Welcome, everyone, for the February 12, 2024 Rochester Select Board meeting, which has been posted in three public places, right? Yep. And on the website, and email to interested parties, so we meet the open law requirements. And we're going to start with the minutes from the prior meeting of January the 22nd. And I read through those, I found one modification in the conversation about the Declaration of Inclusion. At one point, it says that I said the caution will be create more paperwork, and I said, it should say I expressed concern that this will create more paperwork, so just to make that. Here to people in the future that decide to read these minutes, so with that one correction, I move to prove. Second. All in favor? All right. All right. Okay. That one. And we also have the minutes of the emergency select board meeting of 126, where we clarified the numbers for the budget, and I would move to prove those minutes. Second. All in favor? All right. Okay. All right. And we have some start off with the guest, Jan, you're on the list here. What's up? So, I want to find out what's going on with the generator at school. I went down, it was making alarm sounds, and the secretary told me it had been doing it, and somebody came, and the select board knew about it, is it going to get fixed, or is it going to get replaced? We've called the guy, and I don't know if he's coming or not. I don't know that he's coming yet either. I've left him one message and an email since I've talked to you. He called me, and I called him back. He said that he would call me right back, and he never did, so. Is this the guy from Northfield? No. Is that where you have the contracts with everybody else? Bushy. No, it's Bushy. Ben Bushy. Okay. I've been inside there, and look, I don't see anything that's on, that's making it do that, but there's just an alarm sensor on. I'm not sure what it does. I've relayed that to Mr. Bushy, but I haven't seen. Okay, so it's not an impending doom thing? No, and as far as... Are you at it anyway? No, yeah, yeah. There's always impending doom. As far as going in and out of that fence there, it's really not needed to get in and out of there very often, only for maintenance, really, it's nothing to do with the daily operation of the thing. And so I'll try to get back in touch with him and see if he can come and take care of it. I tried to get him to call me just to see if there was something I could do to try to eliminate. Do you know if it's been exercising itself? I couldn't tell you, for sure, I don't know when it exercises, I don't know. Wednesdays? It's every week? Yeah, it's once a week. Yeah, it's once a week. And he said that seemed to be okay, but the alarm, I thought he said it was, when he was there last, he said that it didn't seem like there was anything wrong, that if it made noise again to let him know and he would come in and take a look at it again. Yeah. But that's all it is. He turned it off the first time. Yeah, I don't know. I tried to get him to tell me how to turn it off so I could go down and do it. Yeah, there was a reset button or something. Yeah, something easy to push. It's not that we're out of fuel? No. No. Okay. So nobody looked at it to see that something is wrong. Is that what you're saying? No, somebody did. He's been there before, but the alarm came back on. Since he's been there. Since he'd been there. Yeah, okay. So we don't know why that's happening? No.  The school can operate when the power's out. So the shelter is just an auxiliary. Right. Right? It's not there for the shelter. It's there to keep the school in the shelter, basically. So we've probably never asked them if they'd help pay a bill. So if you get a bill, can you ask them if they're interested in joining with you? Interesting idea. We can discuss it with them, I'm sure. I think that we're looking into, currently, we're looking into having all the generators serviced by one guy so that we do it all in one bunch. That makes sense. Because there's five now. We have five that we deal with. They only make one trip out to service them all one day. Right. So we could. Better than five trips. Because the current superintendent is really great to work with, the current superintendent is great. Oh, yeah. Jamie is great to work with. Yeah. Favorable about both buildings. So I would approach them if you need to. I would like to know when its weekly cycle is. I thought it was Wednesdays, Wednesday morning. At 10 a.m. or something like that. Yeah. It'd be easy enough to be there and check in. I'm on the road all the time so I could zip in and listen to it running, going, yeah, it's okay. It's going. I've never heard it exercise. I don't know that I'd say that. I've heard this one out. Yeah, ours is right at nine. I've heard this one. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of changes. Tell the time. Just right. Yeah. Marta. This has to do with the gym and everything, I guess. You know, I live right up the hill from the school and at night I often see the lights on in the gym. Like I'm up and down all night long because I have trouble sleeping. I'll see it on at 12 31 30 three o'clock in the morning.  But is there a reason? Is it on some sort of a thing where it just goes on for a while and then goes off again? You know, the lights for the gym? Don't know about that. No. It's not our buildings. They're automatic.  But I mean, like at 12 30 at one o'clock in the morning, you wouldn't think anybody would be in the school. I just see I see it on and and it's been happening at least a month or two, you know, and I just thought I'd mention it sometime because, you know, yeah, you might maybe you should say something to someone at school. They go to school. The one I know at school is Erica in the office. I should mention it to her. Who should I call? Yeah, I can call Erica. You could work with her. Also, Jesse Potter. Okay. Oh, Jesse Potter, she does maintenance? Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. Sorry. I just thought I'd bring that up since you were talking about the shelter and that's in the gym. But it just makes me wonder because, you know, it didn't used to go on a lot during the night. They have an outside cleaning service that comes in and does their cleaning and I don't know what his time frame is and whether he might be doing it late at night. Who knows? Yeah, but not at like one in the morning or something. Could very well be. He didn't have a lot of help and he's got several places to do. Oh, okay. He could be on a different schedule. Maybe it hasn't I should worry about. Okay. Sorry. No, that's all right. Thank you. So, um, was that it? It's a recycling question as well. I came in and I asked and read the contract. I know you're going to renew the contract, but so I was here doing my recycling and somebody from town came up with a big screen TV and they said, we don't recycle those. It's trash.  That's not supposed to go on the trash. It's a law. Yeah. It's a different kind of recycling than there's a single stream recycling. That's the electronics. They said, no, we don't take that. We take paper, cardboard, plastic and metal. That's it.  She spoke with A&R. A&R reached out to her because you addressed it. And she spoke with them and explained that she takes her trash over to, I think I wrote it on there, Hubbard's. And Hubbard sorts it for the electronic parts and all of that goes through a sorting system. Out of the garbage truck? Yes. After they mush it up? It's all sorted. A single stream. Yep. A single stream where it recycling. And he wrote a letter saying that what she did, she didn't do anything wrong. And that she can charge because it's a processing fee. It's a processing fee, so it's not recyclable, free, not in the free. Now if you bring that TV to the transfer station, then it's completely free, I believe. But they have a processing fee because they're traveling with it. Right. Right. So I don't know if you want to put something in the content to address it. They're getting a bunch of flyers and brochures that they'll be handing out. So some people in town know how to deal with their stuff. Yep. That was mine. Nancy, you have a question? There was always something in the town report until Royalton took over the transfer station. And then the transfer station fell apart and they had to get a new manager. So I have a feeling that over the last two years with material coming out of Royalton it has been somewhat sketchy. But she's very cautious about what she takes. And she, I guess the law now says they can start charging for recycling, too. Yes. Charging. Us or the town? Or both? I mean, doesn't the town pay? Yeah, the town, they are charging the town. Right. That's what we pay. That's what the, what's in the town report, that's what we pay for recycling is 20,000 or whatever. But can they charge us separately, too? Yes. They can start charging for people that they pick up trash and recycling for. So not here in the town office, but when they're picking it up along their route. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And I just had a couple of other things. Do we have an AED here at the town office? And I eat AED. No, AED, no. Now we do not. So there's grants out to buy them. Do they have one at Pierce Hall? Does anybody know? Do you don't ask? I don't know. I know there's one at school. I think they do for the gym. They probably do at the gym. Okay. So if somebody wants to get one for the town office, I have the grant information. Do you feel like filling it out? Yeah. We discussed that with the fire department, didn't we? Talk to you about that. Yeah, you got one at the firehouse. Yeah. All right. And we have one, which you should know at the shelter. Right. Yeah. So. I don't know if the school has one on hand or not. Yeah. I would think they would. Yeah, they do. It's right by the front door. Yeah. Martha has something to add. Excuse me. I refresh my memory. I can't remember exactly what AED stands for. I apologize. It's a defibrillator. It's to shock your heart when you do CPR. So a defibrillator to use while doing CPR. