creation to one thing on page two under number five on the first paragraph the first sentence talks about you know the champlain housing trust explained the grant application for the seven point eight million dollar project and then in the second sentence it says will list and will be asked to be a sponsor for the grant application so my only concern is i'm a little worried that the grant application might be confused with the seven point eight million dollar project so i'm wondering if that should be clarified that makes sense so the create applications for less than right energy coordinator i guess my first question is is i am says still a little bit confused isn't meant to mean i'm i'm against it please but i'm still a bit confused about how the energy coordinator position which is an appointed position will interact with what the role will be and how if more interact with either town staff or other boards or commissions or the town comprehensive plan does that make sense personally what i would be doing is i guess i'd be partly guided by whoever is appointed to sue me it's mr forrest and mr forrest on his various initiatives that he wants to pursue and then i would assign a staff person most likely eric welles to work with him if he has a proposal to develop it and bring it to the board for the board's consideration and you know i guess that's how i wouldn't vision a bit it's new territory and it's it's a little bit different than working with a comparable board but there are some similarities as well so the concept might be a part of the concept might be he would identify potential projects temporal things the town should be looking at or investigating maybe even doing some of the investigation him or herself for example he might say well you know i think the town should adopt some regulations that tighten up on building code or something we don't have a building code but something like that that has certain requirements for energy efficiency and so they may say you know we want to pursue this and he may do a little bit of homework so i am i may turn over to eric and say ok work with them to develop this a little bit more and it will take of us like board to see if they want to consider it as a regulation if they do then we go through the normal process like we do with an ordinance for example in my last question is is juicy there being any juicy there being problems if there is differences in opinion between what the energy quarter might be advocating for for instance the reduction of use of fossil fuels which makes sense but where the town plan might encourage the use of natural gas as a relatively clean and expensive but nonetheless is a fossil fuel do you think that would be an issue i can't speak to that one particular matter but there certainly is a potential for disagreements or difference of opinion between  the energy coordinator and staff and possibly energy coordinator in this like bored at work it's possible all three may have different here's one thing that's true so with unlikely actually hit when you add a new person into the mix that you know that's just  k part of the process so but what i get from your answer is yes there might be disagreements that's part of the process part of the game and inherently know that's not necessarily a bad thing or a problem on them and it may be you know the new person in the mix also brings new ideas and may push initiatives that you know were kind of either on the backburner for the staff or maybe not even our radar for staff at this point in time and you know it's up to the board to make a decision on whether or not or implement everything ask you from a very practical standpoint how much time eric have to be taking on yet another project at the moment well it's very early in  tenure here so it's a little hard to say but i would say that there is some rumor at this point which is why we have this this position is to provide the ability to take on some additional projects and affordable housing is another  one that we haven't touched it but at least there's a task force and people working within don't please don't get me wrong i think energy is very important i'm just concerned about one person that's pretty much on their own coming up with ideas versus and it's working with a team of people so this is just meant as an observation you we mentioned the whole concept of the energy coordinator there were one might have difference of opinion than the slick board doors town staff and that gets to the issue of the energy quorn nader is going to come with you know that there are not agendas that may be the right word but you know their philosophy what they're advocating for that type of thing and certainly brian did a good job explaining sort of where he's coming from i guess my observation is we could have somebody also in the same position who might advocate from a totally different position might be more no you know i'm just using this as a hypothetical example we really ought to be maximizing the amount of natural gas we use because it's relatively clean burning and it's relatively inexpensive  so that just meant as an observation on who told her that's going but i guess my point is if we were no point somebody when we do point somebody is to recognize we are appointing somebody who comes with that advocacy or that opinion or philosophy or whatever the right words are there suggestion that even if the board is inclined to do one year term it might make sense to do it one year but through june thirtieth twenty nine hundred just because june third twenty eight hundred is just a few strike which is if you're one of the big event in our organization so i think what i'd like to do tonight is just go i have a very brief presentation just to give you kind of an idea of what's going on  name c t a and then merged happened again in two dozen eleven at the current state we have changed the name of the organization to green on transit there is a bill in the house across the board and what i try to do is i try to streamline it to four executive leaders that are work that are work direct reports to me work with my staff work with me and then underneath them there is the rest of the organization with finance operations maintenance and  goods and things like that that they could utilize within their programs they gave us a list them our staff and then anybody else who who contributed and then the day that we did the event anybody who bought the tickets we doubled and actually gave carts double the amount of tickets we sold that felt for them to get the veterans to try and get transportation around the county so we did that for free that was that was our contribution second all we did was the washing county family center we did a diaper drive which is kind of cool down a washing county was one of the things that they needed  from you know we said what are you looking for and they said diapers just give us diapers to the kids and so staff had a really good time with that and we did again partnered with a media partner down there and kind of gave back kind of again giving back to the community that we serve in that we that we that we live in and the last one we did was the franklin county community action we did a winter clothing drive and this was kind of neat because our partner we've had labor really some problems in two thousand and fourteen because the strike but we really become real close and tight with the union and working together and so they actually donated five hundred dollars worth of winter clothing the teamsters did to this organization and we all kind of pitched in and it was a really very successful  event we plan on doing that continually every year we're going to hit the three areas that we serve and in this a community partners and we do media partners and things like that so we we take our marketing money and we kind of utilize a way that really highli organization some of the organizational highlights are i started a staff volunteer program once a quarter staff is allowed to take eight hours of time and go volunteer at a nonprofit that is approved by the organization and that no charge to their time or anything they get taken like that i was a quarter and they just take the day and go spend it helping out whichever nonprofit that is in the community they live in one of the communities we serve there's no there's really no restrictions on where that is so they can do it whenever they feel comfortable with so it's kind of any program another thing i started was communication as i said earlier is a very important piece to what we do is not exist lives we're communicating with our staff and people are aware of what's look at all the documents that either h r or any maintenance or operations that they can load up there and they can look at that from home from what their phone it's it's it's but it's local it's an internet it's not on internet so it's an account that  they log into and that they manage and that we have communities in there and so that's kind