welcome to the select board meeting of may five i will try and project so tell me if i'm being quiet is there any public comment before we enter the rest of the agenda at four pm this afternoon gary and lincoln breasts are bringing our bill holder bill for ten minutes to wander the civil war war battle the wilderness final in which thousands of vermont it was so over a thousand vermonters were killed and others and it's a reminder to us opposed all right when a public hearing to consider rules to create interim zoning at trial in a court and jeff if you just want to introduce what's been going on for the benefit of anyone who hasn't paid attention or redevelop the site namely adding in some residential component and also opening the allowed this is up to more than just the uses or that we're in what's called the village virtual district  so select court put together a committee to examine rezoning the the property and identify whether or not needs to happen immediately and if so we would do what's called an interim zoning measure which goes into effect for two met several times and came up with a document that we're going to look at this evening that we're having a public hearing on which is a new proposal for interim zoning that does a great many things primarily it opens up different allowed pieces it makes  select were that review and approval body and it also has certain scandals that are offshore could be implemented if the select forward saw fit to do so which makes it optional rather mandatory which is they so get a lot more flexibility to potential projects and i know we have a number of the committee a number of the members of the committee here this evening we have marshall paulson christie a sip this evening so we will be able to make it so what we'd like to do is go through the document we have still have a couple of copies on a chair up here at the front of the room if anybody's interested will go through the changes that are proposed w go through a couple of changes that are proposed by proposed by our town planner and our our attorney that sort of clean up things make it a little more tidy without altering the substance of what the committee decided on would like to hear from you do anything or make any changes but they do are are interested in the interest because they feel that it may allow some sort of some possible uses that aren't allowed now and may make it easier for them to do things with their and they said that the purpose of the in terms arctic district are proposing is provide a location within the existing village poor for employment light industry commercial uses community spaces housing and other compatible uses that bring the value to the community and maintain richard's unique sense of place there were two primary goals to help restore and improve the economic vitality of richmond state designated village center by attracting desirable new businesses to the site restoring jobs and  right now primarily we're going to go with this proposal we would allow multiple uses of the property multiple commercial uses of residential component a good good mix for  so what we have a vision of the developer or the owner will come to us with a development proposal that would include a variety of uses we'll put that for the and we expect some sort of a master plan to be filed that developer proposal then we go into what we call special conditions and standards and they have to do with what your typical planning and zoning standards might be that have set backs which is how close to the property line can development happen you'll have to mentions such as  working suggest those changes of if the development application warrants it but they're not a mandatory standard we also have noise standards which were essentially just pointing back to our existing noise regulations exterior lighting again porting back to work systems lighting standards and other performance standards and energy efficiency is also being  optional requirement there are some energy efficiency standards for residential components for single family homes for commercial development it doesn't really apply as much so we're again leaving this up the select boards to allow the developer to propose something like board to have these option have the standards as knobs and if they feel it'll be beneficial to the project in the community allowed uses the proposal says all land development shall be reviewed as a condition to use that means there is nothing that can be come into that the owner can come in and get a building permit for without first coming to the select board the select board will review and a final decision shall come after the application is presumably presented at a preliminary interim zoning committee hearing we're actually going to propose that that be changed in order for the select board again to provide substantive feedback and then approval or denial would happen after that so conditional uses we have a list of conditional uses such as arts crafts studios bank brewpubs catering services commercial light industrial uses cooperative work space in the list goes on these are quite a long list of proposal so that is the meat of what the interim authority committee put together we feel that overall the intent of the chief that we want to open it up make it make it more flexible make it more now it will go into we developed this during a transition between town planners and also our attorney mark sperry who's got a lot of experience with richard's land use they've made a number of changes most of the changes they made were at odds are there was a suggestion made at that meeting a month ago where we reorganized the document to make it more readable if a developer picked up the documented they'd be able to understand a little better they just wanted some reorganization so that's right claire and mark sperry did it but they did and in two important sections one section perry one that had it in and we