So, welcome everyone to the August 25th meeting of the Conway Blackboard. Um, first item on the agenda is to I thought you did. Sorry. Yeah, you did. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
This is only my second time for me. No, no, I'm sorry. Um, So, first item on the agenda is to approve the minutes of August 4th, 2025. Those look good to me as always. Um, so
motion to approve. Second. All in favor? I. Okay. Uh, meetings attended by select board members. Uh, no official meeting. Elaine. Yeah, same. No official meeting.
You want to see? Oh, was that official? I guess so. Yeah, so we did we we had a meeting with our IT vendor on Friday. I guess I'm still trying to figure out what's an official meeting. Yeah, we did. Bernick and I had had a meeting with our um IT vendor to discuss issues
with our current contract. Um that was on um public comments. Do we have anyone here for public comments? Don't believe so. Unfinished business? None that I'm aware of.
Um, so we do have our joint meeting with the with the finance committee at 6, but is there anyone else that we can get to first if it's very quick, which I assume is going to be to the hiring?
I was going to say it's it's just anformational meeting anyway. There's no votes involved. So why don't we just move forward with the finance committee first as well for the agenda? Well, it just might take a little even though we're not voting it. I I feel like we're gonna probably discuss quite a bit.
So So yeah. So if we can um so discussion and vote to approve the hiring of our new assistant treasurer, tax collector, Jolene Lavali, who's been interviewed by our um new treasur tax collector, Sean and Bernie. We have her resume here. You
look exceptionally qualified for this job. could be our dynamic duo. That's awesome. Yeah. Change um discussion. Any discussion? Only if you two have any questions for us.
Really? I don't. No. Do you play pickle ball? I have not. I didn't either. I started playing all over. Oh, awesome. That's great. Just joking.
It's not a requirement. Quantity GM's training to continue to the course. Yeah, exactly. And so you're you're our part-time assistant. How many hours a day? 18. 18. Okay. Um like I said, I read your resume. You
look very qualified. I trust professional student who interviewed you. So, I make a motion that we um approve the hiring of uh Jolene Lavali as their new assistant treasur tax collector. I will second.
All in favor? I thank you and welcome aboard. Glad to have you. So, do I have to sign the actual All right. So, I think you guys unless we have anything else for us when
we're off. We need to help. Yeah. Sean's here to go to So, listen to It's up to you if you want. Well, yeah. I got to run over. Oh, okay.
So, I'm going to show you guys where the um So, should we move on to the convening the meeting with the finance committee? Two more minutes. I don't think she'll be here. Do you have Oh, okay. All right. So, we've got a couple minutes before you have a forum.
Great. Um so, what's the easiest thing? A motion probably. Okay. memorandum. All right. So, discussion and vote on the 20 2026 massive motion memorandum
entertaining the for age friendly. So, this is just the annual agreement you signed that gets us the funds that come in to fund the Is there anything happening with it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. As the meeting will finish there. Okay.
Yeah. It's an active Yeah. Great. So, you need a motion for this? Uh, sure. I'll make a motion approve the mass motion member understand.
Um, all in favor? Hi. Hi. I don't see any changes on here. No, it's it's the standard one. That's um You know what? Together
[Music] running. you employ your meeting to order and we can do our joint make a motion to call the town of Conway finance committee meeting to order. So this is now a joint meeting of the
Conway select board and the town finance committee. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting conversation here. Yeah. So, effective 101, uh, the HMO health
insurance is going up another 20%. Um, so on top of already going up 17 or 15 18% beyond what we already budgeted for FY, correct? So, yeah. Three months in which hasn't happened.
38% since January. Yeah. So, for that for the rest of the year budgeting that out that's going to bring an additional 85,533 and that's not including new employees
that's not taxing a couple of school yet. Uh and then there's also with that change that was that% that wasn't before 22,56. So without any new employees looking at
108, 39. So is that 108039? Yeah. 10803973. It's probably going to be a little more labor than some new employees. Yeah. So, there's no no new employees. It's just existing stuff.
Yeah. And I know one of the school employees just plan. Yeah. And I mean we've been contacted outside kind of just a lot of everybody's in the same boat right now.
We have a line a line. Yeah. and even reaching out. They offer Alliant is really more of like a broker for insurance. Yeah, they kind of Yeah, the same you know
centers contract but we haven't we haven't heard you know so the contract that we have we're so so we can get out of the contract with Hampshire County Insurance Trust.
However, we're kind of really watching, I think, the larger towns to see if any of the larger towns leave, then the trust is probably going to lose its power. The problem with switching is that because we're so small, we're not allowed to see
the actual claim history that we have. So, we would have no idea how it's a HIPPA thing because there's so few, right? So we would have no idea how much liability we're taking on because we don't know what the claims, you know, anyway. So although if we went out to a different
like potentially have access to that information so that we know whether or not they're willing to insure us. It's weird to me that like we don't have even went out to bid at work with a different broker and everything went up 17%.
Not 38%. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's insanity. It It is. I It is. I agree. And actually, I just registered today for MMA and Maya of putting on a joint meeting. They haven't even formalized the agenda yet.
I think they just all felt like they had to jump in and talk about healthcare. So, it's going to be in on September 30th. So, I'm hoping that hopefully I'll get more information. Of course, the rates go up October 1st, but you know, but every town I know around here is going to have a special town meeting to
deal with this. I mean, we can we have enough money in the budget to get us through a certain amount of time, but it's just the point that you already go by 17% and then you raise it another 20. It's worse than that. No, it's because
compounded on top, but then on Yeah, the compound element to it, but also, you know, we were told the 17% increase was due to the I'm sorry, the A1. Was that the GLP one? GLP1 drugs
which stop they stop it. They take those drugs off and then then they increase another 20%. Which in actuality is more like 21 22%. So that's where I'm flabbergasted as to where that math works, right?