of one of the things that we kind of go online look at the information that this organization puts together and not you know have to be on the internet to do it another thing i started poorly staff meetings come come town hall meetings where quarterly i get up in front of the organization and we have satellite five locations within the five counties during the turn of the season or the winter season and i basically over something that is important to the organization or we do some type of training but i kind of let staff know what's going on because sometimes the communication doesn't make it all the way to say our seasonal service down instead of sugarbush so that's one that's that's life it's a live town hall meeting and we do next quarter week so everybody can log on to kind of see what's going on now the fun stuff the funding streams this is just educational square federal grants state grants local contributions which are the assessment national revenue advertising revenue and any other revenue that comes in this part charges gives you a breakdown of kind of where most of our funding comes from and the amounts and you'll see that the federal grants obviously are very high percentage we get different funding from the fed for a lot of we're direct recipient here in as an in the urban system in the world system it's a it's piece of it and they provide funding for us for planning purposes local contributions this is basically part per our charter local contributions assessment by member communities i did actually see one of the major questions that always comes in is eighty eight or transit funding and you know what not where is that number and i'll kind of show you at the end where that is but this basically gives you an idea what the charter is is pretty much been  it's as the crow flies so it's basically putting a bubble around our or fixed roof and basically three quarters mile we have to provide service to eligible clients it's complementary and they were like a the luck of the draw not because of anything the town is done and our eighty eight purchase it uses going down the last two years which is compensated for that modest i doubt three percent increase in the in our and so the assessment of williston is flatter declining but if it's we could get somebody living with us in who needs the services more next year and it would become part of the assessment yet the again mandated service of federal government pretty much mandates we have to go through a whole process of application process to makes a picture people are eligible we've done that in house now we've taken it in as it's another thing we've done where the assessments are done in house so the so we have a little bit more of a control we've we've pretty much taken all the steps that we possibly can right now to you know do the best we can to make people eligible freedia that make sure they're eligible for a d h and any conditional service which means they're going to conditions where in the wintertime there's there's no sidewalks so we have to pick them up in the wintertime in the summertime we can walk to the closest fix through which can be read on the street so those are some of the condition of and we we have an appeal process and and if somebody doesn't like what their ruling was they can appeal it and  we've had that and so we have everything kind of in place to make sure that we're doing our job to make sure the assessments for the communities are you know state stay where they are and get the best of our abil elderly and disabled program it's in the program we'll call it it's through the the fifty three ten funds applied for that eighty percent care partners some of the partners are we have barry project independence a it improves mobility basically for seniors and individuals with this disability so it's it's a program that's funded through the fifty three term federal funds and veterans is the one who kind of control the funding for so some resolution before july first the funds are going to run out before the end of the fiscal year and we don't know what the solution is going to be in the state we will listen or the whole reach up the whole the whole state actually but also has to be a it is does this service as contracting for green mountain transit agreement transit does the same thing in the rural areas so it's a little bit complex but that grant is being drawn down statewide at a rate faster than the funds will last and so the question is what do what's going to happen and that's an open question still and hasn't it wasn't really fully funded through the state this year   what was projected so a lot of decisions that are made there so the some of the some of the funds that are insured in county indy program was no is not near what it was last year and washing county as well so the funding came in a the next steps up that has to be presented to the committee and think this month and then the conversation starts from the state level we've met with the state already and have kind of all made them aware of this so they say go through the committee first and then we'll go from there so that's where it kind of sta that we had two nuns move from one community to stop trying to neutralize the service every day and if you then there are more than qualified to do that and so when they start adding those trips their percentages went up and you know there could be as simple as two people moving to another community and so it's kind of one of these things where you know it's you know could affect wilston of if those two nuns came into town here so that's kind of where i'm just trying to make an you know point  and again mandated depending on where they live of our whole system we haven't done since seventy three we've we've added service but we've never quite looked at it as a whole and all five counties rural in urban so we're doing that it does this it's going into it's over a year now in the process it's been a lot of data and all the information is on our website it's called the next general and that actually is right we have all the rash of data we have all the information and they've they've been pretty much reviewed every scenario analysis of each stop each route and times fair analysis pretty comprehensive if you go online you'll see all the other route scenarios and this has not been a fin recommendation we're currently still doing some write checks to verify so we're actually putting stuff on these buses for the for several days to kind of manually add in the right checks because some of the write checks came through a little bit off so we're actually doing that now we're meeting with municipalities as well so we're getting a mission minutes about what these from their planning department of public works etc so we can get their perspective that's where we are right now we're in the municipal outreach so we'll be in touch to talk to who you would like for us to sit down with and kind of go through and some suggestions from them and we also have farebox council so that boardings are recorded disembarking is not recorded so all we know is boardings but you can assume an equal number of what our system is is you know in one room we could be doing a six m show burn and then the next room we could be doing the north avenue so the buses could be going into a another route that will be fairly busy so they do the first route which seems like and then they go to the next one which is usually the reason we kind of move them to another the bigger buses to some of the more heavily populated and have the higher ridership so there are times when you look and say there's nobody on there and you'll say well it does make sense as a thirty five foot killer driving on the road but then the bus either previously had gone to a very heavy route is going to have a route they just needed to kind of connect the two so there's a lot of that that we do in our system and over a one numbers track very well in terms of like the state benchmarks for what is a successful route we are urban system has been in very good rates well two and a half two point four million last year systemwide that number one between burlington here is the second most written and it's about four hundred forty thousand boardings last year now that's the whole route we don't know how many of those were in well as dinner or ending  liston and i can say too as a as i used to commute on the bus since it came to the village there are two buses in the afternoon and the second one is often very empty but if that second bus were not there i wouldn't have been on the first one because i would have had a safety net to know if i got to work late that i still could get home and so that second bus served a function even when it wasn't getting many passengers but we do look at all of that and can i said way into a couple of things target absolutely so my name is jason gainer i'm your commissioner on the g m t board of commissioners i'm actually the chair for the second year ending in june thirtieth and