did that in the second thing was if we go down we reorganized the parking section in the energy efficiency section to be recommended were optional uses at the back of the document so it looks like these things have been crossed out but they've actually been relocated to the to the end of the document with a little language that clarifies why that over that's correct also we also added in as a suggestion a requirement that after you get developed approval you have six months to apply for a building permit if you don't do that then the development approval would expire we did that to really make it a stick to encourage development to happen quickly and to discourage somebody from getting approval and waiting two years in hopes of either a sale or or some other reason because the town says this is a needed it's really a certain emergency situation the village need to this town these redevelopment if you're going to come in for development approval we expect you to follow through get that building permit put a shovel in the ground this is possible  in front of us and we can definitely pull sections up if you have questions about specific wording so any content car british thank you so just to develop the question about the develop all ball area it's a really difficult word has a posture minus next to it so let's take that it will take that out and make that into an estimate of the word estimated since that is basically what it's referencing but thank you and the other comment i and i don't know if it's appropriate to do this now but i was just curious i mean i like mr house suggestion and i but i want to understand so i understand the reasoning behind having it more dense but i would like to know if there were members of the committee who were here who wanted it less dense to try to understand the bounds are there any committee members here who wanted less dense majority of it then in the same place ok ok excellent so moving on is there any other changes anyone like to see to the way this is currently written i would i would be supportive of the of the a motion that we close the public hearing on the julian court in terms only document i think as a favor and opposed the hearing is closed and we can now take a decision so i'm going to make a motion that we accept whether we're going to say that all the existing regulations we point to will be those in effect at the time of application as opposed to what they are today so y moving on to other business no i'm sorry i don't for presentation the chin and solid waste district but i don't see mr mauro here could we hold off first yes and do the let's hear the presentation  regulation six point eight player rock standing here we don't have a table for you to come in funding from the conservation reserve fund we've applied for a grant of sixty four thousand dollars to support a a project to acquire and conserve the twenty acre parcel of land as described on route two west of richmond village that the parcel is part of what was the willis farm the total property the property was recently appraised one hundred ninety thousand dollars adjoining land owners are joy and robert reap them out mansfield school district and the richmond cemetery association  early as ernie explained we are proposing to acquire the land and to conserve the land with a conservation easement which would restrict the future uses of the property to recreation education open space and scenic protection and it would also require public access to the property and that would be a permanent conservation easement that would run with the land in also as an emergency evacuation site where schoolchildren could walk down and then be picked up by buses from route two we also plan to clear portions of the site for a sledding are any mention we would plan to construct a driveway and parking area off of route two two for approximately twelve cars that would provide access to the property until we do that the property can be accessed from camelot middle school there's already a system of mode trails which leads from the school athletic fields on to the property  a portion of the upper part of the property could also be used to expand the camel some athletic fields and we have been in discussion with with the school about  transferring a small portion of land that would enable them to expand and reconfigure their reconfigure their athletic fields approximately four acres of the property are classified as class two wetland accident and so the conservation committee reviewed and is recommending approval of the sixty four thousand dollars grant what would the balance of the conservation time be the balance of the purchase of there i did want to mention in relation to the total cost of the project and we've also possible applied for a grant from the vermont housing and conservation board for seventy five thousand dollars to support the project that application will be heard at the housing conservation board's june meeting and a strong showing of support by the town would be an important aspect of that application we've gotten some very positive feedback from the did look at the property and viewed it constrains its constraint for a couple reasons and then they were designing in some commercial gateway the much of the completed mike o'brien made the assumption that a road would be installed near the cemetery and go up the hill and it would be twelve units of residential houses own apartment away from route two and commercial logically would take place along route two for disability no reasons but the the weapons don't allow so just a different perspective from would certainly do that but that's our best source at this point and they're making the decision in june june fourteenth i think is really six months to come up with the additional funds before closing to get a yes we don't know of any other received funding for the the bard your project which was references is the last project that we used the