point, we are, you know, we're a political subdivision of the state. So when the legislature says to do something, we typically say yes. Thank you. We will do that. So anyway, but I am curious about feedback on the racial equity topic. And then the only other topic I was probably going to touch on this on the these last few pages was just the building homes together campaign, which is something that we partnered up with the Champlain Housing Trust and Housing Vermont a few years ago, actually over four years ago now to do a five year campaign to build more housing and affordable housing in Chittany County. We set out a target of 3,500 in five years, 700 a year. We're at about 3,200 right now. So we're actually made decent progress in terms of the number of new housing units that got created. However, the bad news is on two fronts. One is we were really hoping to impact the vacancy rate in a significant way if we built 3,500 homes. But we really haven't. We went from maybe we're like 1.8% when we started vacancy rate, which is very low amount. Maybe now we're like 2.4, 2.5. A healthy vacancy rate would be closer to 5%, but at least over 3%. So in the big picture, we still there's still a lot more housing or demand for housing than we are supplying as as a county as a as our community. So I encourage you to continue to do what you've been doing to supply more housing units. And the second piece of bad news was that we wanted 20% of those housing units to be affordable. We're only at 13% affordable. And that's even with the housing bond that the state did a few years ago. Most of those houses get built in 18, 19. And and so that really needs more investment to get to those affordable housing numbers. So anyway, there's a lot more, a lot of other topics in these last few pages that we could talk about and happy to take questions on anything I mentioned or anything that you read that you have a question or comment on.  I'll wait if trustees want to go first. You had your hand up first. Go ahead. Charlie, it first I'll do a statement. It's a pleasure working with you and your staff. I can't think of an instance state legislature or municipal manager where we haven't come up with a thought or a request where you've said no. So thank you for being there for us. For the people at home, CCRPC ends up being an extension of just knowledge that each community then doesn't have to hire or do it alone. You could do it as a county, which is nice. So thank you for that. In racial justice and equity, maybe you could touch on some of the things that you would be reviewing in terms of land use plans that are maybe when you look at them saying, boy, what could change that would really start to help racial equity inclusion and maybe not even just racial equity, but economic inclusion as well because that's also a problem. So maybe you can touch on what you guys would look at and maybe some of the areas municipalities could look at in their own codes. Yeah. And I'll say we're at the early stages. So I don't want anybody to take my comments as thinking that we've figured this out, nor are we either preaching or telling anyone what to do. But at the same time, we know that housing policy broadly has been not equitable over the decades. And there's a lot of players in housing policy, national regulation, banks, realtors, municipalities, builders, landlords, and planners. I'll point the finger at us as well. And so I think I have an early sense in these conversations that housing policy is one area to really focus on because it's also the area where wealth is created for families. Your parents buy a house, they hold on to it for 30 years, they retire, they've acquired some wealth. If you're renting that entire time, you're contributing to someone else's wealth and not your family, right? And I think one of the really surprising statistics I saw this summer was the homeownership rate for black residents of Burlington is 4%, not 40, 4. 4%. Nationally, the homeownership rate is closer to 70%. And so there's a lot to address there. And I think, Evan, to try to answer your question a little bit more directly, I do think that looking at our local housing policies, really our plans, our town plans, and our zoning is something that would have some value to see like, are we creating enough opportunities for all the members of all the households in our community to actually own property and gain wealth through that system that worked for a lot of America, but not all of America. Sorry, Andrew, you probably have some good thoughts to add on there. Evan, do you mind if I just ask a quick question on that? I'm done. So in particular, with what you were just talking about, what can we as the Village of Essex Junction expect to receive from the CCRPC in terms of guidance, documentation, model policies, what have you, so that we can help to ensure our level of inclusivity and equity within our community? That is a good question and definitely a work in progress. We have an RFQ out right now for a consulting partner. And I think we're also trying to work in tandem with our municipalities and with the state to look at all the ways that we can help. I think some of the more basic ways, and I think you guys have already started, I think, asking residents what issues they have. But I think we would look at education and training, for staff, for policy boards, for our volunteer boards. And then I do think I'm hopeful that we'll get into some more of those substantive policy recommendations. Andrew, I don't know what those are yet, but I think it's going to be a collaborative effort. Again, we are not the experts on this and we're in no position to preach or dictate what should happen to anyone. I think it's going to be more of a collaborative effort to figure out what works best for us and how we can be most inclusive and inviting. Because really our community is getting more diverse. Whether you want it to or not, that is what's happening. And we need to be open to that. That's also the opportunity for Vermont. We're one of the whitest states. And we have to find ways to become more open and inclusive if we're going to have any economic success in the future. So as a follow-up, whether we in the Village of Essex Junction are updating our land development code or any other municipality within the county, when it goes to the CCRPC then after our initial approval, is there either at that point in time or before then going to be some level of identification that, hey, something you've written in whatever section isn't as inclusive as it could be here or some recommendations? Again, we're still early in this, but I'd like for us to be working on equity impact assessments while things are being drafted. And so that's what I'm really hoping that we can grab those tools, which are really a series of questions, right? Kind of asking yourselves and the community questions and then making changes to make sure you're not doing anything negative, and then hopefully you're doing something positive in terms of equity. So I'm really hopeful that we start to build an equity impact assessments earlier in our development work, whether it's a plan or a policy in a bylaw, or maybe even procurement or hiring policies, right? I think that's some work to be doing, and that's part of why we're looking for a consulting partner to kind of help us learn how best to do that, and then I'm hoping that we can share that knowledge out with municipalities until we all get better at doing that and being better in those policy changes. Thank you, Charlie. Rock for a hand. Thanks Andrew. So this is a pretty wide scope, this pretty wide area of interest here for your organization. Are there any topics that are being batted around that kind of aren't on this list, maybe they're on the radar that might be of interest to our community that you're all discussing or on the wish list to get to? I think a lot of them are on this list. You can see a heavy emphasis on transportation, because two-thirds of our money comes through VTRANS, so there's a lot of transportation emphasis. But coming with that also means what can we do to provide more transportation options for people and what's the role of transportation in addressing climate and energy goals of the state?  