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's an automatic external device or something like that. Yeah. I don't know what it stands for. Bring back dead. Yeah. Yeah. Automated external defibrillator. Yeah. Automated external defibrillator. All right. It puts out a pretty good joke. Yeah. That's all I can tell you. Oh, yeah. You've experienced that. Having been through it a few times. Yeah. Plus, we always were trained on it anyway with the Green Mountain Power once a year. We had training on it. We carried them all in the trucks. Yeah. So if we did get one here, you'd know how to use it when people have a heart attack when they hear what the budget is going to be. They top it right through it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's pretty self-explanatory. Cool. Not hard, but you've got to have access to it. Clear? Yeah. Yeah. Everybody get away. Get away. So you have the paperwork for the grant? On my computer at home. Yeah. It's just a form to fill out. You can get grant money for it. Super expensive. But I think you should have one. Town offices open all the time. So are you going to do it or do you want to sign it? Do you want me to do it? I can start it. We need to work. I need somebody to do it with me. Do you want to do it with me? Sure. Okay. Great. That's a good idea. We also got naloxone training and a supply and naloxone. The shelter team closet. All right. Good idea to have that on hand, too. So that be considered recycling your lifespan if you use that thing? It kind of goes together with the shelter team and the recycling. Now you're going to have to pay recycling fees. All right. A lot more expensive. Well, thank you guys. We appreciate you working on that. That's a good idea. It's always room for improvement, right? Naloxone. What's it called? Naloxone. Do you have it here? I don't think we have them here. It's for people that have drug overdose. Yeah. You can reverse it. It's just a reversal drug. Yeah. That would be, I'm sure that they rescue probably the fast drug. Yeah, but you probably need two doses of it and you have to do it right away. I think a lot of those people carry with them now, don't they? Yeah, you can. You can just get it anywhere. Right. It's free and you can go to the drugstore and get it without a prescription, too. I just carry it with them. Might as well. Just in case. You can't really give it to yourself. Hopefully you got somebody with you. I'm trying to be serious, guys. You're making me laugh. Sorry. It isn't funny. Do you have pre-COVID tests here for residents? No. We had some. Sometimes offices do. We had a box of them. They came over on the Mayflower. Yeah. They do go out of date. But you can extend those expiration dates. They're just April Fool dates. You can choose whatever date you want. The feds actually extended them two or three years. But you have to go online and look up the number. But you can get them. What's her name? Maya? Newroot? The librarian was going to get them. The library of things. I told her they were. Libraries in the state can get them. And she was supposed to contact the state and get them. You know, you guys can get them too. You want to have some available for folks. But I don't know if anybody would come here looking for one. I hope that they wouldn't come in here. Yeah. We'll call the firemen. We'll call the firemen. Yeah, that's a great idea. Call the firemen. Call the firemen. Give them COVID. I need to go to the emergency. Okay. All right. Well, thank you guys. So M-TAP. Sydney is on the show. Yeah. Sydney, are you on Zoom here? I am. Can you hear me? We can. Yeah. Thank you for coming. Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to check in. I know during our call, we had a couple of calls with you guys. We didn't have a set, you know, something that fit really well with the M-TAP program guidelines and with, you know, what town priorities were. We did look up grants for the retaining wall at the town office. We weren't able to find anything that would work for that. And I know you guys really wanted to make the most of this opportunity. So I know you did have, you do have a capital budget. Does that need updated? I'm just going to maybe run through a list of things and see if any of them spark your interest. Is that okay? Or do you have another? Oh, no. That's fine. Capital budget is updated. Can we work on that last year? It's not updated. No. We started. We never got finished it off because we just got too, too many things going on. Yeah. The problem when we have with the capital budget is that's the first place we raid with trying to keep the budget down. It's nice to have a list saying we should put money away for this or that, but it's been hard to keep to that. Yeah. It's unrealistic. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe you're helping advising us on how to maybe come up with a more realistic capital budget would be helpful. Okay. Great. I've got that down as interest. Is that fairly serious interest? Cause we've got a couple of towns that are doing those. So we could do a pretty quick turnaround if that was something you were interested in doing and looking at, you know, the draft agreement for to see what the scope would look like and, you know, edit it back and forth to, to tailor it. Well, let's, let's hear if we have to pick and choose between options. What are the other options that you've got? What's on the menu? Yeah. Yeah. Let's tell us the menu. I do have a little menu. Um, do you have, I know you have playing fields. Are those in any need of work? Not really that much. This is very, it's not really a priority. The only thing we got coming up is the skate space that that may, that's going to require some that we're looking at putting that out this spring. They've raised quite a bit of capital for it. I believe somewhere around 80,000, I believe. But they're still looking for more. And they're still thinking another 20. He's thinking that'll be over another 20. They've cut the size down and they're going with cement. So is that, would that qualify as an athletic field place where people go and skate? Yeah. These are just, I'm just trying to get ideas of what you might have that could be MTAP eligible. So like, if I could get more information on that skate space, I could tell you whether that's MTAP or not and whether there might be grants out there to help. But that sounds like a really big project. So I'd love if we could help with that. They do already have some grants, but I don't know exactly what they are. Okay. I'd love to see what those are to see if we can help with some of the admin of those grants or application with anything else. There's one from the town. There's one from the superintendent. There's one from the state. Is it ANR or Department of Parks or something like that? We got a big one from them. We got two grants from two banks. A lot of foundations, private foundations. They haven't got the school's money yet. We were still working on that. So what about Norm and recreation and the playing fields? Norm and I and Dean have been doing this right in these grants since last year. All right, well that's... So what about... Sorry. No, no, go ahead. What's being done specifically the skate space? It basically needs to be rebuilt. The site needs to be leveled and proper drainage put in and then repaved. It's not holding water. It's not level anymore. It needs rework. Okay. Great. Thank you. As well as the skate space, it also is, in summertime, used as people play basketball on there and skateboarding. And you just signed an agreement with the school for them to use it after school? Right, after school programs. Because they're also applying for a grant towards it. So that would be... What else you got on the menu? Let me check those off. Do you have a town forest or a town trail system? We have a town forest. I don't know if it's really a town trail system. We have the ridgeline trails wander through town quite a bit. Okay. Are those in pretty good repair, pretty good signage? Yeah, they're not bad. Okay. Sidewalks? Sidewalks, yeah. How about sidewalks? If I remember our prior conversation, right, that was repaving of existing sidewalks or was that a new... Yeah, repaving of existing either or. Yeah. That I'm... Where maybe is the next question in like your kind of core area or kind of spreading out? Yeah, in the village, yes. Okay. So I... That is something I can help with on MTAP. And I'm going to connect you to Rita Cito, who's our transportation planner. Yeah. I'm glad. She's awesome. She is awesome. We currently are in a... have received a grant for one section of our town under the Safe Routes to Schools grant. Okay. But that is really just the tip of the iceberg on what we would like to do with our sidewalks. And I would like to see even an extension of our sidewalks from the school to Kennedy Drive. It's a pipe dream, but I could dream. Yeah. What about cemeteries? I cannot help with cemeteries, unfortunately. That is a huge need. And that's something that's come up in other towns too. But it's not covered by MTAP, unfortunately. But we do know it's an issue and we have our eyes out. There just aren't really that we've seen grants that we've come across for that. Do you have kind of in the transportation route, any culverts that keep blowing out with big rainstorms or that you anticipate will have damage from snowmelt? We're presently looking at one that we're working with FEMA on, but they're requesting an eight footer to be half filled with gravel, which is like a 20 or... I think he told me is around 20,000 just for the pipe. But it's going to cause us to have to put in another one just below it because it dumps into another spot. So I'm not too sure what we're going to do. We're trying to get it cut down to a four foot. But because they discovered trout on both sides of the pipe, we have to make it an eight footer. And I don't know whether we can get White River Partnership to help us with that, or if there's any grant money out there besides