Yeah. They did have I think it was a $2 million reserve fund and I guess they're getting some push back from their own members saying why do you have so much money in reserves and this all point all these claims and If they hadn't had that, this would have happened a lot quicker. So, I don't
I don't know enough about it to be honest with you, but um you know, didn't they tell people they could switch from the PO to the HMO? So, they're going to do Yeah, there's a special um open enrollment for the members who are in PO to switch HMO. We
only have But yeah, so it's not going to make and they're also talking about um so it was 18% DHMO and 20% of PBO that we incorporated into the FY26 budget. So
this is another 20% and includes Medex, right? Medex is going up in January. Yeah, that is not Oh, that's not even No, because that's going to happen% which again will be not
I mean but in anticipation of that I'm think I mean that's like $00,000 is significant. And if we're anticipating like more money in January, if we do have a special anticipate like
Yeah. Get it all done at Yeah. And I I had read in the paper that there was another town that's that was considering three different options for where to get the funds for this. Um obviously you can do free cash once it's certified. Um, we could do general
stabilization if you wanted, which hasn't been used since I've been here, but then we have about 280,000 I think in there. And then OPED, but I did speak with Mike and you could only use OPED for the retirees. So, but that might from the medex that might help. Um yeah,
but my understanding is that the plan has been so good and you know no deductibles and when you compare it's difficult to compare plans sometimes because if you have a deductible it's 750 for a family and no deductible
under other plan how do you decide you know what I mean where's your cut off and savings and everything anyway well their thing is that you know they have free rates for so long that you know it was always voted money to not do it every time they
suggested it. So now they're kind of like the reserves. They have started drastically reducing the reserves being a self-insured plan. higher volumes of healthare going up
in 8 million about 8 million a month and right now a lot again my agency selfinsured and we went up by 17% not yeah which still drastic, right? But in this case, I mean, I think that
drastic they might have for a while, not raising the rates because, you know, people were happy with the cost, but now it's, you know, they should have been going up a little bit every year instead,
but not catastrophic. Now it's Yeah, I'm sure it's catastrophic to some some towns. Well, that's the thing is we're talking about the big impact to the towns which is huge. We also have the employees as well that are part of it. Right. So anybody that
worked a hard year got an increase is being negated. In some cases they're getting less. Yeah. That's right. That's right. We did look into what would be some ways we could try to fairly compensate people. It gets so complicated, you know, and I
know um some some places do offer employees, you know, say a thousand or 2,000 or whatever to not use the town insurance if they have a spouse for their spouses. And I did hear that it tends to be with the people who get that money once we
weren't going to leave anyway or who weren't going to use it anyway. I never really thought that is you take it or you don't take it. Yeah, but one of the things so one of the things they're talking about in the trust is whether or not they're going to change the plan to have deduct high
deductibles to try to lower um you know who knows how it's going to play out. But how in other words how do you compensate somebody you know in such a way that it seemed fair when everybody's healthcare is going up
unless you do it employee by employee you know it makes it really challenging to try to figure out I mean they so they already raised the rates and they didn't know this was coming and then it's okay to raise the rates again. I just don't really
understand the timing of that because they were going to go under. They we literally would have had no health insurance which is why they voted to stay. We would get sucked into again like because we can't see our claims. We don't actually know if we're benefiting from being with them or you know we're
contributing to we could have someone with me. We don't know. We can't see that. So they said we could get in several high claims but we're not we can't see if those high come could we go out to bid as a town alternative like
well as far as I know the only alternatives I've heard are GIC and I confess I don't know what it stands for but I know it's a state group oh thank you okay and that one just got bailed out by the state um then there's there's the Hampshire County group insurance trust and then
there's my so this conference conference that I'm going to be in September is with Maya and MMA. Basically, everybody's having this discussion. Yeah. Um, so when this first happened, I threw out some information to Stan, you know,
asking people questions and I can't remember if it was you or me who came back with the money, but somebody had told me to to talk to this person because that's who their, you know, broker was who helped them with a lot. So, they're willing to still talk with us about alternatives and to see if they
can get us a better deal or put together maybe a subset of Hampshire County towns, you know, but all that takes a lot of time and coordination with the employees,
but that's more money. All right. There was an option there sometimes for kind of flexible spending accounts where they don't take money out pre-tax and kind of maybe offset some of the deduction cost
to manage too to like you know keep track of that on a basis more work for the town contract with somebody who manages the fidelity or something like that and they probably wouldn't work with a small organization like us have to be a group
organation. So, we're we're obligated to provide life insurance to our employees. That's a good question. Well, we wouldn't have employees because they wouldn't work for us, right? I know. I'm just I'm just like think like, you know, we know how much
we're spending on, you know, per individual essentially for healthare. Well, we cover the grammar school, so there it's like contractual, I guess. Yeah, I guess that's true. that gets and that's the majority of it. I one thought I have a couple thoughts
about this. I'm concerned because when I send this an email most people think who oversees this trust. I mean we're not really accountable. We're not we're not a government entity. they're not really accountable other than under trustees
like how are the trustees appointed the GIC and I'm assuming that the state department of banking and insurance who knows how to capital make make sure things are prop properly capitalized is you know required to look at reports and
some quotequote regulatory oversight and uh I'm really leaning towards GC because you have an extra set of eyes and ears of people who are I think understand how to capitalize these things properly. So we know you know become insolvent
become insolvent. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I mean that's a massive organization that's got all of this infrastructure and the you know it feels like they're in a position where it's just going to be you know rats leaving the ship at this point especially all of 73 members. We're all
we're all facing this 38% increase. mean everybody's looking. Yeah. And and if they start bailing, they're they're on a downward spiral. Yeah. So I think I think for us it would be best just to figure out what our next
best option is. Has anyone from the county insurance trust trustees? Have they issued any any kind of uh financial statement for 2024? the one that's published is now over
eight years old. I'm concerned about the uh financial fiduciary aspect because the premium increase is more than just to recapitalize the reserves.
So looking at you know that level how is returning less than a month's worth of reserves. Yeah. I mean I would assume that would be inadequate. Oh it is which you know is beyond our scope but I
mean more stakeholder so we know I can um I can try to delve into it some more but I did have a conversation um with Shelley because she's actually on the executive board so you know she just
does such an amazing job for schools that you know I trust her opinion and background. So I can I can delve into that some more. GIC I'd actually like to delve more and find out because I just heard they were bailed out but I don't know what that was all about. What
was New Hampshire was bailed out? Hampshire County. No no no GC was bailed out. Yes by the state. Okay. And I know if the state bails out the state does have conditions on it including registing. Yeah. So, and I do know that um
Hampshire County has approached the legislators to see if there's any help that can be afforded by the state and can get Yeah. So, I mean, do we have like a like a hard and fast deadline at which point we as a town are going to have to come up
with a certain amount of time to pay Well, you said October 1st, right? October 1st is is when the rates, right? Well, that's when we become liable for liable for right now. We already have our budgeted FY 26. So we
just have to get enough to get us through June 30th. So we have a while before we have to In other words, we already have budgeted. We can cover all the money the first couple of months of the fiscal year. Yeah.
We're we're we owe we're going to owe the higher rates for all the premiums and the rears. But what I'm saying is that we have enough budgeted that will cover that extra amount. All right. Through to probably I I see. So we So we could take out free cash or
we could take it out of capital stabilization. I mean essentially cover operating expense which is a general rule. You know not best practice but given the associates is part of this and they're taking out
free cash. They're spending their free cash down to zero. They're spending their free cash on insurance. Yes. And Marge. That's correct. They're part of this trust. We're spinning it down other things, but they're spinning your free cash down to zero because I mean, right now,
yeah. I mean, so we so we can if we I mean, I guess so we can cover our obligations, but only for this fiscal year. This is not like a solution. It's not a solution.
Yeah. I mean it could be that you know the effect of like not covering the deal. Yeah. They already said they weren't covering such an Yeah, they say we're not covering it and but your rates are still your rates went up because we're covering this.
Well, they did also say that it was a great increase in the number of claims. There was a lot several high really high claims that came in. Yeah, it's probably the number of approved planes all because of something that might have happened around that time that we all
know about. So anyway, and I know we keep on saying 38% but it's not 38. It's like 40ome%. So we're almost talking half. Yeah. And again, it's to recapitalize the
trust to a level that adequate going forward. I mean these are uh these are unknowns. I have no trust in a group that has to come back twice and say we need to increase your rates a quarter each time. I have no trust in your group.
I think we got to really look at options. Yeah. So I need more information but I mean thank goodness we're we're organizationally this town has liquidity to manage this. Well, and the finance committee had selected already agreed
that you would start off with 250,000 in free cash anyway. So, you you know that when it gets certified in October, it's going to be more than that. That'll be more than that. Yeah. Because of local No, I don't like the idea either. Of course, I don't like the idea of spending general stabilization.
Yeah. This is not stabilization. Emergency and it shouldn't be emergency. It should be um And who knows what the next year brings. Like it just can't spiral like this. Just isn't sustainable. I mean I can't imagine that the states
not going to recognize that all of the small towns are in this small town and big towns. I mean some of towns are part of this question. Yeah. I mean is everybody getting the same increase
in group? Yes. Oh yeah. Okay. So again, the only options I'm aware of are GIC, Hampshire County, and Maya. I will be talking with Maya. If you'd like us to, Sean and I can reach out to Alliance again and see what options they
can provide for us. Well, Maya has some kind of a uh dog and pony show for us, or something we can facilitate. And even if just have to call up and find it here, I'll be happy to. Yeah. I mean given the emergency I can forward if you want to I don't know if
you can go to rent some long way up but I know yeah that's the email if I'm out there for for my my uh my other Yeah yeah yeah so John you said you can do that okay so he and I will go to this meeting
my I'm sure there I'm sure it's going to be packed oh oh yeah you better register early oh I already have it came out on Friday. I mean, I'm just I'm curious whe there's anyone else who's explored the option of
just figuring out what you know what a town annually would spend on insurance giving that as a segment to employees marketplace, right? Yeah, I guess that's I mean I guess well aside from that that puts a lot of
work on on Sean because you defactor would become the the HR administrator because people are going to be going to you for all kinds of questions. Yeah, I mean yes we can't offer like one thing to school. Yeah, I know. But we got to throw all
the options out. Okay. All right. Oh, yep. Next up, where is mine? Is that so? There was no vote. This was just discussion with the treasurer. So, all right. Thank you all for
welcome aboard again. Okay, great. I made a motion to call second. Thank you. Finance. Yes. Thank you. to be continued work for you. Yeah. 2025.