Racial equity is definitely in front of us. You see a lot of things on water quality, and then I think housing, also the affordable housing. And what doesn't come out in this probably is also the role that all that works in place in supporting a healthy economy, a healthy and inclusive economy. And we're not GBIC, we're not the Regional Development Corporation, but we do work hand in hand with them. We're actually partnering this coming year on a comprehensive economic development strategy for the region. So I guess just kind of heads up on that. That is a topic that is on the radar coming in the next calendar year probably. And there's more, you just have to ask. Public health issues I think are always on the radar too. Well, I mean, the public health, the equity, all of it, it's nice to see them pulled out here, but there are obviously elements of all of these topics, almost all of them, right? And I think it's great that the scope here is so wide. It's great that they're pulled out specifically. And I really am happy to hear that there's a lot of awareness that they are intertwined. And that's great to know that the organization is on that. Yeah, and like when we did our regional plan eight or nine years ago, we did a really deep dive. And we came up, right? You do your plan, you get all these specific goals. But they're all separated, right? We got a housing goal, we got an economic goal, we got an natural resources goal. One of the things that we did in that plan was realize, yeah, we have all these separate goals and all these separate topic areas. But the strategies to make positive change towards achieving those goals are really related. So I can't remember how many goals we had might have been 20 or 30 goals. But we came up with eight key strategies that if we make progress in these eight areas, they have positive impacts in all these goal areas. So your comments just kind of hit me like, yeah, we really are trying to think more holistically and how things work together so that we don't focus on one goal at the expense of other goals in our community. Right. So sorry, that was a little deeper dive. Thank you guys for asking good, hard questions that I've done in most of our municipalities. But any other questions or comments, feedback for me? Well, the other thing I want to say, Charlie, just how much I do appreciate the CCRPC's work and that you guys are much more than just a typical partner. You're much more than that 11 to one match that I think I saw quoted in your reports. You really are a knowledge base. So we appreciate you're a good partner that I know we've benefited from significantly. So I appreciate you and your stuff. We also appreciate the partnership and thank you to all the work that you folks do and your staff does. We really appreciate working with all of them. Thank you as always, Charlie. And maybe next year when we do this, it doesn't have to be VZoom. That's my finger to cross. We'll see you next time. Thank you. Always a pleasure, Charlie. Take care. Okay. And that brings us on to the Densmore Drive Culvert Replacement Construction Bid Award. Jim, you're covering this one? Yes, sir. Good evening, everybody. Hello, Jim. Thanks for being here. My pleasure. We are still working hard to implement the Densmore Drive Culvert Failure Replacement. The culvert failed back a year ago on the October 31st Halloween storm. Since then, we've been working hard to secure easements. We had a bid package go out where we had a total of six bids received ranging from $829,000 to $1.274 million for the project. The engineers on the project, oil tanner and associates, went through a complete conformance review for all the bids and evaluation of them for fairness and equity and insurance that they've covered all of the requirements of the bid and the FEMA requirements as well. The most responsive lowest bidder was Estee Ireland of Williston at $829,215 and the bid was found to be completely in order. So with that, the engineer's recommendation and our recommendation as well is to award the project to the lowest responsive bidder and that was Estee Ireland of Williston. With the award, work is anticipated to start next Monday with the pre-construction meeting and then immediately follow with site work to stabilize that channel for the winter and to prevent any potential flooding if we should get heavy rains. Phase two will be the actual installation of the culvert. The box culvert will be manufactured over the winter time and when the spring flows recede, they will do the installation and then reopen Densmore Drive at the earliest time that they can. So overall, the bidding process was tight. It went fairly well. The spread of the bids was in the normal range you would anticipate for such a project and we support the engineer's recommendation as well to award the bid to lowest bid to Estee Ireland at $829,215. Thank you, Jim. One question that I had is, Carrie Colfield was at our last meeting or a previous meeting but where we had talked about combining the two culverts or having two culverts on Densmore via one project, am I reading that this is for both of those culverts or is this the culvert closest to the Sherwood condo complex? This is the closest to Main Street and Sherwood Square. Both projects were designed or at least hydraulically designed at the same time as part of this FEMA project but this award is strictly the fast track one for the FEMA replacement to the failed culvert. Okay, I got you. Trustee, is there any other questions? And I'd just like to add to a reminder that this project has been following a FEMA guidelines very closely to ensure that we're eligible for the 75% reimbursement of the total cost. So that's a significant savings to the community. Absolutely. We appreciate the work that has gone into making sure that we have remained compliant with that from my understanding because it's not an insignificant lift so it's greatly appreciated. You're right, it's not. Yeah, I was going to add Jim, you know, I know we throw about terms FEMA. Could you explain a little bit of just some of the guidelines that we have to stay within to get federal funding? Obviously we're talking about $829,000 of a project which basically would take over two years of our street funding of our entire capital budget to do this project which was a washout due to a storm but maybe you can talk a little bit about how narrow the scope has to be to be within the FEMA project. It has to be directly related to the replacement with cause for any variation from it and to show how detail oriented they are. We couldn't even have discussions. We proceeded with design with a little bit of risk because we couldn't have the initial meetings with FEMA. They were on hold from the federal government due to COVID where all federal emergency management staff and personnel were clearly directed to put their focus and emphasis towards the COVID response and not any other projects. So, you know, that even took a narrow line and made it even more narrow because we couldn't proceed with solving this problem and working towards a resolution or even do any temporary work without fear that we would step outside the boundaries of the mandate not to do anything but COVID related