WEBVTT

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Town of Plainfield: Looks like we have somebody in the waiting room. They don't have their first and last name, so I'm not letting them in. I've messaged them that they need their first and their last name to be admitted.

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Town of Plainfield: This because of the Zoom bombing problem. We set to start? We are set to start. Okay, I'm gonna start the meeting at, 6 o'clock. This is Select Board, October 14th.

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Town of Plainfield: I… and I'm calling the meeting to order.

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Town of Plainfield: Any changes to the agenda?

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Town of Plainfield: I'm tracking 3. Who else's tracking what?

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Town of Plainfield: Three changes? Yeah. Okay. We said we were gonna strike the road report. Is that true? Right. Yep. Yes.

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Town of Plainfield: We were gonna add… talking about a legal action over the paving mishap out front, to address the possibility of that. That is time-sensitive, isn't it? Yeah. We probably should… If it's legal action, wouldn't that be an executive session with a lawyer? I think that the action… this is an action item in which we… I think we're gonna say, let's talk to our attorney. Okay. But it's that… it's the decision for all

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Town of Plainfield: of us to do so.

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Town of Plainfield: And then… And then there was the… the potential, Better Connections grant authorization, to proceed to…

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Town of Plainfield: Rose Paul, who offered to write the grant for us, but needs our go-ahead to do so. Did we decide we were doing that tonight, or next meeting? So…

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Town of Plainfield: what she will work on is going to come back to us next meeting for us to formally say yay or nay on, but she is, I think, wanting authorization to proceed with writing the grant on our behalf. Yeah, I read that over. We should have an agenda item. I have a couple of comments and questions about that, so… So that's the third agenda item that I'm tracking. Where do we want to put those?

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Town of Plainfield: We have a dis… Later is fine. Yeah, a discussion about disability insurance is coming up later, right?

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Town of Plainfield: We could do it around that. Yeah, well, why don't we stick them in where the road commissioner's report was? Yeah, okay.

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Town of Plainfield: Sounds good.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay, any… thank you for the… those changes. Any announcements for any… for anybody?

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Town of Plainfield: Hearing none, public comment?

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Town of Plainfield: Go ahead. As you know, I live up on, Brook Road. Do you state your name for the record also?

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Town of Plainfield: You just have to get closer to it. I tried to get ahold of you, Carl, and Ron Dolphin today. Could you, tell your name, speak your name in there? Yeah.

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Town of Plainfield: I live on Crook Road, and on where Corey Cochran?

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Town of Plainfield: Used to live.

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Town of Plainfield: That's a condemned house. There's somebody squatting in the house, and there's now 4 campers on the lawn. One of them's right in the road.

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Town of Plainfield: One of them's got a sewer pipe going down into the brook bed.

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Town of Plainfield: And, you know.

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Town of Plainfield: He paid taxes as his own lease of property. Had nothing to do with, never mind the sewer pipe, just having the campers there. It's wrong. I've talked to the, sheriff.

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Town of Plainfield: Or a constable.

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Town of Plainfield: And he tells me that they all have Criminal background.

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Town of Plainfield: And I think I know one of them, for sure, that does.

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Town of Plainfield: And I just wonder…

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Town of Plainfield: paying for zoned property, what does the town know about something like that? Well, as I understand, the state police have been contacted, and they are… Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's… it's, it's… That responsible told me a month and a half ago.

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Town of Plainfield: He said what? He just moved in another gamble.

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Town of Plainfield: The constable's the one who is communicating with the state police, and they have to be the ones to deal with this, because the constable's not going down there. And no push from the town?

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Town of Plainfield: Well, we're pushing, but we have to…

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Town Clerk: Let the state police gather the evidence they need. That's… yeah, I haven't heard that one. I knew there was… Can I speak about this, for a second?

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Town Clerk: It's from Town Clerk.

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah, from there.

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Town Clerk: Just, so you know, Louie, I, contacted the state and tried to approach this by having them enforce environmental errors, and the state refused.