Medicare for all. What? Yeah. Don't worry, it'll get worse. I'm not entirely clear who's here for what. So, um, do you feel wild and scenic study, right? Wild and scenic. So, who's here for the deer field?
Chris Curtis is coming. I thought he was. Yeah, that's true. Maybe they're having trouble. It is only 629. Um, and Janet, are you also here for the conservation restriction? Well, a little bit. Yeah. Well, that's
mostly the wild and scenic map. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, um discussion and possible vote on applying for the green communities grant for street light replacement. I make a motion to apply for the green communities grant for
street light replacement. I second. And just for and for some context for everyone who's just we the grant that we applied for previously for street light replacement we did not get it's not awarded um it was not awarded and so uh I think
we all just the work that especially the conservation committee or the sustainability committee um did on this project that we're all committed to replacing lights. Yes. display, right? All right. So, motion for the green.
We just need to do all in favor. Okay. All in favor of applying for the green community grant again. I Good to see you. Um, so I'm really bad at remembering how
to do this in presentation for you. I mean, there's this little Yeah, that says slideshow, but then it gives me both. I just like move this over. Maybe you were just to click uh the arrow. Yeah, for that. But it was showing it
was showing all the notes and stuff. Okay, great. Do you want to drive? Okay, so we are next welcoming Curtis. Chris Curtis. Chris Curtis. I I have a request back here because
because of the fan. Oh, can I turn it off for the sound? You know, it's just a little harder to hear everybody's face forward. Much better. All right. Welcome Chris Curtis from um
the Deerfield Rivers and Scenic Study. Yes. Thank you. I'm uh here vice president of the Deerfield River Wershed Association. We've been working this initiative to protect the Deerfield River for about three years now. We've interacted with
you before about it. I think you folks provided a letter of support initially for the concept about three years ago and since that time we've been uh working away and we got a grant from the woodlands partnership which I think you
were also a partner with with us on and uh worked with the wild and scenic um committee and my representative on that committee who's here tonight and spent about nine months um putting together a study that looks at whether uh the
Deerfield River could be designated as a national wild river or not. Want to kind of take you through the findings of that study and give you a chance to ask questions if you like as well. So, um, really what I want to do to tonight is
is, you know, go through the main points of the study and and if there's any comments from anyone, I'm happy to take those and then ask you to consider the vote of endorsement for the plan and for designation of the river after we're
done with all of that. So, some of the key findings that I'm going to cover tonight are um how the National Wild Scenic River System works with studies and approval process, what we found to be the outstandingly remarkable values of the Deerfield River
and its tributaries. And um that's a term that comes right out of the federal um wild and scenic rivers act. Outstandingly remarkable is what you have to have to get into the designation. Um we'll talk a little bit
about the eligibility and classification of different segments of the river. Also the suitability for the river to be designated. Um do a quick uh synopsis of the study committee's work and the public engagement process that we've been going
through. U the kinds of support for designation that we've gotten so far. Talk a little bit about what we identified as the key river management issues and what are the strategies to address those. and then next steps in the process.
So this is the Deerfield River watershed. It extends um up into Vermont. You can kind of it's a little hard to see the the map but um half of the wersheds in Vermont, half Massachusetts. And we looked at in this study 23 river
segments. We were focused just on the Massachusetts portion of the watershed. the Vermont portion um we are hoping to get done under separate funding um and we have some work going on there now through the National Park Service. I'll
talk about that in a bit. Um so you can see the different segments that we looked at. So the um study approval process um just to kind of take you through the steps um
generally speaking this is how it works. initially get a demonstration of local support. That's what we did three years ago. Uh we went to Congress to try to get legislation passed to fund the feas feasibility study. That didn't happen.
We u we got we got bills filed in three separate years by our representative Congressman McGovern and Senator Marky being the leads but they did not pass. Um, so the third step with National Park Service funding this didn't happen.
Instead, we went a little bit of a end around and went to uh the Woodlands Partnership and got funding from them. So, we did get a local steering committee set up as I mentioned to assist with the study. Um, and then the
next steps are that the communities formally adopt the plan um that we are presenting to you tonight. We've been through that process with communities all over the watershed and then the communities petition Congress to actually make the
designation. It's a separate piece of legislation that has to happen. Um and hopefully Congress passes that. But um another alternative is that if Congress is not inclined to move forward, you can bypass them by going through the state's
governor who then petitions the secretary of the interior to make designations. an alternate route. Um, it's actually the route that we used to get the Westfield number designated some time ago. So, it's it's an option. How long ago was that
for the Westfield? Uh, I'm going to say 30 years ago. Wow. 30? Yeah. Yeah. I actually worked on that project, too. Is that the only one that has this in Massachusetts? No, there are several. That was the
first one. as the only the second wild scenic river in New England at the time it happened. But now there's the conquered Sudbury and Asabet rivers and I believe there's a couple more but can't tell you what they are. That's nice.
So outstandingly remarkable values. Um what we found was that were indeed quite a few outstandingly remarkable values that make this river you know worthy of designation. just talk about a few of those briefly.
Um, recreation was one. Uh, we have perhaps the best whitewater boating and rafting in Massachusetts with rapids from class 2 to five on different segments of the deerfield. Um, other recreational
um, highlights are the Makin Mohawk Trail, which parallels the river and runs through many communities including your own. Um, also a number of other hiking trails and then beautiful state parks and protected areas. There's 32 of
them alto together in the in the wershed. And then fisheries is really one of the really key reasons why I think this river qualifies. We have a excellent trout fishery with some of the best dryfly fishing for wild trout in the
whole eastern part of the United States. One of the three best cold water fisheries in all of New England. and the upper Deerfield River um is arguably the premier wild trout stream in Massachusetts. And then other natural resources.
Yes. Sorry, just watching the trees. Oh, uh we have old growth forest in the watershed um including the tallest tree in Massachusetts and the largest collection of tall white pines in New England. Number of rare and endangered species.
We have waterfalls, gorgees, and unique geological formations and large areas of core wildlife habitat. What I'm sorry, what is core wildlife habitat? Um the state's uh fisheries and wildlife department has mapped out all
of these areas that are important wildlife areas and they're all on mass GIS and you can look at them, but they're they're really uh focus areas for for wildlife that are large enough to accommodate habitat for
some of the animals that are, you know, unique to the state. So, we also have um lots of history here. I don't need to tell you that, but um we have quite a few historic villages, including the historic
Deerfield um living museum, rich Native American history. The historically uh significant Mohawk Trail ran along the the river and is now, you know, following the route of the Mahan Mohawk
Trail in some parts. And also, we had import the rail history here, including the Husseek tunnel. Yes. Which has a lot of history. And then um some years ago, there was a national rivers inventory done of everything in the United States. And
multiple segments of the deerfield were identified in that inventory as as being eligible. and also several of the tributaries cold river bog and gulf brooks um which are wild free flowing rivers were identified as being eligible
in that inventory. So eligibility and classification. Um we looked at again those those many segments of the river and we found that five reaches of the main stem of the deerfield were eligible and 15 of the
tributaries um were also eligible and those fell into three different classifications recreational, scenic and wild. And what I'm going to do is kind of take you through the different reaches and just briefly touch on why they're eligible and what's important about
them. So, we're going to start the tour down at the bottom of the river where it joins the Connecticut River and go upstream from there. So, the first reach is um from the Connecticut River up to dam number two.
And uh this is one of the reaches that's in your community. We found that 14 miles of this section were eligible and it's classified as recreational. It's heavily used for kayaking and tubing and fishing. Has the Mika Mohawk Trail along
it. The South River State Forest, but not classified as scenic. Um I'm just curious what that's like. It's a little judgment called. Yeah, just surprised. That's all.