work. So trying to juggle those balls and keep the project moving in a positive direction for quick response was really difficult let alone the layers of criteria that they have for who communicates to whom first when the project number is assigned and then you get into the details of fair wage whether the work being requested is related to the failure or related to other things in the area of the failure. Utility relocation we even have a private sewer line that's going to be impacted by the redesign of that stream. We also have a lot of state permits that we have to jump through hoops to gain and the engineer has done that. He's gained all of the permits so we're ready to proceed even though this seems like a year is a long time we only had less than six months to pull some of this stuff together. So they did a phenomenal job to stay within the guidelines that we had that we're allowed to discuss without any commitment at all from FEMA until maybe three and a half months ago. So I don't know if I answered the question but it's been a complicated process. You did and I know it's frustrating for the residents on Densmore. I know it's frustrating for the business the medical offices next on Densmore but this is a huge intricate project and you know it is it's a stream there's rules there's federal guidelines there's state guidelines and you throw COVID on top it's I'm glad that you were the man on on on point for this one because you are that detail oriented. I'm sorry there's a lot of other people involved in it as well and luckily we selected an engineer that's been through this multiple times and they did a great job with it. Yeah so I'll leave it at that thank you. Trustee is there any other questions for Jim? Nope. Any other questions that someone wanted to make a motion? I'll make a motion that the trustees award the bid for the Densmore Drive Culver replacement to the low bidder at Sea Ireland for the amount of eight hundred and twenty nine thousand two hundred and fifteen dollars. Thank you Dan is there a second? I'll second. I think Roch out that. Any further discussion on the motion? Hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Okay so that is passed unanimously. Jim thank you and thank your staff as well we appreciate it. Thank you all very much for your support and we're working hard to get this thing implemented so we're right on it. And that will bring us into the sidewalk the sidewalk machine bid. Is Mr. Jones taking this? Say that again? Oh I just didn't know if Rikki was taking this or Rikki? You there? Can now. Can't hear you now though. The internet's not the greatest sorry. How about now? There we go. Anything? Yeah I can hear you. We're asking you guys to approve this sidewalk bid that we put out to replace our cold sew machine trying to get this moving. You guys still heard me? Rikki you're cutting it out a little bit. We do have the memo here in front of us. I'm not sure really how much there is to say beyond what's in front of us here. If you can hear us is there anything else you'd want to add beyond that? I do not. This is pretty much the basic information if you have any questions. If you need me to call in I could do that if that's better for you folks. I don't have any questions. Other trustees do you have any questions about this? I don't. I do not. Oh one question. Quick Andrew. Yeah go ahead Dan. I noticed that part of the bid was to include a five-year warranty. I think it's $6,809 for the five-year warranty and I mean it's not a huge amount of money. Well it depends on how you look at things I guess but it's five almost six percent of the cost of the unit itself and it's not say I don't you know think it's needed necessarily but I don't buy a warranty on a lot of things I get. I'm just curious you really think that we're really going to need that spend that much money just in case I guess maybe he can use connections. Sorry can you guys hear me? Yes go ahead we got you. Yeah and that's that total bid that total price is for that machine is $169,490 that gave us $45,000 for a trade-in so it's probably a little less than that percentage that you're talking and yes I believe with travel time and everything else these folks are out of New Hampshire so that covers travel time and anything we need and yes I agree with you I'm not a big extended warranty guy but for that kind of money I think it's totally worth it. Did that come through? Yep okay I just was curious I mean I mean have you had other problems and other units in the past that you've turned to men but if you're confident with that I'm good with it I guess. Yes I personally believe it's worth it for that amount of money for that machine for five years. Again if you guys need me to call in for any other questions if I'm not coming through I will do that if you. I think we're okay right now Ricky trustees were there any other questions? If there are no other questions if somebody wants to make a motion I'll jump it once. I move that we award the bid for the sidewalk plow to Chadwick boroughs for a price not to exceed $131,339. Second. Thank you. Thank you Raj I think Amber Beach Dan for that second so any further debate on the motion hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Anybody oppose? All right passed unanimously. Ricky we really appreciate you introducing this and enjoy your night. Thank you sorry about the internet connection. It's from on. All right and that's brings us to an update on the racial equity work in appointment of a trustee to a planning team. So this one's mine. You have the memo for people attending. Several months back we started the work of hosting listening sessions with the members of our community and our broader community. We really wanted to focus on the having BIPOC as you can see black indigenous people of color and other citizens and people who work in the community to tell us about our community and how they feel about our community to help inform the process of what Essex and Essex Junction or my way of thinking just the greater Essex community should be looking at is the term in terms of not only racial equity but equity in general. So I have so we we have these listening sessions we had three of them. They were hosted by our consultant and I only attended one while I was on standby for two of them. They let the participants decide whether they wanted myself the deputy manager and or the police chief to attend. So only in one group did they want me to attend but I did get to do one which is very enlightening. We have a report due from our consultants in the next couple of weeks. We've also conducted a survey that's been out there and translated into a couple of different languages and getting the results compiled of that survey. And so one of the things that we would like to do is take this and start planning for the next steps of taking those listening sessions and working on the final report and doing more planning with a team of volunteers including a member from the village trustees and a member from the select board along with the manager and others to start formulating that plan for the future to include what we might do with whether there's a citizen board involved in the police affairs. Is there a committee that would work on helping the community do a better job of reaching out to people of color when we do job recruitments and find and building relationships with agencies and non-for-profits on policy and practice and you name it to help people who well to help build Essex as a safe inclusive place to live and work. So tonight's action for you one I will answer any questions and two I'd like to see if one of the village trustees would like to serve on this committee that is being done in my direction. We are not