commander for the on state police i have oversight on direct oversight uniformed division of the department captain troy is the a troop commander he has direct oversight as well of his the vermont state police is going to make this right now with the town of jericho we're going to do whatever we need to do to restore the trust and the confidence of the members of the board as well as your residence here in town and we're going to do everything in our power to uncover every cent that is owed to you that is our commitment to you that was the first question if you're ever but you're right i did reach out to the the captain the local troop commander here and i did ask him to request some time with you folks tonight primarily so that we would have a level of connectivity between the vermont state police as well as this border i see this kind of in a two tiered fashion where you have a local troop commander with captain troy all available to you from this point forward regarding this matter so that you have a direct point of contact at the local level and i'm also going to make myself available personally to you folks as the physical force commander and before we leave here tonight you have several ways to get in contact with us both the job and off the job no matter what time of day or night so that if you have an issue that you need to address or you have a question about with your citizens that you can reach out and you can make contact with the captain or myself i also see this is an opportunity to put some faces with some names or might be in a rural state we think of it as being small that unfortunately i don't personally get around the state nearly as much as i should and i hope that just by having this conversation early on in this process it develops a comfort level at least with us so that you feel you have some resources available to you so that if you have those questions you'll be able to pick up the phone or pick up an email whatever scoffed a bill for you and reach out to us and know who you're talking to on the other end of that phone email i also hope that this forum tonight just starts the process of an open dialogue with the command staff here in the vermont state police in this select ward i don't think that it's fair to you folks not to have that resource available to you and and my hope in coming here tonight early on i know that the colonel made a visit with you mr chairman early on but i think that this is going to be a process and i anticipate that this is going to be a lengthy investigation along the lines of the investigation i obviously can't get into the specific details of the investigation where the investigation is that there's different pieces of the investigation that have made it out to the press i'm not go comment specifically on the investigation but what i can tell you is that since this investigation started there have been more than twenty investigators committed to this specific investigation and it's a high priority for our how how much is done already because i'm not directly involved in that facet of the situation what i can tell you is we feel it's critical to reinforce the level of confidence with this board that the resources are dedicated to just investigation and by the nature these types of investigations they can be quite dangerous and there are there are a lot of different documents that need to be checked and there's a lot of different documents that need to be cross referenced and we have a ton of confidence in those investigators in that process but adding into that we want to make sure that no stone is left unturned in this investigation we want to find every cent that you folks are old to make sure that you're made whole when this process is done are there other towns or the ball will be right now i can't answer that question we know based upon some preliminary information that your town is directly involved and that's why we've come here tonight to meet directly with you just a point of clarification tardo it is our town administrator ok he is this the staff person yes tim and i are the only board members present directly with the chipping county state's attorney's office t j dawn of the draw for us and really specific questions around the investigation really need to go to that office not going to compromise the investigation but i can say that currently that twenty twenty plus investigators are currently looking at the last three years initially and really dissecting every component of the last three years in the documentation that's available and then i anticipate that that's going to build out based upon the information that i received from the state's attorney's office back six years and i think and i believe that has to do with the statute of limitations cetera i think the other point that i think is just needs to be made tonight is where are we at then currently with your contract and in the past of the station commander is responsible for other specific town contracts that are signed on to at the local level and i've directed captain troy bill to take personal responsibility for the town contract that's still in existence with the town of jericho so he will be personally responsible for administering that contract making all of a logistical arrangements at the local level the scheduling piece with the accountability of the hours and any activity that's generated from those contracts for you folks and then the follow up meetings with you to report back as to what activity occurred during those hours who is that did you say please  thought i was just going to throw it out of the ear to the board here i really see this is just an initial meeting with us and i think that we're going to have many more conversations down the road and i hope that you follow up with us as we intend to with you if we don't hear from you for a period of time we're going to reach out just to make sure that you're getting what you need because we recognize that you serve your citizens here in this town and they have many questions so if you become that conduit of questions and in that works for you whatever works best for you you tell us and that's the way we're going to handle it if it means to come back to jericho we're prepared to do that however many times it takes to make sure that you have a resource if there's things that i can't disclose because of the timing of the investigation i will tell you that but if there are things that i can disclose and i can  from what you just said sir to use sounded like you might be able willing if it's needed to have a public meeting where public is able to ask questions yes and i would only ask that we consider the timing of that relative to the