Pretty scenic in many portions. Um, so you probably could have get seen it for parts of it. Yeah. And historic, too. I'm sorry. It's a lot of history, too. Yeah. Lot of history. Um, and it's
beautiful gorge. If you've ever been in it, it's a gorgeous place to be. Um, also regionally significant trout stream. We've all been in it. Yes. We've all a lot. Well, I don't have to
tell you anything. That's great. So, the reach just upstream from that one, reach number two, from uh Gardener's Falls Dam to dam number two, is a really short reach. And we we included it because um there's about 610
of a mile that was eligible also in your community. And it's because the Willox Hollow um area is so particularly scenic, we thought we wanted to try to include that even though it's a short section. Um and it also has the pink and
the hawk trail in that section. And then we kind of skip over one section in Shelurn Falls where there are dams that are kind of all close together. And because the dams are so close together, the empoundments connect from one dam to another so they don't
qualify. But then above that um in Shelurn and Buckland between dam four and dam three, there's another short 6/10 of a mile section that has the so called Sunburn Beach swimming area with kind of the
geological formations there. Um, very beautiful spot. So, we wanted to include that. And then above that is reach number five from Bear Swamp Five Brook Dam to dam number four. This is kind of the
potentially really the most important section of the whole river. It's 16 miles that are eligible. Um, it's got really the best white water boating and tubing. It's got Zora Gap, the Mohawk Trail again. Um, all of that um, uh, old
growth forest with tall trees. Um, it's the premier wild trout stream when I mentioned that earlier. This is the section that falls into that category and history as well. So, pretty special section. And then above that, reach number six,
there's another relatively short section, but particularly beautiful one that's about two miles that's eligible. Um, it's got the Deerfield dryway, which is a fairly intense whitewater boating reach. Um, regionally significant trout
stream, and as you can see from this picture, really scenic gorge um that not a lot of people actually tend to see. really beautiful spot. And then we go into the tributaries. Um
the Cold River, the entire 13 miles um is eligible and it's in the wild category because um it doesn't have any dams at all on it. And that's pretty rare in Massachusetts and New England. It's got a scenic river gorge. It's got
uh swimming and paddling areas. This one also old growth forest. Um, and the tallest tree along it. Um, so it's u it's pretty special. How tall is the tallest tree?
Yeah. It's 164 feet tall. 164. And it where is it? It's like it's in the trail state forest. Yeah. It's a white pine. Yeah. They're all wet pines that that grow with the tall trees and all pines
as well. Thank you for chiming in. No, Bob Le took us there. Oh, it's pretty cool. He's the master of the tall. So, then we come to the Green River, which we found almost 15 miles to be
eligible. There are some dams on this section which exclude the lower part of the Green River as it goes through the city of Greenfield. I think it's town. Um but up above that there's a wild trout stream, some very scenic um areas,
historic covered bridges, swimming holes. So um all the way up to the Vermont border is eligible. And this one is probably most important to you, the South River. We found almost 15 miles to be eligible. Most of that's
in your community, some in Ashefield. Um, so we've got regionally significant wild trout stream. We've got two really beautiful waterfalls, multiple swimming holes, South River State Forest, um, historic
covered bridge, lots of things that qualify this section. You probably know that waterfall, I suspect. Yes. Then the North River. Uh there's really three different segments of the North
River. This is the main stem. There's three miles of this that we're eligible. This also has kind of where the confluence with the Deerfield is where that Sunburn Beach area is. It's also got Can State Forest along it. And then the west branch has 12 and a
half miles um eligible and it's got um Cook State Forest in the Crown Shield conservation area. The east branch has seven plus miles eligible in color. It's got a historic
covered bridge and a historic district along that section. Very beautiful area as well. And then we have Pelum Brook which is in Rowan Charmont a little over four miles eligible there. And some of these next
ones are particularly important because they're this one has a rare wild rainbow trout population and all three species of wild trout in it. Quite a few of these tributaries are really important for that reason. Also some scenic cascades on this.
Um Dunar Brook um up in Florida and Monroe has a little over five miles eligible. It's got a scenic Dunar Brook trail, some cascades, old growth forest along it.
The Bear Rivers in your community, eight plus miles eligible. Uh also got a rare wild rainbow trout population, some unique geological formation, swimming hole. Klesenbrook almost 10 miles are eligible
in Buckland and Holly um similar you know wild trout populations there I think it's special the chickly river um 10 and a half miles in Holly and Seavoy are eligible another
trout fishing river also used for whitewater paddling sometimes of the Gulf Brook about three miles are eligible in Seavoy and Charlemont. Um this one has the in its watershed the Tannery Brook Falls that are shown here.
The more beautiful cascades in the watershed mountain state forest some history as well. And then bog brook um a little over a mile really it's a pretty short brook but it's a undeveloped wild free flowing
river was one of those ones that got initially um identified in the in the national inventory. So do we do we have more wild free flowing rivers in Massachusetts than
most places? No, less less. Okay. Very few wild um free flowing rivers. Deerfield River, as you know, has a lot of dams on it. Yeah. Um but we did find that between those dams, there are segments that are eligible because they are not impounded
and impoundments don't reach up into the entire segments. So that's how the Deerfield River becomes eligible. But generally speaking, New England is a lot more damned than every every place else in the in the country. So, Milbrook and Charlamine and Heath
almost 10 miles were eligible. This one has a covered bridge as well and waterfall. And then this one's in your community. The last one, Chapel Brook. Um, we wanted to include this because it has the beautiful Chapel Brook Falls and
swimming area in the reservation. Um, pretty special brook, I think. So there were four segments that we looked at that were not eligible and I kind of talked about these already so I won't go over it again but you know we we didn't include the ones that had too
many dams in the case of Rice Brook it was kind of channelized in some areas. So next we looked at the eligibility or the evaluation of suitability rather and that basically is looking at what kinds of existing protection happen along the
river and does it contribute to you know protecting the river um in a way that would supplement the national designation. So what we looked at here was state protection which includes the wetlands and rivers protection acts um
existing federal protection which happens through the clean water act the national environmental policy act and FEMA's national flood insurance program and then local protection local flood and selling dialogue and we found that
you know all of those things do really make a pretty major contribution towards protecting the river already. Um and the report goes into a lot more detail about that and why that's important. Do you mind if I ask a question? Sure. So of the of the reaches that you
mentioned, how many of those um have been affected? Like you know this obviously New England is huge when it comes to like the industrial um factories everywhere on river sides. How many of those are affected by that? All of them.
Probably all of them. Okay. Yeah. you know, small dams, you know, put into place on a lot of even most of the tributaries have small dams and some of those have been removed. Luckily, some of them have been breached. And have some of these uh reaches being,
you know, remediated or Yeah, I guess a couple of them. Um but maybe not in the same way that uh other sections of the Connecticut River, for example.
So when we get on the support for designation, I just wanted to ask beforehand um why would there be any opposition? Why would there be any opposition? Well, buddy, um we haven't had any opposition, right?
I'm just like I'm just wondering you were showing on one of your first slides if this the governor doesn't pass or the state doesn't pass it, you can go to the governor. There can be other routes, right? So what are the disadvantages? I just don't understand why there would be any opposition at all
because they would fund the study and they would do the work if the federal government would be tasked with doing that if they approve it. Got it. Right now under the current administration if you go to the Department of the Interior they're not
going to support this. It's not just money. I guess the reasons that we have I I'll take the Westfield for example just to give you another another to But um on the Westfield we initially had some opposition because people misunderstood
what the designation might mean and there was some misinformation. This was again 30 years ago before we had done any wild and scenic. So people didn't have much experience with it at that point. There was a fear that the federal government might come and take over land or tell people what to do with their
private property and that's not true. But there was initially some opposition from communities along Westfield about that. Um we now have 30 years of experience with that and people are pretty comfortable and everybody's pretty happy I have to say at this point
you know even the communities that were initially kind of like we're not so sure are really supportive at this point. So um so they're not going to tell someone they have a dam on the private property. No,
none of the none of the existing dams along the river would be impacted by this at all. Um, they can continue to operate. Um, basically they're excluded from the the parts that we're looking at to designate. And that's part of what we
went through this process for was to map out and in detail describe which sections are eligible, which ones because they're damned are not eligible. So, the dams are basically taken out of the picture. all together. Okay,
that make sense. So, we've been, like I said earlier, working for three years to try to gather support for this designation. And to this point, there have been 14 towns in Massachusetts, which is basically all the towns in the watershed
have expressed support. Um, and 12 state, regional or or local organizations um and one business have also expressed That includes some of some of these are in Vermont
have been coming on board with this as well. So is this national designation? Is this like part of the Department of the Interior or what what federal agency? National Park Service. National Park Service. We'll come to that in a second. So talk a little bit about that too.