asking the village board to create the committee I'm not asking the select board to do the committee it's a committee that I'm putting together to help me direct the work. Thank you Evan and when you say direct the work do you mean to create recommendations to the two boards? Yes okay okay trustee is any questions about this? I mean I don't have any questions um I'd be willing to throw my hat in I don't know if anybody else is interested though. Well we can certainly see who who is interested. Let me rephrase the question who is interested and should be able to meet a few Wednesdays coming up. So I know that I'm interested at the same time got my finger in a few things Raj I am more than happy to have you take this on. I appreciate you being willing to do so. I don't uh I don't want to stir your thunder Andrew. I will not know no hurt feelings no harm no foul um it's all good. I should ask Evan I didn't I wasn't clear on this though before I commit um when what kind of time commitment uh specifically what you're talking Wednesdays is this during the day is this in the evening? Yeah we're looking at two Wednesdays in December they would be from 6 to 8 p.m. Okay and it'll be virtual so we will not be serving you any meals that's an inside joke sorry. So we got no meals for budget day and now we're basically down three meals that's what you're saying well you're also missing out on the cookies we used to get but we still need your sir no not really though I'm sadly but we still need your serves sure I mean if if nobody else wants to do it I'll do it yeah well I think that it's not nobody else if nobody else wants to so we have uh we have Raj who's willing and able are there other trustees who would like to or are we ready to nominate that Raj be the representative? I nominate Raj. Oh second all right and if you don't mind Andrew if you're willing to be an alternate I don't mind uh Raj if you can't make a meeting let me know. Okay. So we have a I'll call the nomination we have the nomination from Amber and a second from uh from Dan with nobody else is there any other comments before we vote on it? Hearing none all those in favor please signify by saying hi. Hi. Hi. Anybody opposed? All right Raj you are it. Thank you Raj. Appreciate you doing it. Sure great. We will see. We'll be in contact. Awesome and Raj appreciate a 48 hour turnaround on detailed minutes from each meeting pictures charts all of it. No boy I'm kidding. I'm kidding. All right and so that moves us into the special village meeting results for merger. Mr. President this is sort of we just figured maybe you might want to go over it just you know if there needed any discussion so we threw it on and let you take take it over. Yeah I really appreciate it. I had already been quoted a little bit in the Essex reporter about my thoughts on this so I'll keep them fairly brief as there's other thoughts there but I'm just frankly blown away at that almost three to one results of those voting for merger as opposed to against as well as those who overwhelmingly voted for moving our annual budget to the Australian ballot process. I think that we had a voting by mail appears to be a fantastic way to engage individuals in this process. I'm very thankful to all the volunteers the staff the Board of Civil Authority who really made this happen. There was no no small feats with a significant amount of work that was necessary to make this happen. I appreciate that and also appreciate the the staff and the work of other volunteers to help make sure that the villagers were informed on this matter. Really appreciative of it and I it's clear we've been going down the right path come to the right path. Evan go right ahead. Yeah great job and nice turnout. One thing that I would mention to you is more than a half dozen people have since come up to me and said so now we're merged and I said well the village has voted the town's vote is yet to come so you will be asked to come out again this March but just so you know as we would imagine it is very confusing at times what the process is so it just is and I believe the select board is having its last listening session this next week on the 16th and one could be hopeful that either that night or at their following meeting they will take action as well to hopefully put this item on the March ballot. And Evan you brought up a really good point just to make sure in case there are no other questions that while yes the village has voted to emerge the town wide vote still needs to happen until that point in time no the community is not merged. We still need a result from that a positive result from that for merger to move forward to the legislature so until this point in time we sit back and we wait for the select board to finish up their work. And I'm happy to take any questions and I do want to thank before those questions you met you may mention we we can't do this alone. Susan McNamara Hill her staff at the town offices the board of civil authority all her poll volunteers so if you could think about it the polls opened at 7 I believe everybody was there at 6 30 the polls closed at 7 p.m. I don't believe many people left until about 7 45 8 p.m. okay that was both at the high school and S6 middle school. It is an extremely long process not only prior to the election but post election and generally went off without a hitch. It's amazing and a job well done by a lot of dedicated people. Any other questions or comments I just echo everything you all said I don't need to repeat it phenomenal job to all the volunteers I'm curious this is basically 60 turnout in this particular village vote wondering how that compares if anybody knows up the top of their head I haven't had a chance to look but I was just looking at the totals of just above article one and just I know that the community as a whole on the town ballot came in at just about 81 percent for turnout which I think might be a record I'm not a hundred percent sure but love them love the mail-in ballot just gets confusing in our community I guess with the back and forth of it's a duplicate ballot no it's a different ballot but I did ask Susan for some for some a little bit of historical data to see how this compares the previous presidential elections to try to get some ideas to you know is this more is this less and how that may have this compared to those those elections and I I have yet to get it I've also said to Susan she's been a little busy and I'm not personally in a rush yeah I tried looking on the secretary state's office but you can't break the village down there right so yeah so as soon as I get that I'm happy to to share that with the rest of the board so any other questions or comments all right if not then we can our next business item is a discussion of an evaluation of public employees which we will do an executive session so that will move us into the consent agenda and if somebody wanted to make a motion to approve the consent agenda I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda second thank you thank you Amber for the motion thank you Dan for the second any further discussion on the consent agenda hearing done all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye anybody opposed okay so pass unanimously and as we go into the into the reading file are there any board member comments for tonight um no never mind nope you sure it's only 724 one one quick note did you all hear that the governor has come out with new travel restrictions yes we're going to talk about it then go ahead Raj no it's on that note I was going to save it for another time but um it's kind of related to your memo for employees you know there's the press conference was pretty eye-opening today the last couple have been pretty stark there's