investigation so that we don't find that you know the majority of the questions are centered around the investigation rate that is that from a general nature about the contracts and things of that nature if it's a  cordon it that with you folks if that's something that we want to set up in the set up an itinerary meeting and make sure that we run the same page so that we can bring something to the table and cover any questions that you have well i've already had people ask me if there's anything right now that we can do to to to to double check the hours that are currently being locked i mean what is the new system that's going to be in place well specifically to that question i'll refer that to the captain because he's going to be personally responsible for making sure that that process is in place and that however you would like to set it up with him as far as meetings of the reporting process he's familiar with that but if there's something above and beyond that i will leave that to the captain yeah i mean i'll be glad to me with these offers you want to meet and then feel you know everything that's going on and you know keep you updated whether you want weekly or monthly whatever statewide as a result of the situation has gone down and our commitment is we're going to do everything we possibly can what i said actually leads to the second circle sorry the first concern with respect to how you respond and  mean this is a black eye toward apartment no question about it but i got to tell you it was an apartment no twenty six years and i've done internal affairs for four years and i tell you i'm very proud of this department and you know we're right by this we're going to make this right and  you know i just hate to see the actions of one you know of what happened here but we are looking at everything and one major said we want to make sure the same thing that you have your concerns we have those terms well and what happened we're looking at it and we're going to do everything  there was a woman i believe the surgeon to do something with had a barbecue ok and i felt like she was very responsive and very visible and you know i hope i hope that you know i just want to say publicly that least least if live we saw an increase in complaints and it and personally i saw a decrease of presence around the town it was noticeable you know i  something somehow i give you my word i'm or look i'm overseeing the contract now and we're going to be meeting regularly and i expect the same decrease you see i expect it to go the other way and what will mean if it's not well we'll take steps to do whatever we have to but i you you promised that we'd be compensated for theft of time or or yes ok is that is that compensation contingent upon successful prosecution know of the case you know so if he if a lawyer convinces that there's not enough proof convinces you know the judge that there's not enough proof and found not guilty this purpose exactly card like to get like the captain mentioned i'd like to leave you with my business cards i've got several of them i've written my personal cell phone number on the back so that if for some reason you can't reach the captain directly then the next call can come directly to me between him and myself one of us is available twenty four hours a day and we'll continue to plan to have open communications w captain yourself he will keep me updated as things progress a sparse communications go if there's a question in the field can be answered better at the headquarters level at the division level simply don't hesitate to reach out and they the hottest you know complaint spots are absent some of the biggest issues because we had been willing not to to on sergeant deegan and didn't necessarily feel that there was a great response to those concerns so maybe we can start fresh thank you folks very much for your time this is kind of a treat for me i guess i want to start out by saying that i've been pursuing it to talk to him about you coming back to the lead for health insurance and  i've explained to you and he thought that it would be a good idea for me to present this to you folks directly you may be aware that the league had a business model with health insurance for almost twenty seven years or twenty seven years that we contracted to help us contracted with one carrier on behalf of all members of the health trust and you know health insurance you may be aware that health only added to the premiums going up so this year we went with a different business model and employed an initiative called carrier choice where we took individual me disappear out to the better is the fact that everyone in the pool is not contributing are suffering from the higher rates due to the fact that know it's not that it's cheaper with unemployed with nothing you were being everyone in the pool was rated the same because it was just our overall claims experience and so i like to say we washed the claims experience clean in the state of vermont is a community rated state so for employers with fewer than fifty people the rate is the rate so wherever you procured your health insurance from any of the plans available to small groups with fewer than fifty employees if you choose plan it's the same price no matter where you go and that's  said that is the infanticide of unbundling because we were rated based on our claims experience when i say we the health trust in all of the members and are rated on our claims experience which was happened demographic or something all twenty go off on their own and get a better deal for themselves which means the rescue is somewhat worth we're still on the other hand if they stay  five doesn't really even matter i mean it's just that in this we were what happens is because we were a pool we were rated on our on our pools claims experience so there could be another pool that was exactly the same size but for whatever reasons had lower claims experience and so their rates would be different than ours and so because ours were climbing we were almost you know we're creating a problem creating a problem for ourselves where it had worked great twenty seven years ago very well because so how are you going to be so we took it apart and so now most of the cities and towns in the state of vermont have fewer than fifty employees so they're  know because you're going to get me into complex territory but you are currently on the plan and i i'm not positive if you're in a pool or not currently  is what you're saying that's what i'm saying great right that we were losing that before because we are this huge company you were involved in the pool of that great had high claims experience you know why we went out on our own right