only project that we've received funding for from the conservation reserve fund and that was for a grant of fifty one thousand five hundred property we enroll the property in the use value appraisal program and so we pay the portion of the property tax that relates to the conserved of the property and then the state reimburses the town for the remaining amount of the tax on the property so the town receives the town receives the full taxes on the property time when i see the entrance driving and parking and then some plans for clearing and looking at the budget hundred thirty five question financially how does it work with the slight improvements have you put thought parking but we tell the plants growing we couldn't bring well a specialist of the sea if our ideas were we would have a longer discussion i think with the school to see if they want a bigger parking lot than what we're proposing that we're open to that but so it seemed impossible to make it all in one budget so since the school is indicated that until we work out denise's ideas we checked with the housing conservation board people that were out looking at the property whether if we did do a conservation here and now whether it would preclude the town doing the road down through the reeves along the back of the property and they said that since it's another public use that there wouldn't be a problem to change the easement later for that the road so we're not trying to do anything  it i was when i was thinking about this is thinking this is how the media's going to go people who have a lot to say about it and i was going to suggest to the board actually they take this decision at a later period and just because in the time at least the time i've said i sat on th we often have fairly emotional conversations about decisions like this and then make a decision and either regret it change it or think it was maybe the wrong decision so i think that there's a lot beyond what was in the proposal that we read in preparing for this i don't think i don't think that would blow your time perhaps we could see it and say this it could be right that perhaps so is that the consensus of the board to wait until the next meeting to bring this back for business during the may seventh when i find the main  where i realized two weeks is not much right ok somebody has indicated if i'm in here is indicated that the cost to build an alternative road into them and then we'll make a decision so the motion would be to schedule this decision for the may nineteenth meeting he has to come before all eighteen members of the county to get approval of our budget and i'm doing so tonight before you is r f y fifteen budget that on first blush appears to have gone up a fair amount four point three percent in the revenues went up seven point three percent however a good portion of that is reinstatement of our compost program that we kind of put on the wayside for a couple years because we had issues to persist in herbicides and if you were to take the if you were to take the compost out of this increase which is the substantial just we storing that program the budget both revenues and expenses go up more mild or one point nine percent so that's where we are there's also you'll notice in this budget there's three point nine new f t e s two point four of them are just restate your positions well i'm posting all of that two point four one point four is compost because it's just a bunch of f t easing they come up to a one point four and then another program that we had cut last year because we were think we're getting out of the business was our local color paint program that well it's back and so vermont passed the new paint bill and with that we won the contract for northern vermont so we're going to still be in business or the person we laid off from now come back to us and i dropped off all my paint and i bought all my peeps from there so it's going to continue and probably get bigger and better and we're going to add more colors it started thursday last week so we got a new contract and so that's kind of what drove our budget probably as more important or as important would see in this budget this year is where we're heading on policy and i thought i would touch a moment because some questions are going to come to each town in the next year that i think are going to be rather big when it comes to trash and how we handle it in recycling and such in one of them is we're going to be coming to all the towns and asking whether you're interested in having a franchise story consolidated collection one hall or for a certain part of town and that's something that we think is going to be probably necessity and by act one forty eight before to pick up organics we don't see the expense being low enough unless we consolidate the routes and right now you know you you can have ten dollars on a room and that's very inefficient so that's basically all answer any questions i give you a kind of a real high level review but i just don't want you to be afraid that we're on a spendthrift you'll notice that if you look at the charts year after year we try to keep our spending well within our budget and or in below our r impact you are your business operation i think system it isn't a good and i don't know how to say this is because it's very self serving we had probably more than any town or any agency  in writing at one forty eight ok and basically what it was is they wanted the rest of the state be like c s to bt and were to such an advantage we have all the infrastructure we have the recycling infrastructure we have the compost infrastructure we have the infrastructure for the biggest point for us is how do we collect that material inexpensively a reasonably and get it to those facilities we can process it once we get it there that's not a problem so i think we're in very good shape as far as what the demands will be you know our biggest outlook is going to our biggest unknowns are