now no safe place theoretically to travel without a quarantine and I had no foreknowledge of his press conference no of course not um that's that's for sure um just you know in the back of my head is the briefing from Dennis about public works in the winter and our staffing and travel and quarantine and you know all of that just kind of goes together I don't I don't necessarily envy your management position right now um but um it is a little concerning um you know having staff and people wanting to travel for the holidays and then having to by the very nature um sort of be out of work for a minimum of a week as a result these two the way things are now so I don't know you know how that could impact us um and if we have there's much anybody can really do about it on top of it so it's you know we are you know we're people's employer yeah um we're we're not we're not at liberty to tell them what they can and cannot do off hours yeah we hope that they are following guidelines uh we have several people who love uh and an annual tradition of going hunting um and it's not necessarily in the state um I'm not sure it's any you know we we have been doing a great job statewide until recent uh days but there are some counties in Vermont that whose numbers are scary um or just as scary as other places outside of the state um so we are concerned we have been talking with our employees about wearing a mask keeping social distancing both at work and home and that the public needs them to be vigilant over these winter months and while I probably enjoyed this nice weather as much if not more as anybody I know that this is a mirage and it probably doesn't help um because people want to be outside they want to be together they want to do those things so we are like what we did at the beginning of of COVID we're looking at split shifts we're looking at different starting times for different crews so that they're not in the same um break room or the same lunch room at the same time um we are trying to make sure that um our equipment is wiped down fogged um with our fogging machines and our our goal is like anything to keep keep our people safe but keep the operations going and we need everybody to buy into that system we also need the public to understand that we would absolutely love to be perfect this winter that we'd be right on time like we always have been but that's not going to be the reality in all cases this winter and while we will take calls and and take complaints um it is going to be very hard to communicate what status we're in on a given day um because we may not know until 3 a.m what status we're in which is our normal call out time um we will also be in communication with the school district as to what our status is as well because what our status affects their status which affects the bus status um and it's it's daunting and that's not even to say what we're going to be able to do with the police department or the fire departments um we rely on paid on call firefighters who have families um who have jobs uh outside of ours um we have police officers who do not get to pick and choose what calls they go on and where they're going to go um so those are the types of things that we are very concerned with and we want to keep rotations so that if should one of our officers become uh COVID positive that person is not quarantining a entire shift um so those are the things we work on we discuss we plan for um but it it's not in our control all the time and as you guys know I do like control so um it it's problematic um but we do the best we can by the way and I'm sorry I forget our libraries we want our libraries open we this goes all it goes into our libraries we are limiting access to our libraries because people in tight spaces touching things breathing on things coughing um we want to be open but we want to be open safely not only for our employees but especially for the public that goes into our buildings and um it's not a happy time sorry Raj did I cover some of what you're thinking and um yeah now it's it's it's going to be difficult um like I said I don't envy your management position on this and um I say this and I say this the the thing that I'm proud of the work of our entire organization both the village and the town think about this eight months eight months we've been at this not one positive COVID test for an employee of the villager of the town now that'll change someday I'm sure of it but for eight months we have been vigilant we have done what we can knock on wood no positive test yet so testament to the department heads and the employees so thank you for your patience so the only thing I want to only thing I want to add to that is we certainly do appreciate the efforts of the municipality we also really need to have the same level of appreciation for our residents as well as the same level of expectations and so my ask my personal ask is really for all residents please listen to the public health experts please listen to the guidance from Dr. Levine from our from our governor the most recent ask of don't travel out of state without quarantining don't have people come don't have to come to Vermont uh unless they're quarantining and similarly to limit the personal gatherings to no more than 10 people uh and above all else wear your mask if you're going out wear the mask we really all need to to do what we can to stop the thing from spreading the thing that I found interesting in looking at that cross-day travel map is if you were to look at the state of Vermont and if we were not blue because Governor Scott said we can travel along the state as much as we want the overwhelming majority of our state would be either red or yellow right now that includes the northeast kingdom that includes Chittenden County as a bright red it includes all of the 89 corridor uh counties as yellow so Vermont isn't immune and our numbers certainly are going up so we need to be vigilant sorry for that little rant Amber go right ahead I had a non-covid uh comment so I'll wait for you guys to finish non-covid what is that I know there's let's talk about something else please go ahead yeah so before we got on camera we were talking briefly about budget day and so I think we have one meeting before we get to one it's trustee meeting before we have the budget day so I just wanted to touch upon it and make sure I kind of understood are we still kind of planning to do what we did last year but zoom wise or anybody have any thoughts on that I have a whole host of thoughts um Evan or Sarah I assume though you guys are coordinating I admit we haven't had this conversation yet Sarah do you want to jump in yeah so we're planning pretty much the same thing that we do every year but just on teams where all the department has come in and give you a rundown and then we sort of chat and go from there I hope to have the budget document or I will have the budget document to you before Thanksgiving so instead of traveling to see family you all can study it over the long weekend is it possible to get the budget dock in a hard like a hard copy if we pick it up or whatnot that would be great I can print you a copy to paper and you can schedule a time to pick it up from 81 Main Street okay thanks Sarah you too Ross me too please if that's okay yes anybody who would like that should email me and then we'll schedule a day in time to pick it up sounds like it's going to be fun I'm still disappointed about the lunch piece of it but I'm going to let it go for now you are gracious thank you all right board members any other comments okay so now of course to get into executive session I need to find the motion unless somebody already has it so I got it here I'll move this trustees enter into executive session to