FEMA. Is that North Hollow Road? Yes. You've heard of it. It's what we lost in FEMA. I think the girls here in the office have worked on a grant for that, and they're pretty happy with having to go through that process. I'm being facetious there. Yeah. So that's really the big one. We do have another bridge that we might have to look at shortly. And we're not real positive what we're going to have to do there yet. And there's always other culverts that need to be replaced. But we've been trying to keep up with them as best we can. And our road crew, I take my hat off to them. They do a pretty decent job with it. So I'm happy with what they do. That's good. I'll keep my eyes out for, and I'll talk to Rita about North Hollow Road and that culvert that's going to need to go in below it and see what we can scrounge up. Yeah. That would be great. And we are looking at a Class II grant. We applied for that, I believe, through Rita also. For the Bethel Mountain Road for that upper section. Right. Yeah. But if we think of anything else, we'll certainly call you first. Yeah, right? Yeah. Sounds good. We'll be in touch. But the capital plan would be a really good idea for us to do. It's something that hasn't been done in probably 15 years. The scope, it was last done by two rivers too. Oh, okay. It was quite a long time ago. Yeah. But I'm not sure the date, it must have been even before you get on the board. No. 15 years ago. Before Dome. Yeah. Now I remember working with Kevin Geiger. Kevin Geiger spent a lot of time with us. Yeah. Yeah. But it's been quite a while since we've done it and things have changed tremendously since then. Yeah. We ran out of money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to put some lofty goals out there. That's for sure. Yes. We'll try to keep it more realistic. I hear you on that. We'll. Taylor better this time. It sounds like. How much more time do I have? Cause I've still got other stuff. Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. Great. Do you have. Any underutilized town buildings where you're like, what do we do with. You know, old town hall or a meeting house or something. Or high school or high school. I've heard of this project. Not sure how M TEP could help with it, but I'd love to hear more about it from you guys. Cause I've heard kind of Sarah. Sarah rate at our office. But I haven't spoken to you guys about it. So. What do you see for that building going forward? Maybe. First, we have to determine whether we're going to acquire ownership of it or not. It still belongs to the school district. So. And so that's going up for a town vote that. We thought we had a date for that, but that is been put off again as. We found or the. The. Brownfield testing. Decided that they want to dig a little deeper where they found some arsenic in light of rules. Changing. So that vote has been put off and. Nancy, you have something you want to add to that. I. Listen to the orca. Meeting from last week. And they're going to do. For their next meeting. They're going to do a get have a purchase and sale. Developed. Yeah. Which they will. Talk with the board about and they're looking for it. I think it's a July 1 25. Closing date. Yeah, but it all depends on. All depends on what happens. They want to have that in hand just in case. I suggested not spending money on attorneys, but. They felt they wanted to lock. In the particulars. About the underground oil tank. And a couple other. Issues. That they had. So they wanted to make sure that was locked in with the board. And the superintendent that's in place now. That it'll be in agreement. Next year. Year after. They want to have. They want to have a first draft of it for their next March meeting. And then. Some if we vote not to acquire the building, then. It all goes away. So. We do have a couple other structures that we. We the town does own that. Are kind of. Sitting there. We're unsure what to do. We basically use them for storage. There's the old mill down by the town garage, which is right in the floodplain for one. And the other one is the old firehouse. And we also are looking at doing some energy efficiency work in our town office and. Jeff Gappard is working with. On that. Plus we're. He's put that up for the state to look at as one of the buildings along with our town garage. To be looked at for some energy savings there that perhaps will help us down the road as far as tax. Operations go as far as keeping the buildings open and keeping them up dated a little bit so. But there's two buildings there that we don't utilize much at all. We they're just storage. One of them is the is the old mill. That's down by the the town garage, which is basically falling apart and needs a lot of work. And I'm not sure what the best avenue is there. I was looking at it over today a little bit. And it really it really isn't kind of tough shape and. And our old firehouse is too, but it could be utilized better than what it is. For something. Yes. And it's a block building that it's going to require some maintenance down the road. Sinking. Well the lower lower course of blocks is is. Is rotting. Is rotting. Yeah. We dug it up. Yeah. Years ago. Very united. And you shovel the block out with a shovel. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing left. So we did. So everything well grades no good. Yeah. Right. So. So. We made it. So that's that's a couple of things that that are out there. They're just I put them on the bottom of the list personally, but. Whatever we can worse. We can do whatever. What else you got there. I have. I know during our call we talked about. Housing very briefly and you have a housing. Committee, I believe. We do. Any, basically any work. On housing. Would be M tap eligible. So if you had like a town. Sorry. You had a town lot that you were wondering, you know, how many houses could it fit? It's, you know, four acres or something. We could work with you to. To find a consultant who might be able to do a feasibility study to see what you have. It's going to depend on where you're at in that thought process, but. I know housing is a big issue. For a lot of our town. So I want to bring it up and make sure we try and cover it. If there's something we can do with M tap on that issue would be great. But it's also hard to spur the moment. Like surprise. Mm-hmm. Here's money to help with housing. Come up with a project. We have a committee. Formed. Looking into housing. So we have some activity. People that are active in pursuing that. There's no town property. That's available. But yeah, your, your help would be specifically to. About town property, right? Not private properties. It's going to depend. Kind of on what that project is. M tap can't be used to build someone's private home. You know, right? But if the town wanted to work with a developer, you know, to encourage a developer to take a specific lot or something and, you know, pursue X, Y, Z grant to help offset the cost of an affordable unit or a number of affordable units in a house. You know, you know, if you were to have a developer to help offset the cost of an affordable unit or a number of affordable units in a housing. In a, I don't know. Yeah. Then that would be M tap. I may be more food for thought than immediate. Like, oh yeah, let's go for it. But. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's all good to know what, what other. Avenues could you explore? Mm-hmm. Next on my list is any interest in community solar. Not necessarily specifically M tap eligible, but we've seen some interest from the agency of administration and pursuing those projects.  We have one in process right now. Yeah. Green Mountain Power resiliency zone project. Oh, that's so cool. I heard about this. Yeah. Sorry. It's all right. They're putting in polls now infrastructure wise and they're getting set to do the, the Green Mountain Power is getting set to do the work that they need to do to make it to move the project forward. Mm-hmm. They're doing the, the actual structuring as far as the grid is concerned. And then the Norwich Solar I believe is, is doing the solar field and that'll be there, maybe I guess. And Green Mountain Power will own the battery structure and all that. Mm-hmm. So they'll be able to, to give emergency power for the village in town and also they'll be able to shave peak when they need to do that. And that'll be how it works. Yeah. We all have generators. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good, it'll be a good deal for them. We don't have any dollars and cents in it, but which is good. We don't need to have, but if, if something does happen with the school and we, in the town does look to do something, a solar project on that building would be extremely beneficial if that was to happen. But I'm not really in tune with that all that much. To be honest with you. Yeah. It's kind of a big undertaking for our town, I think. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, personally. Is daycare of any interest? A daycare practice. I guess a daycare provider in a town owned building. If you have a space that's being used for community stuff. Stuff. Well, that was looking just for daycare. That is for elder care. Daycare and elder care, both part of the. Concepts. Concepts floated for a possible repurposing of the high school building. Okay. Yeah. So they're kind of folded into, to that project.  Emptap this basically can offer planning support and support in, in, um, searching out grants that would support these kind of projects. Is that, is that right? That's right. So we see what eligible projects you guys are interested in. And then we help identify funding opportunities for those. And then apply and then if the town wants, then we would help manage if awarded. And what's the, um, what's the timeframe? How long are we beneficiaries of this M tap support? So the opportunity for support. So that's kind of what I was pushing the capital budget and program. We're not running low on money yet. This is a decent size little program. The initial allocation from the state was $3 million. So that's about half of which went to our PCs to do this kind of work where we work with our towns to develop agreements for certain projects. Um, but that's. It is basically a first come first serve program. So the assistance is out there until money runs out. It's not running out right now. So there's no huge rush. Um, but things are starting to pick up more and I expect it will pick up more after town meeting day. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, I think that's a good point. Once any new select board members have been onboarded. Um, in towns aren't in the crunch. Of. Town meeting day planning. Um, But the program is set to end right now. In April, 20, 25 with a likely extension into 2026, but that hasn't been announced or decided or anything yet. So we're starting to think about a couple or two different options. So we can start with small towns, or one of the goals of the program along with just general assistance to small towns, but. My thighs, you have a question. Yes, I'm sorry. What does m tap stand for? I apologize. I don't know. It's the municipal technical assistance program. Technical. Assistance programs. Thank you very much. any money towards our restoration of our town parks? It's gonna depend on what the work is. So if it's something that would be competitive, one of the elements of figuring out like what funding opportunities is it gonna be competitive? So if it's gonna be competitive for a grant program like VOREC, which is the Vermont, I have that tab open, Vermont Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative, their grant program, then it's MTAP-eligible. If it's replacing two benches or something that are very expensive benches, it's not, because there's not really gonna be a grant program for that. But if it's got a grant that we could apply to, then it's very possible. I'm looking at more about tree maintenance and stuff. We had due to last spring's freeze, we lost several trees on the park. I'm not sure, I think we're slated to cut seven down, is that correct Nancy? Seven, that are on the chopping block. We did secure a grant, but it's a pretty high... It's to purchase trees basically. It's basically to purchase new trees, but to remove the other trees, we're gonna be looking at a fairly decent expense. I have mentioned the work to the town crew to possibly get them on the ground and we'll have to hire somebody into probably clean up, because it'll be a pretty good mess, but I was just wondering if there was any money available for something like that? I can look, yeah. I don't know off the top of my head, but I'm not a wealth of information when it comes to grants, so I will check. All right, thank you. Go back again to recreation and the possibility of pickleball court. Does that come off? It hasn't come up with other towns yet. If there's a grant for it, I think there's a case to be made. MTAP is supposed to generally be oriented toward projects that help with economic development, and there's a strong case to be made that if you have a really strong outdoor recreation or a recreation culture in your town and you support that, you're gonna get more recreation-oriented businesses and more traffic from surrounding towns that don't have those amenities, so. What's the interest in the pickleball court? It's getting greater all the time. Yeah. They've moved inside the school for the winter, in the winter time, just because they just play all year. They're playing in the school. It's probably way the lights are on at midnight. We have half the tennis court in the morning. We retrofitted for pickleball, so then we've got the conflicting tennis players for the pickleball players. So we see the need for expansion. Yeah. Does that happen to be on the same site as the skating space? No. Okay. But it is on the town recreational field area. Yeah, it is on the town recreational field. Yeah. Okay. I'll keep that in mind, because it sounds like, I don't know, from what I've seen online of Rochester, I haven't spent much time up there, but you're fairly recreation-oriented. I should come up. Recreation-oriented town there. It's fantastic. It's like pickleball. Well. Like on the trails. Or ride a bike. Going back to trees, do you have any river banks or stream banks that need restoration? Yeah, this retaining wall right outside of the- The retaining wall. That was where we started with that, yeah. That's what caused it, right, was the stream. So, but you said you were indeed not successful in finding anything that would help with that, if that is considered stream bank restoration. Would that shed more light on that? I don't think so for that particular project. What I've maybe got more in mind is like rip wrapping or planting specific native plants to help with erosion control or something along those lines. But I don't know a ton about the retaining wall project, except that we didn't find any retaining wall grants. But maybe we were framing it wrong. Yeah, if you look at that more in the light of a stream bank stabilization. And sewer line protection. And sewer line protection. Tim Crowley. Yeah. Again. Again, and again, and again. Okay, I've got that written down. Um, I think that's my, that's my menu. We've got a lot to work with, really. Yes. I've got a lot to get back to you on. So, that's all I've got. Do you have any more questions? Anything else you want to add to the list or you want me to ask about eligibility for? Just leave your email at Julie. And this, what about, so we are, we did get a grant for evaluation, the energy evaluation of this building that we're in here. What about grant monies for window replacement for energy efficiency? M-tap does not. Okay. Doesn't tap that direction. Okay. Yeah. And I think that's more of the municipal energy resilience program. Okay. I don't know if they were, is there money for repaving anything? Town owned? That's a read a question. M-tap would be, you know, if you needed to move a road because a stream is moving into that area and there's flooding on that road, you know, if a road's getting washed out a lot and you need to move it, that would be climate change resilience mitigation, which is an M-tap eligible project category, but just repaving like on your regular meet and schedule isn't M-tap, but it'd be a read a question about the specifics of that project. That project. Yep, okay. Well. Thank you. Yeah, we appreciate your energy and help and finding us support and something and figure out something. We'll work it out. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. We'll be in touch. Okay, thanks for coming out or tuning in rather. Okay, good night. So next on the agenda, we've got a park use application from the Rochester Democrats. The Vent is called Goats for Votes. We plan to bring baby goats to the park and some signage to encourage people to go vote in the primary election. What's the date on that? March 5th. Is that? Yep, yeah, March 5th. Voting day. Voting day. So. Day after our town meeting. Voting day. Primary day. We didn't have the long list. We got a vote for the bond. I would think so or maybe in offense for something, but I don't think that just let them loose on Route 100. We're on the park. Well, as long as they clean up after themselves. Yeah. I mean, if they let them out on the grass or whatever, they tear it up, they got to fix it. Yeah. That's all there is to it because it might be soft that time of year. It could be snowy. It might have this much snow on it. Yeah. Yeah, it could have a lot of snow. It's all on. But yeah. Hey, it'll probably, Martha would probably get us a picture in the paper though. All right, I need to move to approve. Okay, all in favor? All right. All right. Now they're permitting. Yes. Bring your saddle. Right around on the go. Yeah. Next. We got the tax mapping proposal for the town of Rochester contract for April 1, 2024 to March 31st, 2025. And CAI Technologies out of Littleton, New Hampshire. And there we go. This would be a first step towards adjusting their common level of appraisal. Yep. So I'm good move to approve that contract. How much is it? That's the same. It's what I brought to the budget and finance committee. Yeah, it's $2,100 for the map. It went out. Yep. Yep. Yep. It's all in the budget. $1,700 and something. Yeah. It was. Point number, exactly. The maintenance service is $2,100 and $20 building added or changed. So if it's just straight up counting what's already there, if it's a new building or significant changes another $20 per building. Do we do a new set of maps every year? Because now you can get them online. They do all of the... They do the online portion too, right? Yeah, they send everything to the state. Yep. I think we got it. I could think about doing it every other year, but it's probably more accurate to do it every year. With all the changes we've had. Yeah. I probably give them like eight new surveys a year. I'm in it. I'm in that all the time looking things up. All right, so. I second it. All in favor. All right. Pulling the money out of us. Yeah, that's the hate when it goes up all the time. Well, it's a... Say-la-v. Nobody is here from the library. We're having a little bit of a respite on the roads. Yeah, we got the truck back. And it's still working. We're at 550. Yeah, he took the other one up to Clarks. All right, I guess it's Clarks. I don't know if you've changed your name. The Red, the international. And that's getting the radiator work done on it. He's been limping through all winter. So they're doing that. So he's taking that up tomorrow. And other than that, he's good. They got the Bethel Mountain finalized. So that's good. We don't have to plow that for them anymore, which was good. So other than that, he's just hoping we don't get a ton of snow. Got the mud plows out just in case. And both in there. Yep. We got the mud plows out. Yeah. The lakes. No, he's just got some plows that he uses in mud season. They're set up a little differently. Instead of using the grater. They don't dig up quite so bad. Yeah. And they're not as hard