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Town Clerk: I hear your frustration, and I want the board to know that this is not the first time

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Town Clerk: that, you've been let down by a system that doesn't take aggressive action. I know there was another trailer moved onto that property, yesterday or the day before.

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Town Clerk: And it's an outrage and a disgrace, and I… I'm not sure what to do. Believe me, we are incredibly concerned about it.

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Town of Plainfield: Yes, Peter. I just don't… I just don't understand

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Town of Plainfield: How we can pay for zoned property.

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Town of Plainfield: State police don't do anything about it, and the state can't do anything about it. The town can't do anything about it.

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Town of Plainfield: where's the zoning coming from? I mean, how do we…

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Town of Plainfield: How do we justify paying his own property when some of the properties in this town look the way they do?

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Town of Plainfield: Louie, if I might, we had the issue up on Bean Road that went on for, I don't know, for years, and there was a zoning administration stuff brought in there, and it resulted in, you know, court action made it very complicated, and the judge in that basically initially ruled against the town and said we needed to switch over to a municipal ticketing ordinance system, and we've been doing

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Town of Plainfield: Do some work on that.

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Town of Plainfield: with the town constable, with the zoning Administrator, Town Health Officer, Animal Control Officer, Bram and I, we've had a subcommittee. We'll talk about that a little later on the agenda.

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Town of Plainfield: In terms of this property, Dan has told us that the… Dan Caddy has told us that the state police are investigating, that there's, you know, potential drug trafficking going on there, criminal records, etc. And so, as Carl said, they're collecting some evidence.

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Town of Plainfield: I don't know what that is. We have not received a briefing on that, etc. This is the first tonight that I've heard about the sewer pipe, which goes back to the Bean Road issue, where there's… it sounds like there possibly is a zoning administration, a zoning violation there that we could, have the zoning administrator move to enforce.

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Town of Plainfield: But I have a question for Bram, which is, Bram, you said you contacted the state. Who did you contact at the state? And you said they did nothing. Who are they?

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Town Clerk: They are, the A&R has a specific… they have one very underfunded officer for basically the entire state. His budget is, you know, one-sixth

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Town Clerk: What, the, animal enforcement is, and he's the person who is in charge of

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Town Clerk: violations in… of, water, you know, I don't know what the title is. And I said, I want you to drive by there, there's no power.

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Town Clerk: And, he reported back that, the septic system was intact, therefore there's nothing he can do. That's what he said.

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Town of Plainfield: Septic system was only intact because he got a grant, that quirky guy that lived there, got a grant from the state to put in a new septic system. That goes for the house.

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Town of Plainfield: The trailers do not have… we have, we have guests that have to talk here. Can we, follow up with this? Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I don't know if you're still going to be here when Dan Caddy, our constable, is going to be here in, like, an hour or so, but a message from Dan.

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Town of Plainfield: about this property, any reporting party, which would be you, need to report these things by calling to Vermont State Police, and then providing the constable, Dan Caddy, a report number, or just

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Town of Plainfield: Let them know the day and time of each report. The town has zero authority here.

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Town of Plainfield: Intervening is not safe for any town official, this is felony-level criminal activity, and VSP has the authority to act, but they can't if reports aren't made.

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Town of Plainfield: And so it's not safe for the town to intervene.

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Town of Plainfield: Why should it be safe for a neighbor? He told me to send him an email, and I didn't send it to him.

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Town of Plainfield: Because these guys… criminal activity, I'm on a dead-end road. And they want me to put my neck out there, and the town can't? No, no, I think the directive here is to call the Vermont State Police. The more reports that the Vermont State Police receives about this activity, the more they have liberty to act.

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Town of Plainfield: But behind the scenes, I don't know what's going on, but I just wanted to relay that message specifically to you.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay, we are gonna talk…

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Town of Plainfield: And if we hear anything, Louis, we'll get to you. But, we are following this up.

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Town of Plainfield: Bridge 21 and Mill Street Bridge. Do we wanna…

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Town of Plainfield: We want to have a presentation, on these items. Shall I start the screen share? Yes, please. And…

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah. Okay.