i'm last year i give you a general update about t i'm really glad you got to meet mark and sort of curious style and how he manages we are basically a municipality by all the regulations and laws and have to deal with and would like to just highlight the amy brewer is my alternate since last year when you appointed her and she has been coming to most of our board meetings which i'm the only commissioner has the ultimate there as well most of the time which has been wonderful and so you have good representation and she's also participated in the finance committee and to highlight the thing about the improved relationship with labor we have a five year contract now that at the request of the of the dry copper eaters to go from a three year to five year contract because they're so positive about the relationship with management and merck is a big part of that revenue however is tight as you know both our federal funds and our state funds have been shrinking and have become tighter  the comprehensive system analysis that we are in the middle of also called the next gen study has some pretty harsh news for our one v the village run it does not have the the numbers i would support maintaining that route and it's not to say it will be dropped but it is in the recommendations for that route that it that it not be continued i'm interested in finding alternative ways to keep service for people in the village and so i'm going to be reaching out on social media and perhaps writing an op ed to try to stimulate some more conversation things like what if it just ran from taft corners to the parking right in richmond which we don't serve now how many people if they could get to the park and ride would make use of it  and if it didn't have to go into burlington it would have time to do more if it stopped have corners you had to transfer the number one which went be as nice for those of us who are commuting but might be an compromise  i also want to highlight that it's in your town plan now that you've recently adopted to work towards having a transit center in the taft corners area i see that as a real significant need right now the parking lot at wal mart serves their transfer point if you're going to the number ten and number two we may have more buses in the future we're going to when they're parking right is build decks at twelve will probably pick that up and to me the perk lot at wal mart wal mart the service not the right place for a transfer and it also would be more efficient for most riders to transfer at taft corners i was disappointed that the one piece of land that the town owns right there opposite the pond from friendly's was leased to the thought purchaser of maple tree place taking that out of being a possible place for two busses still of the lot but we see i would really like us to keep searching for somewhere within walking distance of the majestic ten and half corners in general for there to be a trance some kind of a trance transit center i also want to highlight that we did purchase new buses this year in spite of funds being tight which was a very important and with the cold weather we just had it was a lifesaver because several the older busses had to be taken off the road due to problems with the temperature we also have although no grant and within the next year should be getting for electric battery electric buses which of these for us sort of a pilot in understanding the addition of the different maintenance and operational procedures and and aspects to that to know how to view that in the future and that took away my thunder oh no i was going to be going to let up i was going to bring up the electric buses because one thing that we we did is we got approved for a loan of a gram which is low emission no emission runs through the federal government and we were approved for two buses with that we have a collaboration between bronx electric department the e i c burlington electric  another sustainability division v light when all of these came together we put them in our application thought we had a very compelling argument that say we're coordinating with our lectured our utility company that's going to help figure out a way to do it and honestly through the through the creativity of funding with our staff and all the other partners we were able to draw down more federal funds to get four buses so those four buses the the will be on the street hopefully with and i was i would love to have them in the spring but it looks like we're at pushed up back to get him on the road and then there's really a lot of that out of that we're going to collect and we're going to we're going to take the diesel buses we just received and we're going to take the electric buses that were in duke's comparisons as much as you can and try to figure out what that number looks like and what the return on investment is and all of those factors so in the future if the v w settlement comes through which i just read somebody has told me that it's going to the legislature to to their to the reminder areas those of advisors that today but if that comes through and we are able to buy more electric buses we will then have enough and they did the the technology has taken off in three years i would have said if you asked me three years ago what is the ten years but now just looking at how many agencies are you are utilizing now and even in cold weather so so we're pretty excited about that so that percent electric the agreement has to be they have to be charged it off peak time from ten o'clock at night to four in the morning you know facility in burlington and gives us the rate of half the rate that if it was sixteen kilowatts and i would get charged eight so a your question or comment about empty buses rarely is it eighty six bus empty except maybe on a friday night the last bus leaving leaving mark while i work at the national like complex leaving national life but  i want to very much second chippings comment about the concept of that back up whatever the right word is boss somebody whose work quite often means i don't know if i can catch you know your boss having that boss is a godsend my one constructive absolute criticism if you don't mind is the rap shout two point zero i think i can speak for multiple riders on the eighty six bus is the lack of the eighty six bus  on that is is flush with the other night well maybe a week or two now ago when we had some bad weather the bus was quite late that's totally understood at that but what would have been really nice is because that hour and a half that we all said sat around wondering when the heck is the bus going to be here we don't want to miss it because we're pretty sure it's going to be the last one if the app had worked and we all would have headed back to our offices and did something productive just  needed it yes we're what we ended up doing was having some great conversations some of them flushed durations about the app not working but it just would be great if that app worked i appreciate the feedback and that's what we're getting definitely a conversation that we've been having consistently in the eighty six is has come up on several occasions so thank you appreciate that and when it works it's wonderful the people are using it a lot right good thank you for the question overview of community forestry in general and discussed some very specific examples of other projects said have occurred and how those things have worked well and how they  how maybe they have not worked well and kind of gave an overview of how to to put the thing together we heard from  entry a short sleeve on wildlife management and so i like how to manage this land how to how do how do we how do we handle this land so that you know we consider wildlife management  that we're going to that are going to use to partially fund the projects all the rules that we'd have to be following once once they put their money in we heard from court long  who their program utilizes the catamount outdoor family center currently and we kind of go to understanding of what kind of environment that in the different facilities that they would need to to continue to function and they kind of gave an overview of what kind of bird habitat is there and watch some of the things that we could do to sort of keep that going make sure that the birds are protected there and we've fifteen people attend kind of getting a view of the land and a lot of questions and answers in december there was an open house where we had over thirty we've we started basically you know reviewing the catamount community force plan community forest management plan we've started to really kind of go through each line of that and make sure that it's kind of what we would we would recommend that the select board would would would do i think that you know that's really going to be the focus of the committee and over the next few months is really looking at that and we we've made a couple of attempts to vote on some key issues and then actually decided that we