on the trucks, I guess. Yep, yep. Terry, got anything to add tonight? Yeah, fire department's got one. Parkhouse for evacuation. We met Kevin, Kristen and I met with Ivan. Ian. He's very good about getting stuff around, that's for sure. But it used to be that the people would come out of there for a drill and go with the bean else, which is not really good and feasible because there's no room over there, other than a hallway. Crossing the 100. And you crossed 100. We thought about Pierce Hall, which is still not good because you crossed 100. Crossing 100, yeah. So we would like to have them come here. They would meet right there in front of the telephone building because I wouldn't have very many people coming from that way that quick and then get them over to here. And then we'd worry about it afterwards because this is always heated and you got a bathroom. So, I mean, they got about 16 right now there. So, you know, you're gonna have 20 people there probably that they care of them. And so we really need your permission to say that this is what we're gonna shoot towards and then we'll have a couple of drills. You talked with the emergency crew about that. How's that, what they wanna do? Who are they to say? What's that? Who are you talking about, emergency? Korba? Like, like... Makayla? Makayla and... They'll have nothing to do with this if for a fire. I know, but about if this would be the... If it was gonna do it, this is what we're gonna do. Okay, I just was asking. I'm the one who's called to make the shot. Yeah, that's fine, I don't have a problem with that. And I don't want them on 100. Yeah, no, that's fine. And this is the safest place. I know you have a key, but the firehouse has a key to this building as well. No, we do not. So that would need to be arranged. Right. Or if Kristen's out of town. Or make arrangements with them or something. Yeah, that was part of the discussion that we wanted to have tonight. Like A, would it be okay for us to do this? And then B, is there like a key that we could leave? Did you want to do in the fire truck or in the lock box? I'd rather have it where he could have it if the firehouse would make more sense. Because he may be able to start getting people over here. He only lives at the hardware right now, so I mean, he's have to be there before I could get anybody to start even thinking about getting people over here. He could already be moving them. Is he on the fire department too? No. No. One there and you get one too. We get, Kristen's got one, so that's good enough. Why couldn't you just have one at the firehouse? Yeah. We want it. If you forget it, then somebody's gonna go get it and usually people aren't thinking about that. Ian would be able to haul them out of there and get them over here before we would get trucks up there. So we wanted them to have access. Correct, but I said we'd have another key. Kristen's got one. Where's kind of worse, I'll break the freaking door. It's not that big a deal. I mean, it really isn't. If you have a wire and call me, I'm across the street. Everybody's available, right? Looms across the road. I mean, we sent somebody to go get it. It's just that you can only have so many keys at the firehouse. If you go and do it, put a Knox box out here then. No, I don't like that idea. Not that it's up to me, but.  I can send 10 guys there. They can't even find a flashlight, so there's no sense in going with your key for a certain thing. And to be in the trucks, you're going to be in the way. Yeah. Well, let's back up to the, just using this building. I don't see any problem with it. I don't see any problem with it. It sits here. Part of the reason why we put the generator on this building was for that. For the shelter team, we just need. This is the emergency hub anyway. Yeah, yeah. Right, and they wouldn't stay for that long. I mean, I'm sure you're going to find places to take them. Yeah, you know, but you got phones here. So, you know, the guy can use phone and they can, you know. Wi-Fi. Yeah, in case the whole town goes out. The door's open. Yeah, yeah, I don't see any problem. I don't think that's a good plan. It's just a safer plan. Yeah, yeah. Keep them off for 100. Will we plan on a key in the knock box at Parkhouse? Yeah, that's where he's, or at least talk to him and let him. I would say that would be the best box. Because even we could get it then. Yeah, not the other one. Because at the knock box, at the Parkhouse, we can get it. You know, whoever's there can get the key, and I'm not. No, that's good. I just think this is much safer. I mean, you get the elevator so they can get up the stairs. Yeah. Because there is some that are going to be. The only thing we don't have is ADA bathroom. Right, but they'll have to hump up. We'll work that out and get them somewhere as out as, you know, soon. Yeah.  Yeah, no, you wouldn't want them in there. Well, it's better than the Bean House, Pierce Hall. Yeah, yeah, a little more accommodating, but I don't like the idea of them walking across Route 100. No, that's the way all your trucks are coming from my way. Yeah, if you're on fire over there, that that Route 100 is going to be busy anyway. You're going to have so much stuff coming this way. And then it's going to come out of the south after that. So there's no sense trying to go south either. Right, exactly. Yep. All right. We had a really good meeting with him. I don't know what school's going on. We don't. I haven't had training with school in 10 years, probably. Since we criticized him on how to do it once, we don't get invited anymore, OK? All right. Oh, you're just going to have them all done? What's that? Utilities. Well, I guess in utilities, I'd like to talk about an executive session. You got it. Jeff? He is not here. Jeff's not here. How about grant updates, sir? OK, I've got a couple. Our remaining $260,000 was allocated and moved over the way that it should be. So as soon as we found that out, I submitted invoice two. On February 7th, they deposited $260,000 into our tracking, which has since been paid back to Mascoma towards the bridge. I signed off on the Jones Mountain FEMA. The total there was 6,755. We're expecting to get 5,066. I also signed off on town-wide debris. We had a whole bunch of locations, and they were able to put them into one. That was a total of 4,933. Right now, we're expecting that we'll get 3,699 of that. However, that is a CAT-A category in the FEMA. And on the 9th, we heard that we may be getting 100% of that, so that's hopeful. And on the 9th, I submitted the FY25 Class II road ray grant for Bethel Mountain with the help of Rita. And you could do that every month for us, right? Big numbers. Thank you. I know it. Keep it going. OK, I'll try my best. That's what I do. Great. Do you have any in the public on Zoom? No one wants to speak about anything? Our Zoom has dwindled. And in the room? Why? You know? I thought just bringing up what West Hill Bridge bond is because the ballots are going out and people don't understand that they've been calling. So maybe just kind of stating why we've gone to bond or just get it out there, whether it's on the paper as well for Martha. And I did do a timeline to help with that. We were approached by the US Forest Service conveniently after homeowners on West Hill Road had been asking for a bridge to be replaced because it didn't carry enough weight to bring in well-drillers, concrete trucks, et cetera, heavy equipment things so they were not able to improve their homes. But then the United States Forest Service came in and said that they have a plan to do a logging operation. And they'd like to have used West Hill Road for access. And would we allow them to pay for the bridge? We said, sure. Sounds like a great deal. And they had X dollars to contribute towards that. COVID came along. Things moved slowly. The project went out to bids. In the meantime, contractor prices went sky high. So the project came in. They still stuck to what they were going to give us. But the project came in about 35% higher than what they were giving us. We weren't prepared to look a gift horse in the mouth and turn it away. So we bit the bullet and we proceeded with the project. And so now we do have an obligation of $355,000 that is borne upon the town. But it is only one third of what the project cost. So it still is a bargain for the town of Rochester. And the residents on West Hill Road are happy. And the Forest Service is happy. They're a very good neighbor. So we wanted to accommodate them. And that's why we are where we are, borrowing money for our portion of the bridge. Does that cover it? It covers it pretty good. Total project cost was $1,122,939. So to be on the hook for $359 is not bad. We risked losing the $775,000 in funding that we had aligned already if we didn't do the project. So that was one of the main driving forces of doing the project. Was the fact that we could lose that much of the project, that $775,000 that we got for the project. Now is the fact that there is a up-to-standard bridge at the bottom of that road going to increase the property values of those? We're going through a term one assessment in the next couple of years. Couple of years we'll find out. It could be something we point out to them. Yeah. Take note of the new bridge. Yeah. It'll also come about by way of the homeowners on that road have had wish lists of things to do. So you might see the properties improve. There is one large landowner that has been waiting to build their house because of it. So yes, this will improve our tax base and bring in more tax dollars. All right. And the delays, there were so many delays, but there was so much that happened. I mean, the month after we were approached for the opportunity, the April 15th storm hit that took out Bethel Mountain. So we were pretty well running. Distracted over that way. Yeah. Yeah. All right. There's nothing else. I will move to adjourn and move into executive session. Thank you. I second. You second? All right, non-favorite? Thank you. All right. OK. Thank you. All right.