we just finished a study that looked at the collection over again ics and just to give you an example i live in a new north end of burlington and i pay thirty four dollars every month for every other week collection and if we were to add again next to that rule our study says my rate would double from thirty four to sixty eight so we looked at ok how do we do this better and cheaper and we look at westford which is perhaps one of our board rural communities in the state i mean in our county and they have consolidated collection there and for the same service i'm getting except their garbage picked up every week instead of every other week they're only paying one thousand or one thousand dollars because they have one dollar do  so you know our biggest issue is not processing and our biggest issue is how do we get it collected for people will pay and unlike recycling their garbage not too many people can bury the garbage out back in your search we saw your aluminum in your backyard or you have a smel with the plastics people do have the ability to compost in their backyard and so that makes the collection density so much less because people have the choice either to bring it to a drop center would do in their backyard it just makes the economics of collection very hard because you don't have the our only way of looking at that seems to be how do we do it in a consolidated fashion but how do we do that and preserve the smaller and that's why it's was taken us years to go over these calculations and with that we're now thinking we're pretty close to be in there wit just just as a maybe you don't remember from last year we offered your budget pricing last year authorized one point seven million dollars to go into our recycling facility are what we call our mer for two real recovery facility it shuts down next week for very fortunate to have got eleven years of it so but we had put money away in depreciation account every year so what we just put into it as part of paid for so we're excellent shape for that university the cafeterias you v m hospital you know the ben and jerrys of the world but it'll be twenty twenty before it's mandatory for all citizens however all haulers have to offer the service starting in twenty seven thousand so what we're our hope is is beyond our road for at least one a pathway in if the public doesn't want it that's fine too but we're just going to say if you do want that consolidated collection we will have that plan ready for you by tw every it would be let's consider yourself lucky my little mite my little street in burlington has fourteen houses and we have five hollers on monday and tuesday so we know the feeling and then there are those of us who go to the dump budget any further comment in favor say aye and opposed yes have a thank you for your time thank you ok we'll talk about the v c e d f grant proposal for solar project mind chris's is recusing himself for this discussion from the select board he wanted to be here tonight but boys sick you say he's not not feeling well at all but what we want to talk to you about is this scramble to the clean energy development fund which is the the state's grant fund for renewable energy projects and we have prepared a grant application program to help find fifty percent of the cost of a solar array for the firehouse roof this is kind of an idea that's been on the table for a while thomas has been had been talking about solar on the roof  for other virus for a while and in part because it is it has such good orientation it really is is facing it has a good direction it's a it's a you know relatively good orientation and it's clear there's not a there's no penetration it so that makes for a pretty good site so what we're proposing to do is to to put about twenty six k w kilowatt kilowatts of solar panels on that roof the grant would would find fifty percent of the cost of that and then chris and i are proposing to finance the remaining portion of it and what we would hope to get out of that is the the electric credit to solar credit off your bill for a period of ten years and then after ten years we would sell it to the town for a buck what we d you get clean local energy as an off taker you get the the solar asset after ten years or virtually no cost you would have virtually no risk we would own it over that period of time and be responsible for its upkeep and its maintenance and what we hope to do is we we hope this will be a reliable revenue source for us over this period of ten years and if this works what chris and i hope to do is we hope to to use this is a business model to perhaps do for other other buildings in town our other buildings and towns towns around the state we think it's really an interesting interesting model i don't think the grants will be available for other projects this is a probably a one shot deal as far as that but we're going to use this opportunity to to learn about it to set up our business model and understand how this might work and we think you know we just assumed starting in our own town so my purpose here tonight was mostly to explain that i actually to ask you to authorize jeff to act as a town representative to sign the grant application because we need to have the town actively engaged in and in applying for the grant reshingled about ten years ago asphalt shingles have a life of maybe twenty years so you about halfway through it it's really not practical to keep the  two to keep the existing roof surface on it and so there's a decision to make and i'm i'm what you do before we would want to do the project we would want you to replace this roof surface i actually think what she's live back is asking because i've experienced it at my house when we put on the stand it seem right in front of our garage and all of that snow comes down very quickly right in front of your garage door and you can't get out and so how would we be able to mitigate the amount of snow coming down right in front