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Town of Plainfield: It's the green button. The green? Green button right at the bottom. Enter it. And then click on it, yep. And then share down there.

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Town of Plainfield: And if you click the… where the people on the side are, you have to click that right now.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay, and is there any way to… there we go, how about that? One at a time.

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Town of Plainfield: Can you hit F… I think F12, does that enter full screen mode?

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Town of Plainfield: I just zoomed so it's approximate the full screen.

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Town of Plainfield: Maybe there's a slide, but here we go.

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Town of Plainfield: Is that reasonable? Yeah.

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Town of Plainfield: Thank you for having us. I'm Brian Breslin with William King. Do you need to move the microphone over? I'm just wondering that, yes, as well. For people on Zoom, it's this microphone.

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Town of Plainfield: Oh, okay. So as long as… I don't know if people… Yeah, just move that over. If they can hear him. Well, they're not gonna get…

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah, that'll work. Okay. Brian Breslin, DeBoyne King, I'm the design, consultant project manager. With me here tonight is Andrew Hummers, the lead bridge engineer.

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Town of Plainfield: I also saw on the, virtually that, Evan Dietrich, with VHB, he is our, consultant municipal project manager for this project, is here with us this evening.

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Town of Plainfield: And, that's the product team, that's here for tonight. I guess, could you advance to the next slide?

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Town of Plainfield: So, while we're here tonight is I just want to give an overview of the project, how the project is going to get developed, what the process involved.

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Town of Plainfield: We're now in the project alternative stage, so we've presented alternatives analysis reports for both Mill Street and Brook Road.

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Town of Plainfield: And, we've provided recommendations in order to present those to you tonight.

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Town of Plainfield: Next slide, please.

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Town of Plainfield: So, just aerial view showing US Route 2 in relation to the Mill Street Bridge 20 and Brook Road Bridge 21.

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Town of Plainfield: Can you move to advance the next slide?

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Town of Plainfield: Again, just a project overview of the…

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Town of Plainfield: of the two sites. The top one, obviously, is Mill Street Bridge 20, with a temporary truss bridge on stub abutments, and the bottom photo shows Brookwood Bridge 21,

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Town of Plainfield: Built circa the 1920s. Brian, just a quickie, are you not talking about the washout just a little bit up past Bridge 21 tonight?

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah. Are you talking to Cameron? Just the bridges. Just the two bridges. Okay, I thought this was gonna be three parts.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay.

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Town of Plainfield: Thank you. Because the use of federal monies,

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Town of Plainfield: For this project, we need to follow the VTRIN Municipal Assistance Bureau flowchart. What I've provided right here is just a general list of steps that we're currently at, we're at the public meeting stage, and the steps that need to be followed.

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Town of Plainfield: At the conclusion of this meeting, we're hoping that the town can select a superstructure and a substructure and a traffic control methodology, to advance the preliminary plans in HEPA.

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Town of Plainfield: Following that would be potential right-of-way acquisition, permitting, and then going final plans, contract plans, bid phase, construction.

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Town of Plainfield: Next slide, please.

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Town of Plainfield: Some of the site challenges for both projects are the overhead utilities,

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Town of Plainfield: They are located adjacent to both of the bridges, so the demolition and the construction of them will be problematic, so more than likely, a temporary relocation or a permanent relocation will be required for those utilities.

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Town of Plainfield: Also, in the village setting,

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Town of Plainfield: We've assumed a right-of-way of 3 rods. One rod is 16 and a half feet long, so 3 rods 49.5 feet. We're thinking it's more than likely that you are going to need some type of permanent or temporary easements if…

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Town of Plainfield: The, parcels adjacent to the project do not have… are owned by the town for the funeral buyout process.

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Town of Plainfield: Another, site constraint is the current eTron's hydraulic requirements. Based on the design storm event, you're supposed to have a 1 foot of freeboard, for,

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Town of Plainfield: Debris… debris flow to pass underneath your local or your bridge, so that would… that would mean that for these two projects, the roadway profile will rise.