discuss the evaluation of public employees in accordance with one vsa section 313a3 and to include the unified manager director best extension recreation parks and human resources director I think Dan had that one is there any further discussion my only question that I have is how do we know which teams to get into because we have to leave this one I wonder now I'm wondering if we sent an executive session let me let me send you a meeting notice okay it's coming right at you great so the motions on the table any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying hi hi hi anybody anybody opposed all right pass unanimously uh to members of the public we will be back moment I don't know how long it's going to take us we'll be back at some point in time and then we'll conclude the meeting after that and thank you Evan do you want to just shoot me an email later with results from our executive session yes ma'am thank you so much have a good evening everybody as well thank you so in your email you should have just received the executive session great so I will jump in first seeing the field Evan to join us just want to point out that it's not quite 857 see the picture there we go right we have exited executive session and so I will call us back into regular session would one of the trustees like to make a motion I will make a motion that the trustees that the village award a one-time bonus to Maureen to the Maureen Gillard Alyssa Callan and Rosie Gallo in the amount of five percent of their salary second and Evan is that an accurate recapture yep great trustees any further discussion on that motion really appreciate the efforts they put into it and I really appreciate all that they had done to help make this possible for our community all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye anybody opposed passing unanimously and would someone like to make a motion to adjourn second thank you Dan thank you Amber any further discussion hearing none all in favor signify by saying aye aye anybody opposed all right we are adjourned 759 one minute before each all right good night all be healthy guys say healthy wear your mask thank you


Welcome to this Week in Longmont for December 14th, 2020. I'm your host, Craig Stevens. Triple your impact. Shop, dine, and share. Support local businesses today. Keep them here for tomorrow. Our Longmont business community needs support now more than ever. This holiday season may be the most critical in history for local small businesses. There are so many ways to support local right now. And you can triple your impact each week. Buy from local shops. Order from local restaurants and share your favorite small businesses with friends. Find more ways to triple your impact at downtownlongmont.com. Federal Court rules in favor of windy gap firming project. The United States District Court judge has ruled in favor of the windy gap firming project. Clearing the way for construction of the Chimney Hollow Reservoir near Berthad. This ruling should also make it possible to move forward with environmental mitigation and enhancements related to the project, including construction of the Colorado River Connectivity Channel near Granby. Free COVID-19 testing available seven days a week at Boulder County Fairgrounds. Free COVID-19 testing is available at the Boulder County Fairgrounds located at 95-95 Nelson Road in Longmont. The testing site is open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. You do not have to have symptoms to be tested. To save time, register ahead online through Mako's portal for a full listing of testing options and information. I had to register for other testing locations. Please visit voco.org forward slash COVID-19 testing. Holiday treasure hunt throughout December. The Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future are hiding holiday treasure. Treasure hunters can scour Roosevelt Park located at 700 Longspeak Avenue for special ornaments. Lucky treasure finders can turn in their discoveries at Bank of Colorado located at 916 South Main Street Unit 100 to be entered to win great prizes. Visit longmontcolorado.gov forward slash Longmont Lights or call<PHONE_NUMBER> for more information. Happy hunting or haunting! Longmont Museum to reopen on December 15th. The Longmont Museum will reopen on Tuesday, December 15th following the release of a public health order along museums to operate at reduced occupancy. Guests can explore the vibrant work of Colorado artist Tony Ortega and the entire Day of the Dead exhibition. Front Range Rising, the museum's permanent exhibit documenting 14,000 years of human history in the same frame valley will also be open for hours and details. Please visit longmontmuseum.org or call<PHONE_NUMBER>. Give the gift of golf. The popular Golf Longmont Players' Cards are on sale now at City of Longmont Golf Courses and online at golflongmont.com. At Twin Peaks in New Creek, purchase a $140 card, a $216 value that includes two 18-hole rounds and cart at each course. At Sunset, purchase a $75 card, a $130 value that includes five nine-hole rounds with cart. Players' Cards can be redeemed for play as soon as the physical cart is in hand. Pick up or receive in mail. Inspire December 31, 2021. Gift certificates for green fees, carts, and range use are also available for all three courses. Visit golflongmont.com or call the course for more information. Recycle your holiday. The city offers several opportunities from December 26 through January 6 for residents to recycle holiday materials. Christmas trees can be dropped off at Roosevelt, Garden Acres, Kenimoto, and Centennial Parks. Please remove all decoration and lights. Special bins will be set up at the Waste Diversion Center located at 140 Martin Street. For wrapping paper and holiday lights and Christmas trees are also accepted. Cooking oil and White Styrofoam Block No. 6 are accepted at the Waste Diversion Center year-round. For more information, visit bit.ly-recycle. The holidays are called<PHONE_NUMBER>. This has been this week in Longmont for December 14, 2020. Thank you for watching.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com coming at you with a quick little random number block randomizer with all these teams. To fill up, ultimate, pick your team at nine, which is coming up in a separate video. So it works just like, oh it doesn't say here, but it works just like our number blocks. In fact, if you go to our frequently asked questions area, let me just show this off really quick. There is, I think, a section where it says, yeah, what's a random number block? There it is, that's what it is right there. There you go, so check that section out. That's pretty fun, that's a new thing on Jaspy's. So big thanks to these folks, obviously they read all that so they know what the deal is. Let's roll it, let's randomize it. One and a five, six times for each list. Names first, one, two, three, four, five, and sixth and final time. After six, we got Anthony down to Mark. And then six times for the numbers. One, two, three, four, five, and sixth and final time. After six, we got eight down to two. All right, so Anthony with eight, William with three, Chad with zero. So Chad, you get any and all redemptions. Any and all redemptions for that group of teams right there, including one of one redemptions. Chris, parent, you'll still get live one of ones. That situation has happened in all the years we've been doing this maybe twice. So, but we still have to say it. Sean with four, Robert with seven, John with nine, Mike with six, Chris with one, John with five, and Mark with two. So let's sort that by column B right here. And let's center that up. Coming up in a separate video will be the break itself. Jaspy'scasebreaks.com, see ya.