and we're now  sort of there is the history and here is what we're doing now so what we're doing now is last i said we're taking this path of these out to market individually and repealing whatever you know plans are out there what makes sense for them their money at all you will what we are offering is exactly and the plan that you're on is actually probably one of the more popular plans amongst municipalities since the high deductible two thousand for singles and four thousand person to person tam lease and so what i have in here and i'll take you through these so what we're offering is to provide you with exactly the same plan for exactly the same price that you're paying now except that what you should know is that with all community rated plans there's like a four percent commission that's built in and so with the league we're still a nonprofit we're still owned by the municipalities of vermont and so when we entered this we partnered with comportment because we are not a broker from this so they are the broker that we work with for most small towns fewer than fifty employees we are a primary contact you know they're not working with take our comportment but what we're offering is additional programs and services that we think may remember when heidi joyce used to come in and she would do the health screenings she still does those she comes in and does bone density and cholesterol and sugar and blood in all of that stuff which is terrific for employees that might never go see a doctor so great early warning thing in addition to that she also still arranges the pollution clinics so that's an old familiar benefit of being in the health trust that you would have back in addition to that we are we've contracted for services and we did this after you folks left so this is a health advocate which is not affiliated with any carrier it's was so that this is available twenty four seven for employees and one that i the two things that i like to point out here are right above these two so help resolve insurance claim and work with insurance companies health advocate is primarily staffed by claims benefits specialists and registered nurses so what that means is they speak health insurance so when employees are used to calling customer service blue cross blue shield or m as good as those programs are you have a complex claim where you got denied for something you weren't expecting to be denied and they start talking this lingo and then you know then they transfer you to somebody in pharmacy if it has anything to do with prescriptions which pharmacy has now outsourced you know you're not even talking to someone from blue cross anymore and you don't even know what they're saying so these folks do so when an employee has an issue like that they have to complete an authorization form to allow which is just a two you know just a few lines of information that authorizes them to work on the employees behalf they always get back with the their resolution so they fix the problem or they'll tell you how to fix the problem is the employee or core result meaning that you understand what went wrong and even though you wish it was still covered or whatever at least you'll understand they're also really great if you you know sometimes if you go to the doctor and you get a you know catastrophic diagnosis people don't hear very much after that and you know you go home and you're talking to your relatives and they have all these questions you can actually call health advocate you know talk to a nurse she can actually reach out to your provider and you know talk to them and get back to you and help you to understand what they said isn't all of that stuff if employees have elderly parents that might live in another state and they need to move into a facility you know you're not in another state what do you know and they can you can call them and they can give you references for you know reputable facilities and things of that nature twenty four seven  cobra administration and again this is because we feel most municipalities in vermont don't have an h r person they don't have a claims benefit specialist to break through in those things everybody's you know  you don't have to call them there's on line whatever you notify them and they take care of all of the employing notifications and what if they accept are they to climb and all of that included this is just a little piece on you know kind of what is required with the cover this paragraph here on the second page who is responsible for notifying qualified beneficiaries this is where this talks about  contracting with choice cobra this there is no cost to the town for this this is also included and this is not a marketing it's a sign that was what you're interested in so the next  the next and last piece and on the side is this is a broker of record level up if you were interested in these programs all you have to all you have to do  is this needs to be printed out and jericho letterhead and signed and then we send it off to blue cross and we get you started the census information and then the last thing that i included is another these wellness programs is she makes these available to employees on a monthly basis and they're just wellness ten thirty usually appropriate to the season and that sort of thing and so we you know it's the same old thing that the allegiance always we only work with municipality we've chosen these things because we think that they are specifically for municipalities and we think that you might as well be yourselves or number whatever is the same nothing changes they don't have to get new cards they don't have to get new doctors and your billing stays the same nothing they won't employ might not know anything happened until you know their plan or they don't have you know i still come out and do orientations and walk them through so that they can understand i'm happy to come and meet with people one on one so they need to do to be able to do a presentation because of the speed table the town engineer and myself wanted to make sure that we got it exactly right the first time because the idea of the the ten sidewalks but marking the sidewalk the existing pavement leading to your side of the street table is that pavement you're talking about this right here that is the roach that's across sad walk on over the speed table so i mean and then it is somebody is like driveway to i mean i know you're not supposed to park there but are you can do anything to make it clear or their house was parka other than just painting talking about a sidewalk like you have painted a living strip basically this right here right is what i'm talking about this is where i was parked right i parked right