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Town of Plainfield: Can you explain that term, the freeboard? It's just the… it's just the amount of vertical opening from your water surface elevation of your storm event to your bottom underside of your bridge. Okay, yeah, thanks.

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Town of Plainfield: What is the design store?

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Town of Plainfield: I guess… I guess maybe, could we hold off on questions? Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna, yeah. I think I'll answer a lot of questions. We'll answer them later.

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Town of Plainfield: Another thing as we were going through this alternatives analysis was the,

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Town of Plainfield: Bridge 27, Main Street, right near the, Main Street US-2 road intersection, there is a weight limit on that. Depending on what is crossing the, bridge, it may be problematic, such as a heavy crane.

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Town of Plainfield: Coming across for, erection of the bridge.

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Town of Plainfield: It's on Route 2?

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Town of Plainfield: Your main street. The bridge over the dam. Okay, thank you.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay. Could you move it to the next slide?

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Town of Plainfield: So, hydrology and hydraulics,

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Town of Plainfield: Our D&K sub-consultant, Elena Smith with Hydress Engineering, performed this task for us. One of the first steps is trying to determine the design storm event.

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Town of Plainfield: For the bridge opening area, she chose a Q50, or a 2% annual exceedance probability, for the Xinostom event, and that's based on the VTRANS hydraulics manual.

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Town of Plainfield: The Brook Road and Mill Street are both classified as major collectors.

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Town of Plainfield: And so, based on the table, you're supposed to be designing to a Q50 storm event.

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Town of Plainfield: For the hydrology component, she was trying to determine how much of peak flow would be going beneath both bridges. She looked at…

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Town of Plainfield: Regional regression equations, she's… she coordinated with state permitting, state agencies, and then also looked at string gauge data.

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Town of Plainfield: Her recommendation, based on, based on some, 80% confidence level, was a flow rate of 2,800 CFS, approximately through both bridges.

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Town of Plainfield: Once that was known, moving to hydraulics, she tried finding, what was the required waterway opening.

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Town of Plainfield: She is recommending a clear span of 55 feet, and based on the, storm event, provided low cord elevations, so low cord being, again, the bottom of the bridge on the underside.

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Town of Plainfield: This is Mill Street. I've provided both low court elevations for Mill Street and Brook Road. You're recommending 55 feet span on both of them. Correct. Okay, thank you. To put that in comparison, I believe the Brook Road existing bridge is 24 foot span.

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Town of Plainfield: Finally, as part of this task.

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Town of Plainfield: We, we've estimated scour estimates based on hydraulic… nutrients hydraulics manual.

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Town of Plainfield: We're supposed to be looking at the 100-year storm, and I believe an additional check of the 200-year storm. What we're coming up with is 11 or 12 feet below the bottom of the channel.

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Town of Plainfield: Would be a scour event.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay. So, I guess, put that into perspective, if this was a…

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Town of Plainfield: if SCARA wasn't analyzed, a VTRANS recommendation with a VTRANS hydraulics report might say putting the bottom of your, structure 6 people,

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Town of Plainfield: Sure, Daddy.

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Town of Plainfield: So much, much deeper than maybe a general V-Trans recommendation. And that's just where the… The supports are going.

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Town of Plainfield: Right? Yes. Okay.

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Town of Plainfield: Geotechnical.

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Town of Plainfield: This past summer, another one of our sub-consultants, GZA Geoenvironmental, conducted subsurface investigations, borings, two on Mill Street, one on Brook Road, and they were able to use some boring information from a previous design consultant.

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Town of Plainfield: So, limiting the amount of borings required for Brook Road.

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Town of Plainfield: They found that the soils consisted of fills, sand, silt clays, some sand, gravel deposits, and for the Mill Street project, probable bedrock was 80 feet below ground surface, and for Brook Road, just slightly less than 100 feet.

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Town of Plainfield: Their conclusions were that spread footings are suitable, To bear on these soils.