And we also reached out to the members of Congress from the watershed and we've now had for three years all seven members, senators and congress people on board supporting this in Vermont and Massachusetts. You can see the names
here. I mentioned earlier Congresswoman and Senator Marky have been the leads and putting together legislation for each Congress to try to get this through. But we've had really unanimous broad support on that level as well.
So the plan um took a look at what are the key river management issues and our advisory committee members identified these issues for the most part and um the top priority ones were invasive plants along the river. You may be well
aware of this. We have a real Japanese nutweed problem on the river. um pretty tough to deal with. Um lack of access points to the river and to some of the trails, heavy recreational use of the river, but not much in the way of of
support for like river rangers or help to manage it. Um debris and dumping, water quality hotspots, those are mostly in the green field area and increasing riverfront development pressures. And then we the plan goes into a lot
more detail about this, but we identified really specific management strategies to address these issues and those could include river protection zoning on the local side, uh stronger flood plane zoning, uh local wetlands
ordinances or bylaws. On a regional front, um, uh, we expect to put together a memorandum of understanding between all of the communities and the organizations to basically just kind of get everybody on board with working together and
collaborating protect the river. Um, river cleanup days, which we do already. The Deerfield River Wershed Association sponsors these every year, and there is one coming up in late September this year. Um, Woodlands Partnership, the
organization that covers your area, is thinking about pursuing a national heritage area designation as well. And we might work collaboratively with them to kind of partner and do these at the same time. Uh, working with Franklin Land Trust on
land protection for very specific parcels that might be high priority. And then on the state side, uh we could consider pursuing outstanding resource water designation for some of the areas that are particularly pristine or state
sync river designation or area of critical environmental concern designation. Again, these are really specific to particular areas that have resource values. And then on the federal side, national wild river designation obvious is our is
our major objective and then partnership rivers funding which comes with that um which I'll talk about in a second. So what does designation mean for the communities? Um first of all it means the river is protected along with its
outstandingly remarkable values from new dams and new water resources projects that might impair those things. So this you know one of the main things we were concerned about was for example a new dam on a section of river that's
um in your community. Um there was a proposal for that about 25 years ago or 30 years ago and luckily it didn't happen but that would kind of eliminate one of the big free flowing sections of the river. So this would prevent that
from happening um permanently. Um the National Park Service has um a review function for projects like that that are fall under the category of a federally permitted or federally funded dam or water resources project. So maybe
review them and be able to make comments about them. um how this might play out in your community might be if there was a new culvert replacement project for example um
um I don't know if you have any culverts on the south river actually um okay um so if there was a replacement project there they might comment on that and they might ask you to uh you know make
the culvert Um on the Westfield for example, they've they've used kind of stone facades on the covers to make them less obtrusive, right? But there might potentially be funding. There might be coming to that in a second. Um so so really their their function
would be a review function, but it's only for those particular purposes. It's not for every other development that may happen. Just to be clear, the partnership rivers funding is kind of one of the other key reasons we wanted to pursue this. Um, typically
partnership rivers when they get designated, these are generally rivers in New England. They're usually rivers that have a lot of private land along them. So, they're not in a national park or a national forest, but they're they're rivers like we have in New
England. Um, they typically get on the average about $210,000 per year. from the National Park Service and that funding uh gets managed locally by an advisory committee much like the one that we've had working on this
study. Um and so the Westfield has been getting this for many many years now and they've done all kinds of great projects with it. And is that like a like a like money that they have to apply for every year? It's not just an automatic. every year to apply
and you get to local decision making on it. It's not park service telling you what to use it for. It's the local advisory committee deciding. So, you know, we could do new trails, improve river access points, water
quality improvements, river rangers, land protection projects, um, things like that. It's really up to the communities to decide. How does law enforcement change for that if it's designated differently than
other places? Law enforcement? Yeah. I like would it be a you know like forest service or No. No. There's no federal involvement from that standpoint at all. So if we wanted to, for example, hire river rangers
to manage that section that's most heavily used, we could do that as a regional entity. Um, Westfield River Wild and Scenic Committee is the entity for the Westfield and they they could spend money on that if they wanted to and sim
similar process could happen here. So Conway, I'm I'm sure you know this, but Conway has a long history with MVP and doing a lot of work on the South River. None of that would be affected by this. Correct.
Well, for instance, we just we had just applied for a grant to lower a flood plane. Um, you know, so I'm I'm assuming none of that work would be impacted, but I'm actually more questioning whether or not we would have to have if we applied
for this and then got funding if we'd have to have somebody else review it as well. Well, MVP is state funded. So, this is only applying to federal. Doesn't meet the criteria of federal. It has to be either federally funded water resource project or fedally water
resource project. So, I guess in the case of your question would apply, right? So we could use state funding to do whatever remediation projects we needed to along that river bank. Even though it's technically if we were
designated as like the wild and scenic river, we still have that flexibility. But but you might have to do one more step of approval in the in the um
National Park Service. Isn't that Well, that's what I was saying. If it's a state funded project, the park service wouldn't have any really any jurisdiction in that. Um, you know, the wild scenic committee might, if there was one, might want to
review it and just make sure that it's not going to impair those outstanding remarkable values. It's kind of presumably that either. right now. I mean, it seems like this is just like I'm just waiting for the, you
know, like what's the what's the catch? It seems like great. Like so we could get like all this money just to like you know like deal with our rivers and yet if you know like what is probably doesn't think they've been catches have there Chris
the Westfield folks are really happy with you're welcome to reach out to those communities if some of them are your neighbors they're pushovers I'm sorry they're pushovers it has to be shared you amongst all
these all the 14 towns and what could you tell the story about Paulie Bartlett and the Army Corps of Engineers wanting to build a dam at Still Water in Deerfield? Well, you know, it's kind of before my time.
Okay. honestly, but my understanding was that there was this proposal and and the Deerfield River Wershed Association at the time, I wasn't a member at that point, um came in and led the efforts to try to stop the dam and Paulie was, you
know, probably the president of the association at that point and she's she's done some great things. Yeah. She worked on the the bridge in your community, for example, for crossing. Yeah. Well, I just thought of it when it said
prevents permitting of new dams because that would have been bad news. Yeah, because it was supposedly to help out East Harford, Connecticut or something like that. Oh, really? Sorry to interrupt, but if we could get to this designation. Yeah. What is our what is our action item here?
Yeah. Well, so we we had this process that we went through with the advisor. I already talked about this, so I won't cover it again. They met seven times. They guided the process. Um and they formally voted to support the study. So, next steps towards designation.