weren't quite r think as we kind of we strive to say ok well how do we all feel about key issues and then we realize that we need some more time to keep keep talking about it so yeah i mean specifically related to incorporating multiple recreational uses on the property just based on some of the public input the committee has gotten that around allowing  you know potentially permitting hunting some people were interested in a discussion of course some other people were interested in ice skating on the pond and just you know sort of also hashing out policies around pedestrian use and how best to accommodate the free desk train access that will be required from our grant sources and making sure that it's compatible with the other uses on the property like mountain biking in skiing and what some of those decisions are going to be harder to make than others and the committee has has done well in sort of  getting making decisions on the low hanging fruit some of the somewhat easier decisions but is is having a little more need for discussion on some of the more put together and i always felt you have a variable aggressive time schedule time frame to get this completed with and i'm looking at final revisions to plan dated june thirtieth two thousand  think five months from now do you think you'll be able to meet that deadline i think so i think that there may be some decisions on which the group can't reach reach consensus and in that case we'll have to make a statement that basically says you know this will not be allowed into in such a time as you know a plan has been thoroughly vette the walking the birding maybe you know things like dogs or whatever and then the activities that would be on a fee basis i assume through the nonprofit which i you know whoever that  nonprofit is and i guess my question is is is there a prioritization over the public access to the land type uses versus the for free specialized let's say recreation activities i think that what we're like so say for example why some somebody wants to ride a horse right and and so the question is is like well do we allow access for people to ride a horse and then what with what the group is kind of grappling with is whether or not for riding if if like six people riding a horse the whole year if that  is that going to be a problem for everybody that was riding bike so it's kind of trying to find that balance and then in terms of like public use versus like whether you have to pay to use it then i think that you'll be coming into whether or not the like so if the license agreement kind of gives charge to the to the catamount outdoor family center to have to to make enough money to stay solvent then like every time we allow access to it for free then we have to look at where it where is the revenue stream coming to support say some other activities that we want to keep there so just to clarify i mean so we're required to provide free public access and what that means is pedestrians have to be allowed on the property at no charge and so what the committee is trying to hash out is where can those can that type of activity take place and you know not that conflict with other types of activities like mountain biking race or something like that so those are the decisions that they're looking at and you know i think the committee feels that the in general the free pass train uses is not really going to conflict with other uses i mean as long as there are some common sense policies like you know if a race is going on be aware of where that's happening and and walk and other trails if you know if there are camps going on just be aware of your surroundings and you know be aware that those activities are taking place and use common sense where the answer my question is  i don't know if there's really there's no right or wrong answer i'm just trying to figure out where the committee might be going is one of the ways to deal with you know who has priority for lack of better words maybe that's not really the right way to think of it is by they'll be some segregation mountain biking won't be allowed over here because that's primarily viewed as one that's viewed as a hiking airy or walking area where over here it's mixed use were you will run into those conflicts but then the common sense aspect of it kicks in on a night where there's the weekly mountain bike training race series expect there to be mountain bikes and again we'll probably have a conflict of with a mountain but not conflict maybe not the best where you will see you on countering a mountain bike if you choose to walk there it really was what i was more aimed at is because it's a it will be in a public land owned by the town it's kind of that question of will  for free type activities that would be done by let's say that whoever the nonprofit ends up being have to take sort of a secondary roles because of that public ownership but it's not sounding like that's the case at least how far it's gone this committee's gone i guess the committee is i mean we still have a lot of discussions ahead but right now i mean i guess partially based on some of the experience that the cabinet or families had with just with people walking on the land you know whether i mean again assuming they pay feed to walk on the land but that that there hasn't really been a conflict or any problems with people walking and other people who are biking here skiing so i guess where we're not really seeing it as a zero like we're really  know we're not really seeing seeing it as you know what before fi gains therefore the free pass from public access loses kind of thing i think that i think i understand and again there's it's not like there's a right or wrong answer i'm just trying to get a sense the the forestry aspected do you see there being a role for the talk about the forgery potential i mean so we have heard from the the gin county forester on the subject and i think you know he's he's encouraging us to come up with like a plan and you know so the bridge is that part of his role is to help you would to peleg that plan yeah well i think it's like generally to come up with one like it you know like so i can one one example a plan might be to you know make that let's make as much money forestry as we can and on the other on the other side is like let's let's never let forestry get in the way of anything else to want to do so somewhere in between you know we in the end i think we want to put put together a plan that makes sense for you know i think that's what the you know ultimately we're you know going to try to and infectious diseases as an epidemiolog so basically i just want to give a quick spiel i have an overview of the main diseases we might be concerned about transmitting from poultry to people  for main ones i guess from most see it lists them for most biggest concern to lois concerned biggest concern being seminal osis infection with salmonella handling undercooked or eating under cooked poultry so by having packed backyard poultry less of a risk unless there's plans to slaughter and handle you know and process and cook poultry chickens particularly in the u s in general these strains don't typically in fact humans though but they have the potential to mutate and cause illness in humans most hum n illnesses and sporadic outbreaks occur and so that south asia but i guess the only human infection interestingly enough that was confirmed in the u s was in a veterinarian in new york i had close prolonged contact with a cat there was a cat outbreak actually in shelter there recently think last year so low risk but theoretical risk so and then last when i mentioned west nile virus there's no direct risk to humans from back here poultry because it is a vector borne mosquito borne disease or poultry can be infected with that virus and have other mosquitoes then be infected by them having it in their blood but they're not typically affected by it they don't get sick from it so but i will the main concern is salmon a low cis intellect kayla give a little  fever headache and in some cases it can translate into the bloodstream and cause more severe infection outside of the g i tract and those can lead to life threatening complications this happens in about eight kind of the general way a lot of cure i pathogens are spread through animals is that the animal shed the pathogens in the young animals so the baby chicks and the ducklings more likely to shed these pathogens so that having the contaminate the environment around the animals people get exposed to the pathogens by coming in contact with the animals themselves or that environment many of these garbage ends including salmonella have very low infectious dose so it does not take a  lot of salmonella contact for you to get sick and then people get sick after being exposed to them and children are at the most risk for serious illness as well as ultimately adults over sixty five and those who are  associated with live poultry trends in the u s and in vermont so those dark red bars are the