Some of you are familiar maybe with that Dr. Hugh Lenn from Hawaii, it's called Ho'oponopono. And basically it's the same teaching, it's like empty your mind of everything that you think about anyone. He literally was hired to go to award an institute for the criminally insane. And he went there and there's so much turnover with these directors at this institute for the criminally insane in Hawaii. And when he went there he just had this feeling that he was there to forgive. And so he started looking through the charts and the papers of all of the clients that are supposed to be under him. And forgiving everything that he saw on the charts. Did he do intake interviews? No. He didn't even talk to these people. Now how's that for a psychotherapist? Not even talking to the client. That would be like, ah, he simply took their files and he forgave. He said everything in these files must be what my consciousness is showing me. That's why I've got these files in front of me.  And I need to free my mind and release everything in every one of these files. And he didn't even interview the people. He would see them in the halls and he didn't even call them into his office and didn't even chat with them. He simply did it all and he cleared the entire war.  He didn't last as the director because they had to shut the institution down. He lost his job. He forgave himself out of the job because he saw that everything that was in these folders about these so-called criminally insane people, clients, were just simply judgments. So that's really how powerful the mind is.  And where is the rent going to come from? Immediately the ego went to work in almost like a very logical way. Starting to make a case, the initial reaction was no. And then the ego immediately started to build a case to support the no. Then her partner Nicholas had been feeling the same thing. It's time for you to move on. He had spoken it but then they're starting to get more and more guidance. You don't just get the guidance, quit your job and then you're just left there with no more instructions. That's just like one destruction and then the next destruction comes and then the next and the next. And it's like you have to be led to this place of perfect oneness and forgiveness so the instructions come. But it's really great just to be able to watch your reactions sometimes to these things that come in. I have to say I think back to some of the things I was guided to do and certainly I resisted and had reactions. I mentioned I think yesterday I believe it was when I was guided to transfer from one university program to another that I literally resisted the guidance over and over and over until I started making myself sick. And I could see that I was just fighting myself and then I stopped. Then there was such a sense of relief when I finally just went okay, okay, alright. And then that's the way it goes for us. When we resist it, it's a struggle when we just yield into it. It's very sweet.


Okay, so the next talk is on permuted puzzles and cryptographic hardness and Justin will give the talk right hi I'm Justin, and I will tell you about permuted puzzles and cryptographic hardness later Right now. I'm going to talk about private information retrieval Which is the main reason that anybody should care about permuted puzzles and it's also something I guess you've already heard about but just to like remind you so in private information retrieval we have Some database that's on a server and you have and some client that wants to access this database without revealing which part of this database is looking at and Of course the two basic requirements are that the client should actually get the bit of the database that he's interested in and that the The curious server should learn nothing about which bit the client is accessing Okay, so the in Traditional focus and private information retrieval has been on minimizing the communication between the client and server like specifically trying to do better than the trivial solution where the server sends everything to the Client and by now we know how to do like poly logarithmic overhead or maybe even O of log I don't know but in this talk We're going to focus on something different which is the amount of computation that is done by the server So there is like a trivial linear lower bound on the amount of work that the server needs to do because if it if It doesn't touch some bit of the database and you know that the client is not looking at that bit Still though, we're going to try to do better than that by allowing the server to do some preprocessing That's what we would hope for And so this notion of private information retrieval scheme are not just a client but also the server runs in sublinear time Was termed doubly efficient private information retrieval in TCC two years ago So the question is does doubly efficient private information retrieval exist and I have no idea. I don't have any candidates and I don't know of any impossibility results However, there is like a useful relaxation still of doubly efficient pure I guess you can think of as a secret key version of pure In this version Well, there's a secret key and you need to have the secret key in order to Process a database or to make queries to the database and privacy is guaranteed against the adversary adversary that does not have the secret key So intuitively this corresponds to a setting where the database is actually like owned and controlled by the client But the client is just storing his own database on some Snoopy server So this notion of a secret key Private information retrieval scheme is actually sufficient for some applications like a homomorphic encryption for RAM programs Okay, now the next question is the secret key doubly efficient private information retrieval exist I also don't really know but I have like some more reason to think that it might exist So there's basically one candidate construction that was in the same TCC papers In 2017 and within this there's like sort of like one fuzzy construction There are some ways you can play with parameters and vary it a little bit But this is fundamentally like an ad hoc construction. It's not based on any standard cryptographic assumption And it seems to me like it's very hard to try to construct the scheme based on it on a Standard assumption, although I don't have any formal evidence to justify this So I want to show you briefly what the candidate scheme looks like even though it's not Really the focus of this talk sort of So the secret key is involves a pseudorandom permutation and also an encryption key Although like mostly we'll forget about the encryption key. So what you do is you take your database and you encode it in a locally decodable code specifically we consider the locally decodable code that is the read-molder code and so You don't need to know what that is So we encode the database and then we randomly permute all the entries of the database under under this permutation pie And we encrypt each entry of the database now Said that you want to look up an entry of this database privately. So here's the The scheme that we proposed First I'm being a little bit vague first you sample a low-degree curve I'm not too low-degree, but say like the degree is a security parameter Through the point that you're interested in in the in the read-molder encoding the database Now instead of just you take some points on this curve and you Ask the server you like permute these points yourself and you ask the server to tell you like the values at the permuted points and Now you just decrypt the responses that you receive and use some polynomial interpolation Which is it's just some local decoding procedure. That's guaranteed by the code. You don't need to Worry too much about that if you're not familiar with read-molder So does the scheme make sense to everybody? Okay, so Yeah, that's like roughly a scheme you can play with a little bit by like Varying how you choose the points on the curve and you can like maybe throw in some noise too but That's that's this is basically the only scheme that we have So to be a little bit more formal about what we want out of this scheme will tell you like what the security game is So Again, you have a challenge and an adversary you sample your random your random key and now an adversary picks two different sequences of Queries that I might want to make If you want you can think about these as being adaptive, but for now like just for simplicity. Let's say they're all chosen at once The challenger like just makes the Deep that the peer queries basically it samples the curves that go through the specified points for like one of these two Two query sequences it permutes all these points and the adversary then tries to guess which which of the two query sequences The challenger chose Okay So if this were to be secure, where would the computational hardness be coming from? Well, the hope is that this secret permutation is Somehow adding computational hardness because we can we know we can show that if you don't have this permutation if you just Just use the identity then the scheme is completely broken So for the rest of the talk, I'm going to try to look at this phenomenon a little non a little bit more like Does adding a secret permutation ever actually create computational hardness and more specifically for our candidate construction is this assumption plausible? So for the first question does a secret permutation ever create computational hardness? Well, we formalize this question a little bit better. That's just what these permuted puzzles are all about if you've been waiting and this builds on one of these TCC papers in 2017 and We do show that yes, there are actually examples you can you can like Show that permutations create computational harness from like standard crypto crypto graphic assumptions Although this won't we can't show that the PI the private information retrieval scheme is secure from standard cryptographic assumptions Just like this general phenomenon Can happen? okay, I mean the yeah, we show this based on random