We've also kind of covered most of this. Um, so I won't go over that again. Um, so our ask of you tonight is to vote for a letter of support to endorse the study and its findings and to petition Congress to designate the river as a
national sample of I got it. Yeah, we have. So that so that's our first step and and if that if it doesn't work at the federal level then we go through basically those steps that you outlined. But that still hits the federal level to get
more would you reactivate this like when there's a new Congress you know would you would this regardless of the Congress but you know if there you know the midterms change the structure of the Congress we might
have a better shot. So you'll I mean will somebody keep bringing this back up to the current I mean department um not do you happen to know like over the
past like two or three years when is the last time any town or any petition for the designation of a river as wild and scenic has actually been approved by Congress. Yes. So
I don't think this Congress has has acted on so legislation. So in the past Okay. So like in the past 10 years, how many rivers have been designated as wild? That's a really good question and I don't honestly know the answer to it, but there's been several in New England
that I can site. There's two in Vermont. One's called the upper koi. So it has happened in the past 10 years. Yes. Okay. I think several in Rhode Island, one in Connecticut maybe. So, yes, there have been some,
but not since not in the past two years. Yeah. You know, Republican leadership in Congress, but Yeah. Right. But I mean, it seems like it's not I mean, you know, we're being asked to sign a letter of commitment saying that we appreciate Yeah. And I think it's a moot point to try to think how they're going to
approve or not. We should stop gap. Yeah. We This is something that we're in favor of. we're in favor of regardless of what the political situation. I'm just curious like you know in reality like what this is gonna you know how it's gonna play out but it it seems like we
get this designation we basically have access to a potential new source of funding. How often can we shove this down their throats if it fails the first time? How often can we automatically Congress? Yes. Our our congressional delegation is
committed to introducing legislation every year. So just reapply each year annually. They've been really active and helpful. Great. And and your group has not applied yet. I'm sorry. Like like there's been no application
presented yet to Congress for this designation? No, there has. Filed every year for the last three years. One year it made it through the Senate. Um Environment natural resources committee with Senator Marky's help
and did not reach the floor of the Senate unfortunately. Chris maybe could briefly distinguish this was the the eligibility I mean this was support for our the eligibility study. Right.
Right. Yeah. Which was the proposed legislation but here we have now completed the eligibility study. It was a little confusing. So, we've not you've not actually applied for like we've done the study, but we've not actually applied for the designation. Okay. All right. That was my question. Okay.
We could talk in circles about what we can control, but what we can control is I'm going to make a motion here if you don't mind. Uh I'll make a motion um to vote that Conway endorses the study um and the proceeding request for
designation of the Deerfield River Wild and Scenic Study. Second. Here. Here. All in favor I I and Mr. Curtis, thank you so much. It was a great time. Great presentation.
I appreciate your work and I'll get that I'll get that draft and have signed and I'll get it right to you as soon as I can. Most of the other should have voted on this as well. So I hope so. Kind of a norainer. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Okay. Um Is there anything else here? Several meetings, right? Jess, is that you? Yes. Okay. All right. Discussion and vote on the Hilltown Trust conservation
restriction restriction request for 4 and a half landlocked acres between South Ashefield, Williamsburg Road, and Brierville Road. Jess. It's nice to meet you all.
So, you are the last ones to get this conservation restriction approved. Like you said, it's four little landlock acres on the side of a steep steep slope that is undevelopable already. And so, we're just putting so we're just agreeing that this is land we want to
conserve. We are looking for your approval to finalize. Yeah. Okay. So, it in a nutshell. Yes. Um it's on Williamsburg Road. So, um Brier Hill Road is the official
address. So, go Williamsburg Brier Hill Road, but it's between that and Williamsburg Road. Okay. It's just up the hill. Y it's 132 acres. It kind of spraws down. Okay. Awesome.
Okay. So, I'm sorry. Of the 132, this is the word that's in con. Got it. Got it. Okay. I'll wait for Erica here. I have I have no questions on this.
Let's do it. I can answer. Do you know are there any um are there any interesting things planned for the land in terms of trails or access or anything like that? Yes. Over the summer we actually launched a trail network up mostly on the ocean parcel and in in collaboration
with Williamsburg woodland trails. So they're Brier Hill Conservation Land. So there's a nice little network in there now. Oh, you did send us the trail map. Oh, I did. I see it. Um in the packet, but we purposefully left out most of
Williamsburg in that Conway parcel just to leave it for wildlife habitat. Um nice to kind of keep it at a minimum. So we invite you all if you'd like a personal tour. It's really fun to show that off. That would be great. So this is
So this is 4 and a half acres uh in Conwood that is a part of 130 acres, right? And that so it's I don't see any reason not to Oh, no. I was going to vote. I was just waiting on uh I'll make a motion um to vote on a Hilltown trust conservation
restriction for 4.5 landlock acres between the South Ashefield and Williamsburg Road and Brier Road. I'm sorry, Brier Hill Road. Second. All in favor? I I Yay. So, I did print this out. Did you
have an original Okay. I didn't know if there's one you already had signed that was supposed to be, but they do have one here. Sorry. Possible to get your notorized signatures this evening. That would be fantastic. If not, I'm happy to come
back and pick it up. Oh, right. Yeah. We have to get Lori Loose here. Yeah. Help us with that one. Okay. Thanks for your work on this. I'm good. Good. Okay. So, yeah, if you just want to let me know when to come pick it up.
Um, sure. Sure. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was nice to meet you. Thank you. You, too. Thank you. Okay. All right. Finally, discussion and vote on a grant application authorization for the rural and tribal assistance pilot program
for repairs to three Shelurn Falls Road embankments. Okay. So, this is a That's right. Yeah. So, this is a little bit more in depth than most of them because So, just to back up, I I I've been working with the federal funds
infrastructure office who's been they actually they've been doing all the work and we tried to do the protect grant before, but then that went away. So they have all the information still on file about those three embankments that we need to shore up. And um so Amy Nation had put this
together as um a possibility for the planning portion of this to be under the rural and tribal assistance program pilot grant. So I in the back of that I did attach
her her general budget but so no matching funds required. The amount of the grant would be the $348,000. No matching funds. Uh not a federal grant. Doesn't trig Well, it doesn't trigger town audit essentially, right?
Um so this is essentially us giving Verique the ability to sign and apply for a grant for $348,000 for the embankment work. um which hopefully we'll and then we can do planning
and so this requires no um expenses on right although I am hoping and wondering if we can maybe leverage the $75,000 earmark as part of this as well if need be. So, um,
it just may make our grant application more. And one of the things that I'm particularly interested in, which I think the board agrees, is to basically research as many um, nature-based solutions as we can rather than just trying rip wrap. If that ends up being
the only solution, fine. But otherwise, if we find something else, absolutely um that's nature-based. And I I'm pretty sure DOT has a list of folks who deal with nature-based engineering. So, Great to know. It's just time
time sensitive. It is things are eroding like crazy. All right. So, I'm going to make a motion that uh we uh vote to approve this grant application
for um rural and tribal assistance pilot program for repairs to three Shelurn Falls Road embankments. Second. All in favor? I I Okay. Okay. Items not anticipated 48 hours in
advance. We had a request from um Paul Katanzaro from UMass and it turns out he has found a photograph. Um essentially he's uh publishing a book found a photograph that he believes that
the town of Conway owns the copyright to. um is asking for our request to publish this in the book and I believe that was forwarded by Julia. Um yeah. Um
so it's a historic photo of a farm in Pumpkin Hollow Con by mask and I believe since the original photographer is not not able to identify he's not able to identify the original photographer. Um it seems as if we is
Oh. Yeah. So um yeah he's showing two photographs of the same place but years apart from his book. So he is looking for permission from us is the town of Conway to publish this photo in his book and I
feel absolutely fine about that because he doesn't know who took the photo and neither do we but he believes um yeah I mean I think that's just a thing of you put underneath it unknown. Exactly. But um but he's asking us to sign this official permission form,
which I feel totally fine about. So um motion to uh give Paul Kotzaro from UMass permission to use the photo that he requested um in his email to us. Second. All in favor? I Okay.
Um TA update. Oh gosh. Me. Yeah, I will. I have a couple things to that are random. Okay. Um, so, uh, I think everybody's up to date with where we're at with Source Pass, but Erica's keeping up to date
with Yes. It's costing us more money than we thought. It's not clear why. Yeah. Basically, the the gist of it is at least for our equipment, we found out that our some of our computers, like my laptop is okay in terms of like it's
maybe ninth generation or something. It'll just need a little software boost. But most of our um hardware most of the hardware needs an upgrade which right we don't really have a choice but why didn't they know this ahead of time well that was that was our question and
what they said was they didn't have the appropriate access at the time that they yeah there we have questions as well okay and it is we're in it now yeah and it's a it is a transition period like I said like we're moving
from Unix to like Microsoft cloud there's there's a a lot of complicating factors that this is one of our questions is how did you not know that was good? Yeah. Yeah. Um especially when you say oh you we've come across this before which is what they've said. So you're
like so if you've come across this before why don't you specifically look at this then? And so what I did was they gave me an original quote which was like $54,000. And I was like, "Hey, right." And then I say, "Okay, what absolutely has to be done right right now and what can we put off?" And
they were also willing to finance it over three years with no interest for us. So, but what I'd like to do if possible is let's just get the, you know, everybody has to have a working machine, right, that will work at the proper speed once we're in the cloud. And I gather takes a
lot more juice when you're working in the cloud. So, they're going to basically provide to us like what has to immediately like what what do we need to do before they can actually complete this transition from in-house IT support to outsource IT support.