number of cases in the u s and the case count for those obtain so again  big proportion of the children under age ten who are infected with salmonella are affected due to contact with live poultry as opposed to other methods of getting though some other risk factors so the is data that was collected from two thousand and eleven to two thousand and seventeen so forty two percent of those cases were in children under the age of ten ninety five percent of the people who had somehow reported owning less than twenty five checks so we're talking like low numbers backyard flocks versus agricultural on for most cases and then seventy seven percent reporting keeping the chicks inside their homes  getting salmonella is having the birds in close proximity to your living quarters and then in two thousand and seventeen have a bit more data because this is the outbreak that i did most of my research on ninety two percent report purchased within this poultry season so that was within the year twenty seventeen seventy seven percent said they were aware of the connection between pull tree and salmonella so a lot of these people had the knowledge they just weren't necessarily using the right techniques to protect themselves from some analysts and you can see that sixty two percent said that they always which was defined in the questionnaire by ninety five to one hundred percent of the time wash their hands directly after handling the live poultry so reportedly pretty high but still you have almost forty percent not washing their hands after touching poultry that's another big factor and then seventy seven percent said they had  direct contact with the poultry themselves or their cages and enclosures there were two cases actually both in children that had no contact with the poultry at all they got sick from contact with other people in their household so it is possible to get some analysis out directly touching the poultry as well with it just being in the environment or coming from the hands of another person and then just some general recommendations based on some of the respect errors that we've seen in from angst and around the country are you after you touch a bird or anything in the area where it lives or rooms always wash your hands barley with soap and water if you do not have really shouldn't come in your house or they should be like poultry handling specific shoes and then a good knowledge of hand hygiene and its importance after handling the birds and then don't eat or drink in areas where the birds liver you so we don't typically test eggs for salmonella if there is like a single case in situations where i would anticipate us testing food i would be in like a large scale outbreak that was linked back to a specific restaurant or a specific food i have not had any personal experience with that so i'm not sure but the eggs that come from your chickens and your backyard can be contaminated with salmonella mostly because of the fecal matter in the and vironment so there are separate set of guidelines from c d c about the handling of eggs in your home i'm do that and those are the best recommend for using one of those rubber brushes if you don't want to put any chemicals on your eggs and then refrigerating if they're going to be kept out for you know more than twenty four hours or so or not consumed quickly after collecting them but yeah i don't know what the incidence of like you know how many eggs you come in contact with   i do good question and that's getting it thank you so much for all the wonderful mission and it was really helpful but i'm kind of getting the impression that it's probably in america this isn't necessarily for the faint heart and you want to know what you're doing you want to have some good guidelines in place for how to care for chickens it's not going to be your goal fish and it's like a great idea it's a lot more to it  yeah there's a lot yeah you need to sort of do your homework i would imagine i don't have personal experience caring for chicken well i do as in a zoo keeping setting so we were really good about biosecurity and you know training in those sort of instances but in general a lot of you know these specially sammael and camp of actor it's a lot of personal behavior protective behaviors that are going to prevent illness salmon ella poultry are infected with that they don't have illness from it so they can intermittently shut it that bacteria in their feces you know all the time and so there has to be a constant level of awareness and protection personal protection  not fully developed immune system but because you know they don't have as good of hand hygiene as adults do you know and they are in no drawn to the probably the younger animals like chicks and ducklings in there there were hand held and of course want to kiss them and that kind of thing and you know i think you may have said this to those younger animals are the ones who actually are shedding more bacteria also because you know they're usually coming through mail order stressful sort of situations that can make them shed more bacteria relieve you actually have an opinion as to put you on the spot or it i think i mean you can it's tough to put any sort of policy in place that will make someone take personal protective measures all the time i think the benefits are there for is may reasons people are moving to backyard chickens as you know organic movements local you know food movements want to make sure their you know they know where the food is coming from and that animals are treated humanely and they're really i guess the really nice animals you can even handle them i know so but yeah there are those risks are always there as they can be with any animal you raise you know there's campbell bacteria assists that other back that you're in mentioned is also been linked practice it's just making sure people are aware of giving proper information but it depends on what he's in for if it's strictly eggs yeah they i don't have a personal experience but i had some friends in north carolina that had some chickens and i think they were good players for purchase them from so once you get those checks home the risk isn't gone you know that for years after you have them but the risk does decrease over time when they're out of those kind of really high risk situations for them to be shouting so there's always the risk of getting salmonella from your chickens in the backyard but kind of the majority of cases come from those new checks that you're you know recently purchas similar to that more cases are associated with persons who have had poultry for less than a year because they're they're new to the practice and so they might have not gotten their bio security practices completely down so that also improves as you have chickens longer is the question i want to ask you is following up on something you started to talk about is compared to other animals that a residential home might have dogs cats rabbits  on you know i don't know what else or maybe even small mind or were they were two chickens hundred chickens in terms of the public health risk for chickens more risky less risky about the same you can't really answer that fairly i would say more risky compared to the domestic pets that we you know allow in our homes i would say probably in the same level as other agriculture animals you know we've we've had s to other you know go and eco life from you know cattle and that kind of thing so the difference is a i think these agriculture animals are now being raised in a sort of more home environment on a smaller scale and so that cross contamination is easier between the home environment you know where your parents and children are versus on a farm commercial farm practices that ha it's just you know kind of the practices surrounding raising checks as different that makes it more risky yeah and there can be some it's a complete misconception that like you know chicks need to be kept warm and so there's you know people will take them inside you know when they're being sold more around the spring time when it's still kind of cold where it just puts itself at more risk so the other question i have and i know it's going to be hard for you to maybe critique an ordinance or so  question and that has to do with the number is there any guidance that you can help with in terms of what is a what is an appropriate number for a residential property that's  say on the smaller size in terms of you know zoning how many homes are allowed per acre type thing that's something i would have to in terms of an animal health perspective to like avoid sort of crowding that's something i would have to consult with our agriculture colleagues i would say you don't want them crowded as far as you know but being healthy and not shutting you know bacteria because of that but specific the ordinance that's that's in front of us for you know as a first cut to take a look at six i didn't want to bring up a specific number of i didn't have to work you know i did you know