of where the fire trucks have to come out with the standing seam that's what you're  something because you're not gonna you're not going to suddenly go perpendicular it's just a consideration so look let me clear be clear about what would be included in this project in what as far as the solar project we're talking about related to the solar project the roof surface is not we're not talking about financing that ourselves so that would be a decision that you would have to come up with as a town what to resurface it with and how to go about doing it we've gotten estimates from i got it and estimate from from bob murray that to replace the entire roof with asphalt shingles today would be somewhere around the twenty five thousand the range to replace to replace it was standing seam would be about thirty five thousand dollars and you could do half a half of it at this time it happened in the future if that was something you wanted to do but when we were talking it through you know with chris and i and just frankly what what we've what we figured is what we can offer as a solar project you know it's a renewable energy project it will require some decisions on the town part because we won't do it unless it has  a roof it makes it doesn't make sense for any of us to do that we'll have to figure that out and perhaps using congress or funds or some other way to finance that and i think that will have to be part of the discussion of what to what surface to put on had good a good chance to experience snow this winter yes i did different kinds of snow some of it sticky you know and so i guess ponds and sticks to it what my experience is that it does warm up to you know it a little bit of a comes off and yeah so my cartoons when i i'm generally a big fan i'm concerned about the engineering of the roof weight on the roof and making sure the whole plant works which is partly financial so when you put into it and then when you get out of it over the life of the project and maybe that was here i just couldn't see us or sort of more from and i think first so what we did i talked with a structural engineer  trusses are two by six and two by a which in this circumstance is good news you know it means that the they that the top member can support more away so while what the you know i took a bunch of pictures and showed it to a structural engineer she said that she would do an analysis you know she gave us a price for what it would do to do that and if it needed beefing up like those those rafters could be sisters up so that that would that could work and you know it's a state who knows but they said they said that they hope to be able to make a decision by the in the month and what we would like to do is we would like to do this project this summer ok what's the life expectancy of  inverters they have a life of fifteen to twenty years but those are kind of easily put in and taken out a lot of the cost of solar these days about half of it is the cost of putting it out you know see that the value of the solar credits right now are about twenty cents a kilowatt hour so it's about five thousand dollars a year somewhere in that that range high and then after ten years he would and you would get that benefit yourself of whatever the rate was at that time so to say my mind this is a way for the town to accomplish some of its renewable energy and and carbon reduction footprint at very little grass and very little cost for the town that the issue with the roof if you if you replace the roof it's still an asset that was going to need replacement so  might lose a few years out of the the asphalt shingles that you got on it you look at those asphalt shingles they don't have a lot of life left in them they've got some so that i think that's the main cost of the town is that we meaning the life  that would be ideal that this is that this is a this is a rift that has good orientation and it is a good opportunity as far as one the other piece that is needed to do a project like this is a user of electricity that uses enough to be able to benefit from it so the town uses an awful lot tricity to be able to use the production off of it so that's one of the one of the chris and i are looking at are these fifty k w in last size which is that the thing that's interesting about it to me is that's a small enough investment to be able to attract a local resident who might want to invest in their town make a reasonable return and you know there's a lot of community benefit out of that it seems and that that would be different than most of the other projects are out of town investors are doing for her skin bigger bigger stuff ok investment committee however i'm willing to authorize further exploration of the project to see where it can go so you know that it's not a commitment right we're not committing to it and i think that it would be ok to can continue considering benefits and structure to the project that could resolve all the issues yes ok so the motion working group real quick here because i don't want to put up a longer after the discussion at town meeting day and kind of in line with what we have been working on already i asked jeff and do we need a new public safety building but what is the future of emergency services in richmond which as a growing more suburban community we if we need to anticipate the changes that could be so that's all you fire we talked about we didn't we didn't we didn't we discussed about we discussed approving a grant to consider to consider a public private partnership to create solar energy production he's actually that discusses how a supervisor makes that determination if they believe somebody has been abusing drugs or alcohol so this reasonable suspicion policy sets forth training requirements and also what we would do if we had reasonable suspicion that somebody was under the influence and essentially directs them to get tested and then get treatment of their own to be under the influence and