Um and then they're kind of like the things that they recommend that don't immediately have to happen. That's they're they're going to split out their quote basically. And that's what I'm hoping we have time and I'm hoping the grant comes up again that I can apply for a community compact IT grant to take care of the rest of the
costs rather than us working all at on. So we'll see. Um okay. So that's that. transportation. I'm so excited. Oh, hold on. It's not that outside of hardware cost and obviously the cost of cloud service which is need to pay.
If they have some other type of service they're trying to tack on because of one of their mistakes, then we shouldn't be paying for it. They should cover that. Yeah. There's not there wasn't an additional service. This was literally just like, oh, now that we come in and we're doing the job that we said we were going to do, we actually need more money. I just wanted to put that out there to
make sure. Absolutely. Yeah, I will say it's I'm thrilled that Erica's involved because you know I'm not the biggest techie anymore and uh and I you know so I'm kind of between all these people and but Roy has just told me tonight he's going to make our call on Friday.
So I've got and I don't know if you can make it. Yeah. I've got Roy, Erica and Source Pass and me and Adam all on the same call. You know, I'm hoping we get to the whole bottom of this and just like So after that, we should be able to come back to you on the ETH with more an actual dollar figure.
I hope transfer station start. Oh, no, no, no. That's okay. So, I'm really excited because we actually had 17 people on the email chain who are willing to so cool. I know. See, give a give them a nice building and they're like, okay. Um, so we're talking about logistics in
in the building and it was great because everybody, you know, was giving their feedback. I hope I took away the right thing, which was, you know, originally I talked about just having a little room for the volunteers. And one of women chimed up and said, "Well, why don't we really, you know, it would be better if
you just insulated like half the building, put a wall right here, because I I don't think we can afford to insulate the whole building and AC and heat the whole building with those big double doors. It's just going to be a waste of heat and AC." But she was like, "We'll just do a wall here." You know,
so the doors would go into the unheated space, but then half of it and it could be like clothing that stays in the whatever. But the volunteers could be in there and staying warm and sorting all the So the swap shop would be uninsulated, unheated, but the volunteer space. No, no, no. It would be swap shop, too,
but it would be half a building. I see. So rather than trying to make a tiny little room, they were trying to figure out how to do dimensions in that building for a tiny room. And it was just going to take up so much space that it was like Well, what if we just enclosed half of it? So, that's currently the thought. Um,
to go up there and check it out. Yeah. Yeah. I just bought a lock box. So, there'll be a coded lock box like realtors have. So, I can give you code. You can go up and check it out anytime. Sweet. And somebody else is going to be putting together a Google scheduler. So, it'll be like Jan's pickle ball. So, people
will be able to tell whether or not there's somebody at the mall that weekend so they'll know whether it's going to be open or not. So, will people be able to like sign up for shifts that way too if they are volunteers? All right, great. Yep. Do you think it'll open this year? I'm Well, we talked about doing a soft
opening. I really want it open as soon as possible. Well, you don't have any stuff anymore. That's the Oh, don't worry. Don't worry. People are going to be bringing in stuff, but we thought for a soft um opening. And I know this is going to I can't do it right now because the festival. Maybe
right after the festival, we could borrow some of these tables. I told I told them the outdoor tables are not going to happen again because of all the stuff people dumped and if it's outside it's not monitored. It's just it gets rained on and all of that. But we could maybe borrow some of these after the festival, put
them inside and just have indoor tables while we're trying to sort everything else out just for swapping, you know. What if we took some of those heavy tables to use and then just left them there? Bulky them because those things are dinosaurs.
You know those old brown ones that Well, you know why not? Cuz then then the whole stack of them. Okay. And if they get beat up and they get shifted from there to right to the metal pl. Great idea. Love it. And you're going to help move, right? Yes. I heard that.
He knew that was part before I opened my mouth. Laughing. Liam, you're going to be on that team, too. I know. I know. Okay. Um, and unfortunately the cost of recycling, we're not getting as much money back in the market right now. Just want to let you know it's that's the market
going in the wrong direction, but it'll probably go back. We already talked about green communities and source pass and federal funds. And I think I mentioned the LEAP program, which is what an acronym local early stage and actionable planning.
There's some small grants that might be able to we might be able to apply for stam is going to have a thing on this on September 4th. So I'll more them. But I wanted to throw out the idea. Um I know you had some ideas for what to apply for. And I know I've had we've had
residents who have asked if they if we could do a sidewalk from right at um Baptist Hill and Shelurn Falls to complete the square. I know it would be tricky, but you know, if we got the state involved. And then also another thought would be what if we
had a sidewalk going um from the ball fields? you know, it kind of ends right at the church if there's some way to figure out how to get it all the way up to the condom pool. Well, you know, the church doesn't even want that sidewalk anymore. Well, I think they wanted it replaced. Um, but anyway, it's just it's just a
thought. They also have one of the things I thought was interesting about this is they're they're willing to do communitydriven projects and they're willing to come in and kind of guide the community discussion. So, if that's something that you're interested in, we just have people say, "What about the
pool?" Yeah, I'm working that in the background. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I Yeah, I did talk with somebody today about getting a list of all the jobs that they need done. Oh, good. That we could post. Good. Yeah, good. Good. Um, and MVP 2.0 is moving forward and
and and any questions? No, I just have a couple quick things. Yes. Select board members comments and concerns. Did you go on a ride along? I have. No, I have not yet. Okay. Yeah. by his I've just been observing like driving on
a lot of dirt roads in general I don't find them I mean there's a couple of washboard areas there's I drove wash outs but I like but the thing is also the other day I was driving my truck you know which has very different suspension
and I was like god I love this truck I should drive this truck more and then I hit a dirt road and you I was like oh I don't you know it's a different ride you know So I was like, well, you know, I mean, you drive a big I I mean, I did we did do a ride.
I did do I I did I did a drive around with Ron on our Townster Resids, not with um I can't remember the name. Brian Mascus. Um yes, I have not done the the ride along with him, but I did the ride along with with Ron and Ron acknowledged that
they're like spots that like need more work than others, but again, it's like, you know, how many remind me, Chris, how many miles of dirt road do we have? Oh, we have 64 miles in our town. Oh, there's 64 24. I mean, I just went up uh Cricut Hill Road all the way to the end.
It was really not bad at all. And that road can be washed out big time. That was not bad at all. So, there were definitely Fields Hill spots that like, you know, acknowledged like, yes, this is a bad spot. But I mean, honestly, in the in the tour that we did of the I like there were like
two. Yeah. All right. So, that was one of my things just observing that. But I'm still happy to and I just I've been this has been a crazy summer for me so I have not but I'm happy to do this with Ryan. Um I saw a truck a water truck from
Connecticut parked taking our water for pools. We've seen that happen. Phil had reported that a couple years ago. A water truck from Connecticut has been here twice in the last week from where Jen knew the town. But where were they parked?
Where we take the fire trucks fill up. Are you kidding me? No big tank. I big tanker truck and I was like, "Oh, our must be our fire tanker." And I pull up and it's Connecticut. Like, is there
is this okay? Is that something that we can ask? Do we have We could certainly ask. Jen is Jen runs that loop all the time and she said, "Oh, I see that truck now regularly." So, this isn't like a one-time deal. And the river is low. Low. It's very low. Very low.
Yeah. Um, yeah, I should certainly talk with Don about that and maybe Chief Baker. Yeah, definitely. I mean, is that Yeah. Well, I just don't know the rules. I don't either. Of the truck also. I could have taken it yesterday. Well, you know what?