kind of on the smaller purchase any fewer than six birds if you buy them and yet at a store in vermont if you order them on line through a mail service and have them directly shipped to your house you can get  less but it's technically not legal so when you say sex that's kind of people don't have a choice to get any fewer than six so i wouldn't go lower than that because you'll conflict with some other rules i guess i anticipated issues i could see with that is this year for example i heard when i was interviewing a lot of these cases that there was a high mortality rate among checks  for i think a couple of reasons but one that was mentioned was our really cold spring so in a situation like this there was a lot of folks who you know lost quite a few of their checks and went back and tried to purchase more so i guess if you lose you know all about one and you want to get more and you can only buy six that might be an issue from a public health state have you and i will say for that reason six or seven is going to make a difference here so  i will say that and sort of flock member might not be up to the person or for that reason is that there is a high high chick sort of you know being sent through the mail and sort of that crowding practices and so you really don't know what you're go eleven years and i think one might even made it to sixteen years according to this book of world records but as far as laying the the in a tells me that they don't stop at a certain age the audience who are interested in the subject do you have any questions for our experts tonight  questionnaire was kind of a section out it was i think one to say are one to five six to eleven and then like eleven to twenty five early twenty five or more is was a question now so that's kind of why i picked twenty five because of female only versus i mean i understand the issue with male chickens roosters but is there any public health aspect of having a sole sex sex flock not that i know of but i will say that there should be a plan for if you to get a rooster because sometimes they can sex incorrectly and when they can be sexting correctly when they're very young yeah the town will take the rooster but it's about an eighty percent success rate sexing the chickens when their juveniles are younger eighty percent yeah so about eighty percent of the time they get it right raising to review the ordinance and she had really positive things to say she thought it looked really good but that was one of the things she brought out because she has personal experience with said on wanted her and cannot find a place to rehire him currently so it is something to consider states quick question governor came up the issue of going to is that you know ornaments that's in the current you know that's the whole idea of right of making it more permissive but then also if we're going to do that adding some so we did do an update and in europe did and there really is only one request and it's a repeat request and that's what chris knight was here for last fifteen i think it was he asked us to start planning those walks and paths and we declined and recommendation for me from public works was not to be doing it because we didn't even own them own them yet and he's just trying to make sure that he's asking that we start plowing along for right now he's doing stuff where he does all the sidewalks in there although the associations are the ones that are doing some of the sidewalks so my recommendation in this request is that if he truly does get it done and turns it over to us that we should at least do the path along zephyr road next winter development will have to go through the same process that any other sidewalk goes through in developments which is really not really do any right now so consistent with that thought is recommending this be tabled until such time as we know whether or not they're going to have it done in time for when i say done paving done and ready to turn over to town prior add you know i might add fifteen minutes depending upon the storm obviously you want to wear use and blowers or trucks if we go to snow blowers all bets are off anyway so i took sunday doing the sidewalks call upper old stage road northern section north amount due to the debt in the speed limit up there right now it's thirty five miles an hour and there is a request from some of the residents to see about reducing it to twenty five miles per hour so i had requested a regional planning commission to take a look at that and they came back with a recommendation that it meets the criteria to lower that speed limit from thirty five to twenty five based on eighth percent tile speed in other words people are driving thirty five miles an hour up there anyway so we can lower it to twenty five without being detrimental dating and the da this this and i guess in a sense comes up every year you know what metrics are parameter to use when you're trying to figure out if you think that the  budget or the impact of the budget and the impact of the budget the one that i primarily would measure it is you know the impact on the tax rate what parameter meant metrics to use and i think one of the easiest easiest in terms as it's easiest to make the connection to me is is it consistent with what money people are making might be a you know simple way to do it how much is are their salaries going up there's no there's no answer to that question of how much other stuff you don't know that for a while a stand but my sense is is you know with things like you know how much of a raise do your town employees get i know what you know the state entity i work for you know what our annual  salary increases are it's built into you know our negotiated agreement with the state you know and it's it's more than likely at least until somebody tells me i'm wrong in the one to two percent range so that  when we go above that we i feel like i really have to have a strong reason to do that and so my goal is is that the tax the impact on the tax rate is no more than one to two percent and you know which you can read you know if it goes above two percent or around two percent that's when i'm going to start saying you know way second this just as i feel right i need  need to feel more comfortable with why it's above two percent needs to be about two percent that's the best way i can explain it so the budget that was presented to us was a little more than two pushed up three point four percent so we would need to know how much we would need to cut the budget in order to do what you're suggesting by calculations around two hundred thousand dollars every maybe i'm wrong but one penny one pan is close to two hundred thousand dollars right but ok so i mean i don't think you're talking about cutting a whole penny no i'm not right now i didn't do the math in terms of what is two percent added on to the current tax rate jennifer no jennifer has thank you employees went up one percent and the tax rate stayed flat so if we're going to look at that that i think we should be going closer to three percent to catch up from last year after not doing a one percent increase of a problem with the numbers you're using jeff because you're when you're taking a percent of a tax rate that's very different then when you talk about actual numbers so for example someone's earning fifty thousand dollars just say can they get a two percent increase that's a thousand dollar they earn thousand dollars more over what they earn the previous year but if you do the tax rate a penny it is ten dollars per hundred thousand that say it's a port of thousand dollar home that's forty dollars more versus you know if you just picked up one fifty thousand dollars number it's they've earned thousand dollars more and they're only having to pay forty dollars more in taxes so you see the numbers are quite adding up the way you think they are and i get that but in my defense if you will our impact on on residents in terms of their cost is one of many you know there's fuel there's car insurance there's blah blah blah guys in things that everybody pays and those are also going up so that analogy of yes you know compared to their salary our tax increase is a small bit of what of that piece of what their salary went up when you average gated all together i think we all should have that goal whether we're we're insurance company whether we're selling fuel oil or telephone service or repairs to homes we should all aim for that one to two percent if that's what people salaries are going to push the world doesn't work that way we know that we have for  whatever reasons i mean i don't mean to pick on champlain water district but they were recently in telling us they're going up was it some three point five percent there's probably a very solid reason why they have to do that and there are some people on fixed income  two percent yeah what i don't know what the appropriate time share that i had to write but i guess we'll throw it in the mix you know i keep doing these sheets and i  