here in my hand right so i understand what i have to move up right here cross so once you get on the other side of the road from the story generally i mean i think i know the glamour and dickinson and you in my place and everybody knows a lot more about traffic than i do but it just seems to me like if you don't finish it in puts maybe plant it didn't have that impact because you saw they were off the road but occasionally science plus the one in the middle is sufficiently confused that you think you know i better slow down until i see how it works  the problem is right now the fog line is still pretty visible and we don't want to have to fog lines to confuse people and it's pretty expensive to grind up the existing  speed barb's is the certainty of being caught is one hundred percent the penalty is very very small abo this is the speed table i'm not really familiar with speed table just the bumps from the same way but let me ask you something if a person is going the speed limit at twenty five can they go over these without slowing further you can go over dickinson recommended that we hire a pretty skilled paver to do it and i would also suggest that we probably hired they were to consider some of the firm to oversee the building of down were you approach to see if we could put some style next year no no it all happened so fast did anybody come to you and say we want you on the story then right yeah you know like it's i mean it's a store to visit it's not up it's a beautiful open so it's clear that's a good look i like the pictures of it and everything and i think the cars in front of it will ruin that picture but you still and what the intent is and how woods actually being how it actually kind of plays out you know quick overview of what the program is a landowner who has at least twenty five acres of land without any structure on it and asked to enter an agreement with the town whereby for a five year period their property eligible property is taxed at thirty percent of the assessed value they are not required to do anything more than welcome required to develop for five years for five during that and then the most recent agreement has its origins around two thousand and three prior to that all of the agreements they went down to ten acres but the difference was the agreed they were for five years but every year they automatically renewed for another year so it's essentially and if you wanted to leave the program you provided notice and it didn't turn it into four years after that notice so it was a pretty it was in perpetuity but the way it worked is a lot of those agreements lasted a long time because they automatically review what we presume where people in the program when i was there were more because it was down to ten acres and because you were locked in if you ever wanted to subdivide you were always withdrawing from the contract and having to pay a penalty what we've seen in the past year or two is only a five year contract because every landowner an opportunity after five years up now is because of the twenty eight contracts i thank him every exact number i think something like twenty one or so are up for renewal in two thousand and thirteen there are forty four properties in town that are actually in the state's current use program which is a much better program that insuring overlander farmland are working and states that they force you to make a decision up front what land may you want to develop future enroll that because you know this things in perpetuity and you're going to pay a fine if you ever take land out to a penalty or whatever to develop it so we've got two ideas are are all of the twenty  there's very little for the right to learn and the nice thing about current use is the state makes the town whole for the avoided taxes instead of the townspeople making the schools whole with our i mean our recommendation what we think is the best idea is if if the program were phased out and if people are really interested in it that they've been rolling current years that's what we think is the best result if the board does is reluctant to do that then i think the terms of the community need to change so that it's oh i think that's the right way much more to do the thing is you have to do it you have to face it because you chang agreement is and then it's up to the landowners at that time to decide if they can live with the new agreement the only thing that worries me a little bit is of the judgment  renewed it was using round numbers they had one hundred fifty acres and when they renewed it they took out seventy five acres no penalty you know they enjoyed a tax benefit for a long time they took it out so they could develop it but they had she's going to have some good ideas yeah yeah how we can do i mean if we keep it for another girl then i mean not just having the benefit but maybe adding a penalty well they should come tell the story it is a complicated story i don't want to know i know and i think i told my husband i said i think when we bought it it's not like it was certified organic so what it what can we do and he said yeah but when you buy companies it's not supposed to kill family with i was told right so that it's a big problem and this is a community organization so it's not just a question of what they can get away with legally and the question of you know what's the right thing the liabilities are on the only allowed to be used if you register that you use it and there are no registered users at all really so whoever used it is an absolute violation of law which means how they help you find out where this how they think they've stiffed traced it investigation going on the status of a show where that's coming from but the fact the the problem is that it's as if as you say it with yours it has absolutely devastated some gardens and this is been in contact with half the top soil for soil chemistry country and you know it can be you know a tiny little change in the rest of the environment  i mean if this were not a community organizations this were a pure hard bitten hard core graceful way you could never prove it was a source you couldn't get a penny out of the system if it were hard yes i still have a whole bunch of the stuff and you could hear you i realize you're right it's just this is an ugly situation and the only reason it's small it's not there's no money that can make up for the fact i don't have a car fresh tomatoes the stuff that's priceless i know i don't know that i'm a registered and like registered on the program like the pictures and submitted and i don't know if there's a conflict because i don't know if i have a conflict you know it's not here with their report but just i mean i