We know the town. Jen, I can ask Jen the town. Town. Doesn't the town own that property right now? Because we just bought it. If you're talking about where the dry hydrant was going to be going across. Oh, that's right. We own the bay property. We own that property. So, and it's posted like we could we could whatever for trust us, couldn't we?
I mean, let's get the town name so we can call. Yeah, I think it's not a town truck. It's a private truck, but it's from Connecticut, but we take pictures of the place in Connecticut. Her name is on the truck. Can figure like we can figure out who those people are,
right? I mean, I'm sure they'll go to another river around, but it's just like it's like Yeah. All right. So, I just I didn't know the rules. Jen, if Jen goes running and has her I'll put her on alert. Yeah. Yeah. The picture would be Yeah. Right. I just I should have taken a
picture. I just saw just saw Sunday. So anyway, and you know, I could also ask um Janet if she knows anything about that. Yeah, I imagine she would too. Yeah, good point. Um are we going to fix the festival sign?
Oh, yeah. It's kind of really the one that's ratcheted to the trees like to to like be having a festival. It looks like you're not having a festival anymore with that broken down thing. And I had said maybe we could get Eversource to put a couple of posts in. Right. Right. And stick Yeah, we talked about this before.
I feel like whoever like hung that back up was really proud that they they like strapped to a tree. Yeah, it is. It's It's got like It's like ratchet straps. Looks really bad. Yeah. Okay. So when the the committee just had a meeting tonight, so I will and when I went in a town
Yeah. I mean, I I think we could help obviously, but I when I had a meeting with the committee about the car show. Oh, yeah. I did bring that up. Um, and I could have sworn they said that something was going to be done and it
was just temporary. But it's this is way beyond temporary. Well, I getting so close to the festival, so you don't want to look like, you know, here's our festival. We're so proud of that. And here the sign is like ready to Yeah. Is that private property or town property? I think that's I think it's private property. It can't
be it can't be I don't because it's it couldn't be on on Come on, Bernie. It can't be in the DOT right away because they wouldn't allow a sign like it's probably but some stretch private property. I mean um
paper. It may still be probably. Yeah. I mean, it's been there forever. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because that's one of the issues. I didn't update you on that tonight. Um but uh Susan Schroeder is still working on the sign placement. She got approval
from DOT for the two signs. I still have to make sure. So, there's one um up on Asheville. These are the right to farm. Yes. Right to farm signs. Yeah. So, there's one up on that's going to be on private property that DOT approved up on Ashefield Road, but the other one they
want to do at the grammar school. There's a question of which place would be best, but either one DOT approved. So, now I just need to get make sure the school and Ron are okay with where. How about we have the festivals committee in here on our next meeting and we can talk about what happened the news we got today and talk about the
sign and talk about, hey, you know, how's this looking? This is coming soon. Volunteers, how's everything looking? I think they have volunteers are starting to show up. Yeah, they they just had a meeting tonight, too. No, that was Sorry, that was part of health. I think they have a meeting tomorrow. Uh, and my last thing is a a neighbor
and towns person stopped by and she I guess Karen Elry had talked to you before about the mowing. Yep. So, she was very upset about the milkweed in front of the library. It's like right about, you know, was growing
in front of the town hall growing up and it's right about the sensitive time that the butterflies need it and then she goes by and the town guys cut it down. Well, I don't know who it was. I don't It wasn't our guy. Yeah. Well, it may have it may have been
our contractor who came in and weeded it. I don't know. Janet and I were talking about the other day when she came in and we were both like, "Yeah, go milked." Um, okay. But I don't So I don't know how it got removed. Who removed it the last time?
Okay. It's up again and it's pretty tall again. And I was going to reach out to Ron and say, "Can you just make sure leave it until September?" Thank you. Yes. Okay. I mean, had this batch hasn't flowered yet, but it's okay. Cuz she feels like she hasn't
really been heard on this. And I said that would surprise me because I know people are very into the butterflies and pollinators and all that kind of stuff. So, but it feel she's talked to the lawn guys herself. She's very supportive of Ron, but she
feels like Ron kind of turns a little deaf ear to this. I mean, well, in front of the town office, somebody it it looked like committee people or something. I saw them one Sunday morning and they're the ones who cut all the who cut it all down in front of the tower group.
No, no, no. They would not. I didn't really pay close attention. You know, I was going over I came out and I was going over to Yeah, they were from We're going to take your water and your milkweed. You know, maybe I could just I mean, if the board is all true to that, I'd be
happy to stick a sign out there that says do not touch this milkweed. I think it'd be great because I don't know who's doing it. More signs. We don't know who's doing it. Just a small sign just so Yes. But it wasn't anybody. It wasn't a company or our guys. It was people.
Interesting. At least in front of the town. Speaking of signs. Okay. Tuesday. I will get back to Karen that we are going to try to to moderate this. Um. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're all prot. I'm going to go move it myself
and then I'll put it at the highway department if they don't want to remove it. We've given them enough. Did you see the email that I moved forward? Yeah. Okay. It's been weeks since then. Oh, it has. I just wanted to make sure. How long does it take to go down and remove a sign? Yeah. Um I also wanted to say uh I talked to
Chief Baker and he presented this big pamphlet uh cardigraphic cardic associates in Littleton, New Hampshire had done a base map um for the town and it's at this stage is 9 years old. He
says that it's very critical for the fire department and the uh emergency any emergency services um EMS and police uh to have this map. So you talking about our GIS being updated? No, it's like a handheld map like it was
a big 12 by 17. Oh, I know. I've been working on that for three years. Okay. And the problem is the assessor Derek knows about it because this is done through the assessor's office. That's what I said. I was I said I bet this is I've been working on it. Um I've I gave him an update about assessor's office and what we've been kind of going
through and said I'll bring it up to the board. Yeah. But no, he's he's absolutely right. These are critical. They should they should have them. And I ordered actually last January when I was at the U MMA in um I ran into the guys who create
these and I said, "Oh yeah, we need five of these." You know, can you hear the people to talk to? And I thought it was like all set, but no, because the s haven't been updated and there's there's just it's like we need to go up to Littleton because there's a great brewery there.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got the name of the place. But you're saying that that that they shouldn't can't even make that until the assessors are caught up with GIS. Correct. That's okay. So, they can't do that. Yeah. Because then they'd be putting the wrong Exactly. owners on it. But I agree. it this should have been
done years years ago and you know so we're just playing a huge game of catchup unfortunately but I will bring it up again and just be like nudge nudge I mean it's like are we the only town that's in the situation I mean I imagine they do these maps for like all the
other towns is well it's our assessor it's our it's our issue is that also because of the transition that we did from the two from the Yeah we're still waiting on the other thing I've been asking for for years now.
What? The pilots. Yeah. Well, not and municipally owned. Municipally owned. Yes. Yeah. The pilots are a whole another matter, but yes. Yeah. Well, you did see though that the um there's going to be a commission. I did. Looking at pilot. Yeah, the pilots. Yes.
So, some movement. Yay. Well, good to know. Whoever's doing the cleaning, the trash has been emptied on the ball field. I've not seen No, you're not going to see me doing that again. No, she's been really good.
Yeah. Okay, so mail um request. Request for support for Northern Teal. Northern Teal. Sorry, I can't. Uh Northern Tier Railroad from Burkog. That's a mouthful. Um
announcements. I already gave a support. I wrote in the recorder a huge thing. Yeah. So, this but it's kids mail. Well, they were asking for a letter of support and I think she sent a sample one. So, you know,
I think we signed one of those already. I mean, they just have to do it every couple years, I guess. All right. So, um, next meeting September 8th, uh, Monday, two weeks from now. Um, and then the next meeting after that,
we 22nd. And I so I I think I think I told you I had I have to go to Alaska for a week, but I think I'm not leaving until the 23rd so I can do the 22nd meeting. Um so yeah, next meeting September 8th, 6 p.m. All right. Motion to adjurnn.
Second. All in favor? I. Okay. Thank you everyone.