oracles or a DDH assumption or For me my showed us a very clean example of something based on LPN Okay, and this talk I'm not going to talk about the DDH. I'm just going to do everything in idealized models So on the second contribution is looking at whether or not like actual secret key DAPR schemes are plausible and We still don't really know but we do rule out one very broad class of attacks, which we sort of formalize So in terms of the abstraction of our pre-permuted puzzle So in secret key DAPR we have this Distribution we can think of it as a set of points You can think of that as being a binary string where ones indicate where you have a point in general We'll think about having just a bunch of distributions on n-bit strings And we wanted to say that when you permute all these points then Somehow stuff became indistinguishable, right? So in the and by permuting I just mean that you're taking the bits of x and you're just rearranging them according to one permutation You reuse the same permutation in every sample And we wanted to say that these are These like these permuted distributions are indistinguishable and like pretty standard sense You pick two different sequences of these distributions the challenger picks a random one of these sequences and picks around the permutation And now it'll answer according to the sort of permuted distributions Right and in this talk I'm just going to focus on K equals to where there's two choices of distributions or other than like n different choices of distributions just for simplicity because that seems to capture the phenomenon of the computational hardness so That's that's like what a permuted puzzle is you have some distributions They're easy to distinguish you add a random permutation and now they're hard to distinguish so it's Not too hard to construct these in the random oracle model I'll just show you the construction and assert that it's obviously a good permuted puzzle So you have a random oracle Just random function that takes inputs and just end bit outputs So in each sample I'm every time a sample I'm going to sample basically new random oracles You can derive some random oracles by choosing a seed and like whatever it's pretty standard You can derive n new oracles The first distribution is going to be a description of these n oracles and Like an input and then like just apply the oracles in order and then you get an output Okay, and the second distribution is going to be the same thing except at the end instead of doing the output You just you just the distribution just contains a uniformly random string Okay, so just so we're on the same page. It's very easy to distinguish these two distributions, right? You just Apply the hash functions in order and see that at the end you get the the claim value Hey, but now if and if you don't get s1 through sn in order if you just get them in some random order My claim is that like obviously in the random oracle model You can't tell whether why is the result of applying of check of like Computing or iteratively applying these hash functions in the correct order, right? So I'll just say that's Obviously true, and if you want a formal proof you can look at the paper All right I'll show you one more construction of a hard-promoted puzzle just to give you a taste of What are what things look like and it's in the generic? I'm going to argue that it's secure in the generic group model But the same construction actually you can show it to be a hard-promoted puzzle under the DDH assumption So you have your group She's a random vector over is EP He is order of your group and now your two distributions are just two Vectors of things in the exponent in the first case every the vector in the exponent is orthogonal to you And in the second case the things in the exponent have no relation to you whatsoever So again, these are two distributions that you can easily distinguish just by doing an Dot product in the exponent or you can check whether You dot the exponent is equal to zero just linear operations Sorry Like behind by one on my slide count Okay, so On the other hand if if you permute these two vectors The claim is that you just can't you can't do this simple inner product test anymore And in the generic model you can actually show that these sorts of inner products in the exponent are the only thing That you can do to try to distinguish a vector of encoded group elements from random So as long as you is not like say a constant vector or something close to it There will be no fixed vector that you can try to do an inner product with which will be zero with any Noticeable probability Okay, so now we know that there are hard for me to puzzle in principle at least permutations can make Easily distinguishable distributions become indistinguishable so the next thing I wanted to talk about was how to Just analyze permuted puzzles in general like how how to think about whether or not a specific puzzle should be computationally hard And in particular this is going to be motivated by our a secret key deep here constructions Okay, so The idea is and I don't have a like a formal statement or proof But once you when you have these distributions of and bit strings, and you apply a random permutation to each of the strings that kills a lot of the structure of the ways in which this Distribution these these strings could be non-random I will mention that it is important that I'm talking about distinguishing these strings from random if you talk about just General distinguishability of two distributions. I can construct kind of complicated Examples that I don't really know how to how to rule out so Yeah, does anybody have any good ideas for how you can what kind of structure you might look at I don't mind no talking so one one thing you can try to look at in In Like distributions after it's been commuted is something like say the number of bits that are still one because that's preserved by a permutation right, so you can if if a Distribution has has a hamming weight that's Distributed differently than uniformly random string that of course you'll be able to distinguish it even with a permutation Another thing you might try to do is look for some weird correlations between bits So maybe if you have a distribution There is some pair of bits that are never both one or there are just some like small number of bits that are distributed differently From uniformly random So you can look for all for these bits You can try all small subsets of the bits and you can do this even if you have a random permutation Okay, like one other thing and this is the last thing I promise that you can I can think of that you can try to do to Distinguish some permuted strings from random is look for some linear structure So for instance say that your x1 your all your x's are contained in a Like a low-dimensional subspace It don't necessarily know which one is just some subspace that they're contained in you can check this By just doing linear algebra like Gaussian elimination or something and this is also preserved if all of the samples are permuted by the same permutation And I don't really have any other like fundamentally different algorithmic ideas for how you can distinguish It's sort of permuted puzzle thingies from random strings And for the rest of the talk I'm going to focus on like a generalization of these ideas one and two called statistical query algorithms So yeah, what's a statistical query algorithm? So oh Everything appeared all at once, okay so I Guess you can just look at the slide while I talk but given a bunch of samples from this distribution you're trying to tell whether or not it's uniformly random or not right and so a statistical query algorithm just limits the algorithm in a Specific way where the algorithm doesn't get to directly look at the samples instead It gets to look at essentially one bit per sample So for each sample it says it specifies a function and it gets that function applied to that sample and it gets as many samples as it wants in this form where it just gets one bit per sample and And then at the end it tries to use this is one bit per sample Queries to to guess whether this this distribution is random or not And so this is a this is a like an idealized model of learning that was introduced by Kearns to study Pack learning that's robust against noise and we kind of thought it was a neat model to Like to study for just these distribution distinguishing problems that arise in deep here Okay, so The sounds like a really like silly moderate like if you're only looking at one bit of each sample, what can you possibly do? Actually quite a lot so In this whole field of like robust pack learning algorithms basically every single algorithm is In is a statistical query algorithm like there were some algorithms before statistical queries were introduced and those were later found to actually be equivalent to some statistical query algorithms There is one exception which is well-known BKW algorithm for learning parity with noise when the Yeah, the secret is very very short Just very slightly super logarithmic And like I said we're we're sort of Studying statistical query algorithms in a slightly different setting than they were originally considered but we're still able to show lower bounds which is I Guess part of why we consider them Okay, so what can't statistical query algorithms do? So one thing they can't do which is you might laugh that is I can't do Gaussian elimination Like there it's known that you can't learn parity with statistical query algorithm And that shouldn't that should make sense because there's this type correlation between statistical query algorithms and noise robust learning And we know that we can't learn parity with noise. We hope that we can't learn parity with noise And in this work, we show that these statistical query algorithms also cannot break Even like a toy problem in That's like similar to deep Europe, but presumably easier to break So what is this toy problem? Why is it different than the actual construction and why can't statistical query algorithms break