did another one today that i distributed so i want to quickly go through that to help you understand some of the numbers and i'll just highlight some of the changes item number four is new we looked at our  money that we have in our highway large highway truck rotational fund and we've actually been earning at least this year anyway more money in this truck old trucks we sell than what we had budgeted for so we feel comfortable in that we can reduce that amount at least for next fiscal year by twenty five thousand unfortunately that doesn't affect the tax rate because that twenty five the money that we're going to pay know some board members are a little concerned about over using that which is good i mean that's a legitimate concern so that's not a number one number two i did put under the recommended we're hoping that that person will last our record isn't good that you know we can continue to live by and and so that's why i did ducted that or at least recommended deduction on the fireside that one of the board members and i don't recall who asked why i did had not included in the budget and i mentioned a couple things but one thing i forgot to mention is one of the primary reasons i didn't include it was well i one of the things i did mention was the impact on the budget and but the other piece of it was at the time of this preparing the budget i didn't feel comfortable with the numbers and so since between then when i you know they were talking about the end of november early december and now jennifer spent a fair amount of time hours probably going through the budget and then all the numbers with the fire chief and  feel comfortable now with these numbers so that that was kind of a major factor in my decision making when i presented the budget outside services were recommending five thousand and that's because i think we budgeted twenty five thousand and laker who is asking for the association is asking for twenty thousand so that was an easy one and it's the i guess that is the only one other important change on the four that did not include any increase at all in the grand list and of course we do know that the grand list is increasing so we have taken a conservative number and add it as far as a potential increase an way truck rotational because it was proposed to be funded through the fund balance you talked about the two hundred thousand yes if you take that out then there's no and it doesn't affect the that is in addition to what we authorized for that we authorized for the current year which is forty thousand and so the proposal the up at the sixty thousand so if you take that twenty thousand not that is a tax impact even with that being that twenty thousand and they're at the point out make about that and and first i don't read this is i take this lightly zero going out the environmental reserve fund on the other hand we are trying to adequately fund the purchase of a major piece of conservation land i assume the most expensive one at least in terms of town dollars that are being spent on one so the concept that we are just zero to get out and will have i don't you know years we have the future to build it back up whatever you want to find the future in a couple years or maybe many years does it work maggette the concern but it doesn't worry me because we are we're making such an investment in this one piece of land that from what i can tell it doesn't have universal or complete support but i would say it has widespread community support maybe it maybe i wasn't clear with with adding the twenty thousand we don't have enough money even to buy this land will be short twenty thousand and so the east sixty thousand that's more the annual contribution versus the two hundred that's more  with hopefully we'll get a grant buried in a positive we will get a grant amount we need that sixty thousand dollars to make up the four hundred thousand dollars that the town is already committed as i mis understood where we were to two hundred thousand dollars and the risk of not fully funding that on the other hand in a sense it's the wash because it's coming out of the fund balance  i personally it seems like an easy decision because it doesn't have needed impact on the tax rate it's an insurance policy that if we don't get the grant we have it and you know what what would happen if we don't get the grand canyon well first of all we need the money anyway even if we do get the grant we needed initially for the purchase of time so i don't see where there's a lot of choice if you're if you're assuming we're going to buy the land you're advocating for buying the land right now after let's say the money comes in and goes in an environment reserve fund and then we get the yeah yeah exactly this is always the trouble i mean this happens every year we're everything we look at there's a liability there's none of this is fluff  so i guess one question we need to talk about why has the far department request for the street positions and whether in their support for that i asked jennifer to give us some the reduction in call fire hours plus the increase in ambulance ravenous so those things are all tied together so one doesn't happen without the other we don't say we're funding three full time firefighters and keeping cost it is all of these are together so that is approximately forty thousand dollars so the estimated tax rate would be twenty seven point two seven six seven or two dollars a year for each hundred thousand of assessed value so doing this for half a year i made some assumptions in there of because we'd be doing it for half a year there'd be some lag time in that so we wouldn't you can't just take that forty thousand and cut it in half it's going to be more like a thirty thousand dollar impact if we do it for half a year  because it's going to take a while for that revenue to catch up and just be fully staffed and that sort of thing so doing that would be an estimated tax rate of point two seven six two or a dollar fifty a year per hundred thousand dollars then the last one on here was just the part time custody and changing a part time custodian to full time for half a year and instead of the full year that one is an easy one where we can just cut that in half so instead of the twenty seven thousand it be thirteen thousand five hundred and so that is seventy cents a year last ye for a tax rate of point two seven four zero or seventy cents per one hundred thousand dollars of assess those different those are just some dips different suggestions that terry said like what would be the tax impact of doing this of course all these numbers have changed since our new estimated gram less fifteen thousand from the housing trust fund she feels we should look at inclusionary zoning first and she doesn't feel the need to fix the housing problem on the backs of other home a way to keep the town responsible for the building and the clock is part of the church and she feels it's inappropriate for the town to pay for the towards the replacement of the staple and she feels that she suspects they can raise the money that she thinks it's a great organization but questions the town's contribution and wonders whether we should move the two hundred thousand for the catamount property she assumes that we're going to get the grant but you know i've already kind think that kind of quickly summarizes what's she says it did she provide any comment about the fire department oh i'm sorry if she did as she said she was on the fence she felt that because i had not know to cover the grant that the grant aspect of that the year after contribution from the budget i realize it would have been you know a net zero impact because of the source of revenue for that but let's just say we did that and six months from now seven months from now we find out we were not getting the grant so we've cut it from the budget it's not in the or after and we learned that we're not getting the grants so we're two hundred thousand dollars short on purchasing the kind of out of community forced what would be our options at that point well first of all the the timing is a lot of i think they're hoping the close on that before the end of this fiscal year ok and we won't have the money to close on it because we need that two hundred thousand the grant wouldn't come until after we buy it so but but that two hundred thousand dollars that we vote on in march in that state approved that still wouldn't be available what it until after it would would it would it there's a thirty day waiting period that passes then that money is available for use every day going to the operating expenses generally wouldn't be available but as we have got to that part of this year we haven't reached that point in time  about that is i've given some thought i asked the question about the separation of church and state my feeling is is how long is that cochran in there four  hundred thank you hundred thirteen years if we were not to provide you know so the structure that holds our clock i feel we