First outcome was real clarification that tenure reform and its implementation must be prioritized within the ministry. With regard to land reform in Uganda, my message is we need to make an effort in ensuring that the good policies in place are implemented. Time and again we have seen the policies are in place but implementation is quite lacking. When we look at all the three planting and land act, the issue has been implementation of these otherwise well thought through policy statements. If government can take up what the NGOs are doing and at a much higher level and maybe join hands much more with NGOs than what it has been, I believe we are going to reach a much wider audience. Of course, government is not doing it on one extent could be due to lack of resources in terms of financial and human resource but that is an area where we need to put more emphasis. If it remains the national level, it remains disorganized, this will fit us through up to the lowest level. If, for example, corruption starts from the upper levels, it is filtering through up to the resource level. Once the resources degraded, the first tenure security of the community is so much threatened. So we need we need to work at organizing ourselves at national level. For us to have a declared community forest, which is a strong case for security of tenure for communities that are using a forest, we must have a statutory instrument endorsed by the minister. But it is another sector, the justice sector through the Ministry of Justice and Affairs that actually prepares the instrument that is the mandate.  So the argument is that we write, we write again reminding because we've done that before, reminding them to fast track the process so that we can have this come out as soon as possible.


My name is Abaduot Udo. I'm from Nigeria. Born in Lagos. I grew up in Orishniki. Since then I've been little. And I discovered what I can do right now from a particular movie I watched. That's Twin Mission. And from that movie, I blend myself to the people I saw, the actors I saw from that movie, which I have not seen that kind of people before. So from there, I started, it was like, they were doing some kind of move. And at that moment, by the way, Dlinix, I said I should try this. I've never seen something like this before. And at that very moment, I said, I tried it. I did it. Contortion, sometimes referred to as contortionism, is an art that's not very popular in Nigeria. Sam and Blessin are contortionists in Lagos who hone their skills from constant practice and watching videos on YouTube. So from there, I started pushing. Then I pushed into dance from there till I grew up. I still didn't know what I was doing, other as well, until six, seven years back, then I had to start doing research on it. From there, I didn't know what I am doing. Then I started working on it professionally, taking it very serious, taking it to a very high stage too. From what I've been doing, from time come to now, I've been watching videos on YouTube and other ways I can actually learn from. So that way, I've been learning. Then some of my friends, which I work with right now, they came to me and I actually teach them. So for me teaching them, I have to go work more on myself. I have to go watch more videos to improve so I can teach them. So that way, I've been learning by myself until when, 2019, that was when I went for a yoga class, a yoga school, and I got satisfied from being a yoga teacher, yoga instructor. So aside from that school, there has been no other school. Once I come up on stage, I connect with the whole space entirely. I connect with everything around me, even the sand, the water, more or less the demanding. I make sure I connect down to the hearts of anybody watching me. Nigeria as a whole, I also, it's me, number one. I come the best. So from there, I've made income from it, and I build up a group. Thereby, if I have a job, I don't even want to go for the job, eat the page, no kitchen, and I bring up the new generations, which are just starting, and I send them out. Most times, if I fall sick, I fall very sick, type of malaria and all, I fall sick. I still make sure, if nobody is at home, I put on my sound, and I do movements in the room. With that, where I sweat everything out, I get better at it, and I probably go out, but laugh at something cool. Then with that, I can beat off my sickness. However, if I have a job, I'm falling sick, and I just hear about the job. If they are paying me or not, I just make sure I go for the job, eat off the stage, connect with people. So that way, me connecting with people, I'm dragging more energy. So that one builds me up again.  I don't get sick again. Or if I should have a particular injury, like presently I'm having an injury, which I'm not supposed to do any time at all, but when it comes to me performing, I don't see myself as an entertainer. I don't entertain. I perform. I do act with my own work. But most contention is they want to entertain. They also want to make sure you stay aware of what they are doing. But me, once I come up on stage, I don't even want to hear any noise. I also want a quiet space. I do my thing. Then again, you can give me whatever comments you want to give me. So I've not broken any bones before. Not even... Normally I dislocate my joints. So all I've been doing is dislocation, dislocation. So the injury I can just get is from muscles. When I strain the muscle, I go extremely out of the act. So I've only had just two. The first one was my shoulder. And the second one is the nail, which I'm having now. Because that's why I say when I'm on stage, the space I'm in, it can put so much energy in me.  So if I'm performing on this stage where I'm at, the energy I'm picking from that stage is building me home. I want to do something very, very, very crazy. Which I've not even practiced before. So it's more like I'm going into this spirit ray. Into somewhere else that is just black. And I just do things extremely out of the act. The extreme I've done was twisting my neck to the back. Then I used to have... I do this triple fold. That's the back bend. You have to triple fold.  