it? So it looks kind of similar to a setup you saw like 10 minutes ago if you remember that at all except that instead of for these these polynomials instead of Being these parametric polynomials that can like intersect themselves and all that we're just looking at Graphs of polynomials, so these are just simpler to analyze. That's the main reason that they're part of the toy problem simpler to think about for sure and We want to say that when you have a Low degree again degree is a security parameter polynomial versus a random function These distributions become indistinguishable When you add a random permutation Okay, so I'll just try to sketch why this is true and Then I'll be almost done So suppose you have a function f that you're this is going to give you your one bit about some sample and Also, I'm just going to make your life easier as the attacker I'm going to say instead of a uniformly random permutation We're just looking at a restricted class of permutations Where you just sample each column separately and then you sample the ropes either need to serve then you permute the columns And in order to show that I want to show that Your statistical query cannot give you any information like so to do that I want to say that the probability that your query is returns a one Doesn't even really depend on the secret permutation or like what bit the Challenger chose so like with very high probability this Over the truth. Yeah, basically when the challenger chooses this permutation with very high probability This probability is very close to some fixed value. So you can simulate the result of the query by yourself Yeah, you can simulate the query by yourself Okay, so What I like to I want to explain why this is true and I'm just going to show that For the distribution on the left the variance in this probability is negligible so the variance of is Equal to this quantity, right? This is just how it's defined, but if you look at this You look at this quantity It's like saying you take a random permutation and then you take an x and take another x prime And yeah, and and like what's the probability that f of pi of x is one and f of pi of x prime is one If you if you like stare at this expression enough, that's what it is and here It's saying if you take a random permutation pi and another and a different random permutation pi prime An axe an axe prime Then like what it's the same thing It's like just stare at those those expressions enough and it turns out that what you need to bound is a statistical distance between These two different distributions. So one is if you take two samples and you apply the same permutation And the other distribution if you take two samples and you apply different permutations Okay And and then you and you yeah, yeah, so So the the difference between these distributions is just related to the the size of the intersection Between so when you when you apply the same permutation to two different sets The distribution is uniformly random Conditioned on like those two sets having the whatever overlap they had Whereas when you do two different permutations, they're just there's just some new distribution of like how many points They overlap on and other than that that distribution is also uniformly random So what we need to prove at the end of the day to finish this bound is that the when you take two Degree lambda polynomials you look at their graphs and you look at how many points these polynomials Agree on it's the same roughly distribution of number of points as if you'd have two random functions And there's some parameters about like the field size versus the degree and stuff to make this work But that's that's like what we that's like the lemma at the bottom of this statistical query lower bound All right, that's all the technical stuff So for future directions I said that there are these different types of algorithms that you can use to try to break permuted puzzles And I addressed two of them and said that those don't work. So what about the third one? We want to address that and actually in a Some work in progress we show that this toy problem, which was like the easiest thing that we didn't know how to break before We can actually break with a linearization with a sort of linearization attack We don't know how to break the actual full schemes We do want to figure out what's going on at these full schemes We can maybe attack them maybe reduce them to standard assumptions Maybe we can formulate some sort of idealized model of like these really are the only types of attacks can do a permuted puzzles And show that these attacks don't work I Sort of feel like there should be some reason that you can't reduce the standard assumptions But I don't know how to say anything formal. So that would be cool if we could do that And finally, I still want to have a not secret key double efficient pure scheme. This is a keyless scheme I Have no idea. It'd be really cool if you could figure out whether those exist That's it. Thank you That's just for just 10 Thanks. So one thing that you could consider maybe you did already Is to not just ask about the points that are on the curve But also add some dummy points and this intuitively is sort of like adding noise, which seems to be useful in many settings So do you think this would be helpful in particular? You have an attack on this toy problem So does your attack work also and on sort of a noisy version of the toy problem? Yeah, it's a great question We're definitely thinking about the effect of noise. We don't have anything definitive to say at the moment But yeah, like we don't we are attack doesn't work when you add noise Okay, any other questions? Have you thought about other applications of these assumptions? Like are they useful for building other things? I have no other Applications that I am aware of thanks Okay, let's thank Justin again


Hi everyone, in this video we will cover how to link a Lyric controller with Apple Homekit and create scenes with other Homekit compatible devices. Apple Homekit can be downloaded from the App Store on your iOS device. Using the search function, type in Homekit. The icon can be identified by a white background with a yellow house in the middle. The Lyric controller needs to be revision 01.04 or higher to support Apple Homekit and requires a connection to AlarmNet 360. For the Lyric controller to integrate successfully with Homekit, both the Lyric controller and the iOS device with the Home app installed must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network. To add a new device into Homekit, press the plus symbol in the top right, then choose Add accessory. When adding a device to Homekit, you are presented with several options. By default, it will ask you to scan the Homekit QR code. For the Lyric controller, choose the option Don't have a code or can't scan. If the Lyric controller hasn't been previously set up with Homekit, it will populate in the list on the next screen. Select the option for Lyric AIO and you will be prompted to enter a Homekit code. The Lyric controller will prompt you for the master code, then populate the Homekit code. Enter this into the app. Once the last digit is entered, it will start the pairing process and the Lyric controller will return to the home screen. If the Lyric controller was previously set up with Homekit, you can reset this by selecting Security, Tools, entering the panel's master code, Advanced, then Reset Homekit. Once paired, the Homekit app will take you through the setup process. First, it will ask you to name the Lyric network as a whole. The next steps will walk you through your devices. Pressing Identify accessory will cause the panel to beep and state the zone descriptor. You can name your zones in Homekit and choose the room location of the device. The Lyric controller will be identified by a red strobe within the icon. Other than the Lyric controller, the only devices that populate in Homekit are burglary zones such as door contacts, window contacts, and motion detectors. After configuring your devices as desired and finishing the setup, you can rearrange the icons as needed. Press Edit in the top right, then press and drag the icons to the desired order. Press Done when finished. You can now arm and disarm the Lyric controller through Homekit by pressing and holding the icon for the Lyric controller. To exit the Arming options screen, press anywhere outside of the controls. Our automation device for this video is an Apple Homekit-enabled Honeywell Lyric T5 thermostat, which you can see is also within the app. To create a scene to allow multiple devices to work in tandem, click the plus symbol in the top right of the screen, then choose Add Scene. You can use the suggested scenes or create your own. For this video, we will create a scene for leaving home. Once making the selection, you can add and remove accessories as needed. For me, the Lyric controller was already added to the scene by default, but I also want to add the Lyric T5 thermostat. To do this, click Add or Remove Accessories and select the devices for this scene. Press Done once finished. Now that both devices are added, press and hold on the device that should make a change. The Lyric controller is already noted to arm away, so we just need to make a change to the thermostat. Press and hold the thermostat icon. For the thermostat, you were presented with a slider to adjust the temperature. Change this to the desired temperature while away from home, then press anywhere outside of the controls to exit this mode. Once finished, press Done. Back on the home screen, you will see the newly created scene listed. Tap the icon for the scene to run it. The panel armed away, and the thermostat changed its cool set point to 80. You can also use Siri to run the scenes by launching Siri and saying the scene's name. Leave home. If you wish to control these devices remotely, either an iPad can be used as a hub if it's always left at home and connected to Wi-Fi, or an Apple TV fourth generation will be required. That's all for this video. Thanks for watching.