have some responsibility to help maintain we the town if we were not to provide money i'm being a bit facetious but they probably have a right to package that clock up put it in a box and put the stones in it here to us and say here's your clock i'm being facetious i hope everybody realizes this but it's you know i'm i'm of the opinion that it is an asset to the town it is worth protecting and twenty five thousand dollars is insisting it's going to be there for another one hundred made a he convince me that he convinced me that we are not adequately using the equipment that the town has supported the ambulance equipment in the fire department equipment by not having sufficient full time staff that sufficient staff on duty to utilize that equipment is example of two people or driving somebody to the  hospital we may not be able to respond to another ambulance or fire call and that that's that's an issue that's a problem and i think  trust your analysis of the the impact over the other piece we need to add in is the unfortunate and when you used the word demise maybe that's not the best word i probably gys if it isn't but demise or decrease in the on call appears from all indications that's the reality of a bar fire ambulance people's ability to serve and which just puts more emphasis on why the full time staff needs to be needs to be added and nowadays is the right time to do that and the cost of the sixty three thousand again seems like a worthwhile investment to me come back with a proposal to us next week was the proposed tax rate but what would target his targets rights kind of thing because yeah yeah i mean really you've done it every michael job i appreciate you guys being mean to give up their full time custodian and limp a minute in terms of trying to keep the taxpayer's going if there is any other possible savings anywhere and i know that everybody has worked brutally hard to get it to where it is the only comment i would make was that while i so appreciated what we did last year and especially what you folks did with keeping it pretty much level i don't like the comment of we should be able to raise it by the percentage up the shared if that makes sense that's not an attack it's just we were able to say that last year i don't think that means that we get to add that what we're adding to this year that come out i don't know what else i can add to the two percent is my my god mine favorites i don't know what to think about church and i doubt if you doubt jeff's parade of horribles what actually happened presented with the public comment moment of a select board meeting with a with a showed one of the problems that i've seen over the years like board member then was that in this was particularly the time is the great recession was hitting is that you know we have we've all these deferred things that should be these other things are unavoidable i'm not going to feel that i didn't do my job if it's somewhere in between it's a do it again to get it close to two percent i don't think it would be the full eighty because i think when we did that but there may be other items that in the we may end up and giving a long list of small items to but you know what will come up with if that's what the board once i mean i hear two members b t i have consensus to stick to around two percent as best we can that's very that's ok we'll come up with a list thank you the start of it is fair but i guess we'll be adding to it so next week in january so i think we're going to the minute his report  heavy equipment that's going to the size of these things and there's a waterline on one pole it's like you know what i feed off the ground or so maybe even a little higher  it's it's kind of amazing north most of our bridge was also closed for a short time but that's that's fairly normal and i don't know of any it reopened pretty quickly so  other little problem of course was with the library and the good news is we're going to be reopening it tomorrow morning at ten am more of the new carpeting is in and the damage was well the carpeting but of course we're replacing that anyway if the carpeting the reason that carping had to be replaced originally was because the glue was failing and of course when you add water to it it may be even worse but if the glue been fine you might have been able to salvage the carpeting but in this case it didn't matter there is some little bit of damage to some dry wall but it was pretty minor the biggest cost is the expense of the watering the building that was about twenty thousand dollars there's some damage the phone conduit where that although in the required run through well it was a water conduit for water and in addition to the wires but as it dries out some of the stuff is coming back we have problems with a fire alarm system but you issues but the good news is it's going to be open tomorrow and the marty fisk her staff and a host of volunteers deserve a lot of credit for the all their hard work and the historical society play role too they had to move bunch of stuff around and their room it wasn't affected all by the flooding but as part of the putting in new rugs they had to do a lot of work and they had a good crew there from what i understand report i do not have for this evening i will have for your stormwater maintenance you just want to highlight this point you may recall back in july we had a big discussion with information that we had about how much we paid to the school each year for the use of their buildings license agreements and it's hundreds of thousands of dollars we course asked a question of well what are other towns paying question the value of creating a broad based committee i thought well you know least we can work on it the staff level but she was able to work it through the numbers or self and decided that it was fair for them to keep maintaining that system so that's  a non issue at this point and the board meeting in december nineteenth there are some questions about the north will still road study i believe you have an excerpt of that study  think there's also i made available link i'm going to the full study and there's a memo from eric wells in your package as well the at this point stuff is recommending we wait for the other study be completed and then see if there's any work that needs to be done and north of us can row the board wants to pursue we do have money in the budget already to do some of the design work on that so there's no decision the board would have to make now when i say in the budget i mean the been previously approved for the capital project it's not something that's part of the operating budget for next fiscal year so that is  a that we thought could possibly be covered after insurance is we're not able to cover it under their insurance due to the status of the pipe at the time when they took it out it was the damage  wasn't necessarily caused by bad construction and then it was the condition of the pipe pipe was due to yes there's a question about how much did the construction work really impacted because it was deterred so much it would have failed anyway i mean you can argue that both ways and it was a part of our agreement of doing the project as we had to  the storm out of london grant fund so we have received the two grants from the state for both south bridge neighborhood and brennan would stay ahead right now we hold those funds in that account waiting for the projects to be completed as those projects are completed then those funds will go back out to the neighborhoods so they're sitting in there now and then we are getting some great interest rate step is moving money around as she can for better interest rate expenses for this will be covered under our insurance the piece i don't know is if it will change the capital dollars that we are paying for our current carpet project because they did remove some of the carpet for us so i so the historical society has put aside money to pay for some of the carpets so it would be nice if we got a break on that as well but if it's possible and just let me know so we can write a check neighborhoods that have expired permits or is it just to the ones for which the grants were received and it's done based on the grant allocation colace that's in las vegas neighborhoods and so right now i ha as each one of those grants come in and we allocate it out to the different neighborhoods and as i say brand what's finishes their project they will get any grant findings that are allocated going to the percentages that are in the policy ok good then i understand the i guess the only question i have is from the stage perspective that provided the grants when they provided it for a specific project do they have any concerns that that money is allocated respects a different thing because we got the grant and this other distribution thing is a whole separate thing ok so i think i get it yeah great thank you but things and you're done with it it's all him other business rick to send us out the report dedication list