But I have to stop doing that because I've seen too many people doing it. And I want to create my own style. I don't come up on stage and I do something and they'll be like, this one can do it. This one can do it. Because it's still the same transition you use in going into it. You do something that's the transition you barely see it around. You watch multiple videos. You have these scenes. It's very rare to see. So that's why I have to cut off some moves from what I do. I do a whole lot of moves before. To make sure I entertain people then way back. Then when I have to now start noticing myself what I can do. How more I can reach out to my skills then I have to just cut out some moves and start working on my own moves. Creating my own skills for myself. More like the rocket move in Nigeria now, presently. I'm the only one. Though there are others now coming up as well trying to get their own rockets and start doing. And some of them will still come up to me and teach me this particular move and I'll still teach them. So there will still be a time where if I say that okay, they have gotten it off to that level. I'll drop that and move into another one. So because they've gotten the next twist to level a hair. I can't do it again. I can't go any further than that. I have to leave it for them. So it's only when I have this kind of audience like if I have a performance for a particular program and they'll ask me for to perform like five times five different times for one event and I can't come up with another move for the next performance. I can't come up with another move for the third one. So that's how I just break down my moves. Then probably the last performance that's where I can come up with the next twist and I have to work out for it. Then I just go up and twist. So I have to do a one week next stretch to stretch the muscle for one week straight. I'm ready to just twist it out. Go for me to build more like a cycles in Nigeria. Bring that to Nigeria. There are people doing it cycle cycles. It's just more like a show. They're just doing it and they call it a cycle show. A cycle show is not supposed to be something you all do once in a year. It's supposed to be something you do like every weekend in the year. So what I'm looking at from five to ten years from now is that I bring cycles into Nigeria. When it comes to contortion most people, they mistake contortion for dance.  I'll say I'm a contortionist. I'll be like, oh dancer, I'll say no. I'm a contortionist. And I'll still be wanting to be like explaining what is different from contortion and you being a dancer. So I have to now start breaking it down to them that this is contortion. This is dance. Though it still looks more alive like when may I come up on stage I move to music. Some potentially they don't have that musicality. They just do. Make sure people shout. But me, I just make sure I come up on stage. I have that musicality. So that's why when some people see me perform mine, they call it dance. It's not dance, it's contortion. So when I call mine contortion act so it's an act I'm just portraying to people. But before I made the lesson, I've just known six, seven contortionists. Before I made the lesson I've known just six, seven contortionists which have worked with and I didn't work with all of them. I met few of them in a competition whereby they see me. They just see that somewhere I've come that we even want to leave the competition for me. But I'll be like, oh what is it? Is it not the same same thing that they see me and they still want to run away from me? Same thing to bless them. We met at one show then then from that show I saw her. She was the first female contortionist I've seen like I've traveled Nigeria I've seen contortionist but she was the first one I've seen that was different from older females. Hi, my name is Miss Okute Blessing Uche I'm 21 years old I was born January 7th in the year 2000 I'm a student of Lagos State University or Joc Campus 200 levels I'm actually studying physical and health education I studied with about six years ago and I was seeing this movie, Our Strength it's about this teacher a dance teacher actually so I was teaching our students artists' cleats and then to carry their legs up so they know what they can do with their bodies so I decided to start on my own too and to start stretching I would always stretch my pillow it got to a point whereby my pillow wasn't spacious enough for me so I had to go to this place opposing my compound to a spacious so I took my dad's mirror because he used to be a baba he had a salon so I took his mirror there and then I would always practice alone in that place Do you want to say it's profitable? It has been profitable because I was able to use this money I get from the shows I do and the concert I go for for my school bills and other bills I have to pay it's actually helping me to take care of some other things too but I'm not where I want to be right now I'm not getting what I want right now because I want more to every lady that wants to be a gymnast or a confessionist should know that it's painful and whatever you put your mind into you're going to achieve it One thing that helped me to get this far is my consistency and my fast consistency I was always training sometimes I go out training for like three to four hours every day most times I train in the night stretching in the night before I go to bed my mom always be like blessing blessing blessing you're not a boy you're not a boy always acting like a boy and be like mommy just stopped us come out of it this is what I like to do most of the challenges in what I do is that whenever I go to the bar to perform or any concerts men are always my challenges like they just keep coming at me because they feel because I stretch too well because my hip flexors are very very flexible and because my backs are very flexible and I bend into some other shapes and some different kind of shape they think because I'm very flexible like that on the stage I'm going to be that flexible on the bed they even go as far as touching me aximi stops like I'm not very nice I'm not for short time I be like sorry I'm my sex worker sometimes I fight them sometimes I insult them sometimes I talk to them anyhow but I can't keep doing all that too I just find a way to maneuver them we asked myself five years from now actually in five in three years time I should be done with my school my B.S.S. certificate then last year I intend traveling after that I intend going to the U.S. New Orleans precisely actually I'm actually mailing a mail to them to know if I can for them out there and then to be a professional gymnast competing and representing my country in Nigeria