what happens next after that last year we adopted p l c t s t d l drug testing policy in this year they have made a couple of minutes today so it's really just making some amendments to an existing policy  i'm going to make a motion that we accept the amendments to the drug and alcohol policies for see the operating room and can i do it together and are other any further comments questions i was in favor of the approval say i think night and opposed the eyes have it so we did move the final review of financial status to other business because i i heard what people said last meeting and i feel like maybe it gets lost in report other reports so you do have the third quarter financial statements in the meeting packet and they know chris had talked about after had suggested that there be a formal process for this or not ready to unveil a formal process but at this time maybe jeff if you have any comment you wan give back to those results right so the last collection of the year this is as of march thirty first the last collection of yours do here this month in may so  we typically run a higher than normal delinquency rate through the year and then in may and june a catches up because people want to avoid the eight percent penalty so in the past we've been having about a four percent delinquency rate per year which is not too bad it's hard to tell what's going to be this year i don't think that it's going to be much different than that so that's the number one revenue concern you have is that what are your tax collections and i think that overall is pretty good that it's not deviating very much from previous years but will the war at the end of this month some of the other revenues  are a couple of things that we're running a little bit slow on and then asked to do is earning permits and some call time and things like that but otherwise those revenues are pretty good expenses obviously highway department has gone way over on salt over time diesel fuel and they have an aggressive grab a plane coming up and that  question is there anything more you'd like to see i mean we keep trying to improve these i know it's a little strange i don't want to bombard everybody with ten different sheets so if there's it sounds like we've got a recommendation on appointments to the water commission from the pool who applied and fast these are one year terms and three members is like board mice and two water sewer customers so the names from the psych ward really will be actually barred and david and customers will be proof bailey and robert fisher just have a quick question j so i see that the points run from may first to april thirtieth so next year because i won't be like board member as of tom meeting dan and i will be a user well there are just  so the big news is eighteen t v has formally filed the jericho road tower for nineteen twenty five jericho road this is on the  it is very important that we hear public comment on this we've already had one large meeting there's a twenty one day period where we can file to request a public hearing and intervention status that will be that will expire on may twenty first so we have one more select board meeting where we would have to decide whether or not we want to do the i would like to post this on front porch for when asked for comments from the public if anybody knows of anybody that objects have them contact me in writing i'll prepare that there's a summary of that for the select board for the next meeting we can decide whether or not we will file discuss it past meetings that whatever we did for one we have to do for all or we should do that and i'm wondering i mean i'm not going to dismiss the public comment component of this but i feel like we should be prepared to present the same arguments for this as we've done for the others personally so all that i think that if where if we are doing something if we're arguing that the reason we are opposing these and are the reason why i have continued to approve opposition is that i think that it's and we need to stand up for the  just one select board to do that it's a significant undertaking i'm on the town's only witness on this and i'm going to be the one defending our regulations in front of the hearing officer when does that process going under way is underway it's under so the last the last budget update was that we did spend about thirty four hundred dollars on that process but i'd unless you have a number now i don't have a number i  those three items listed i would like to talk about the highway work plan ok so let's talk about the highway work plan so first of all the first big project on the list is what's white  that's for the full length they're going to put down fabric and gravel through the swamp area they're going to be putting in some under drains to try to improve the drainage there it's very difficult but they're go do some work they're going to replace the culvert below the dam and go it's pond and the road will remain open except for a few days where they replace the culvert because for the highway work plan that that's actually i mean it's going to be starting very soon so if you live on west whitehill be aware and are they going to move to their fourteen hour days or whatever they they've already they've already done a great how do we notify folks abstain no one person could vote no or choose not about you just have to have three members vote yes to carry a promotion ok thank you so i'm going to move the minutes of april seventh eleven and twenty through twenty but what i just wish me this is the april seventh meeting ok i'm on the record mr stanton reported that he met a highway if he doesn't enjoy liberty and the owner of clarke's trucking he did not meet with the owner of course trucking about this issue but peter in short did i talk to brandy clark on a number of things but not this issue i did speak with peter and with troy and they spoke with quarks about the issue but i did not directly