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Town of Plainfield: However, they acknowledged, or were aware of the scour potential for these bulkreeze bridges. They also mentioned that pile foundations would also be suitable.

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Town of Plainfield: Utilities.

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Town of Plainfield: I've already mentioned area utilities. In general, the Brook Road bridge has less utilities than Mill Street, so there's less coordination or impacts to those.

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Town of Plainfield: The Brook Road Bridge, I'm only aware of a, besides Ariel, a water line that got damaged during the July 2024 storm event, and it's capped.

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Town of Plainfield: And for the Mill Street, there are sanitary sewer, drainage, and a water line in that area that may be affected.

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Town of Plainfield: Next slide.

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Town of Plainfield: This is just the regurgitation of what I said earlier about the 3-rod right-of-way and the need for potential permit and temporary easements.

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Town of Plainfield: Can you move on to the next slide?

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Town of Plainfield: This is a,

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Town of Plainfield: What we're calling a right-of-way plan, showing the right-of-way limits, 49.5 feet, centered on the roadway, with property ownership and property lines.

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Town of Plainfield: This is a depiction of concept sketch proposed improvements. As you can see, the wing walls there are approaching the…

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Town of Plainfield: right-of-way limits, and what is not shown right now, we're showing a, a 9-foot travel lane and a 2-foot shoulder.

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Town of Plainfield: 22 feet wide, currently on the roadway. What we're not showing is 6 inches of curving and a sidewalk.

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Town of Plainfield: So when you take that into account, most likely the ring walls are going to be at or outside the right-of-way.

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Town of Plainfield: We can, modify those, or consider changing the geometry.

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Town of Plainfield: As the design progresses.

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Town of Plainfield: Could you move to the next slide, Brook Road, right-of-way plan?

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Town of Plainfield: Again, this is showing generally the same information, with just, again, the need for potential right-of-way.

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Town of Plainfield: In the area.

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Town of Plainfield: Moving on to environmental resources,

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Town of Plainfield: Again, because of federal monies used on this project, NEPA documentation is required, National Environmental Policy Act. It's a U.S. law that requires federal agencies to evaluate environmental impacts whenever a

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Town of Plainfield: Federal proposed action is… being implemented.

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Town of Plainfield: For permits, we're anticipating a U.S. Army Corps general permit, and then the other one associated with a bridge is a stream alteration permit.

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Town of Plainfield: Also, as part of this environmental task, D&K staff visited the site this summer to identify natural resources. The conclusion was that there was no significant, species, rare, threatened endangered species within the project site, which is a good thing.

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Town of Plainfield: They did document invasive species, so things like Japanese knotweed, things like that in the area. Yeah.

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Town of Plainfield: So, this is a layout plan. As the design is progressed, we would be providing… developing more detail. For this right here, I just wanted to point out we're showing a 55-foot clear span.

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Town of Plainfield: On the bridge, pointing out proposed wing walls and potential roadway reconstruction limits.

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Town of Plainfield: Does that include the rising of the road, as you said? Yeah, if we move on to the next slide…

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Town of Plainfield: This is a profile view of Mill Street, showing the approximate 2 to 3 foot rise in the, bridge.

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Town of Plainfield: We're currently showing shallow roadway approach slopes of 1%, 2%.

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Town of Plainfield: I just wanted to mention, depending… as the project is developed, if we determine, or the town determines, or the property owner says.

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Town of Plainfield: impacts to my property are too great. One of the things we can do is potentially steepen the rotary approach grades while still keeping,

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Town of Plainfield: To acceptable rating.

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Town of Plainfield: But for right now, we're just showing 1% and 2% grades, shallow, to kind of mimic.

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Town of Plainfield: What's out there currently?

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Town of Plainfield: Moving on to Brook Road, it's the, again, same information that I presented for Milk Street. 55-foot clear span.

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Town of Plainfield: The one thing I might want to mention for this one is we are…

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Town of Plainfield: Currently proposing or thinking about,

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Town of Plainfield: for the western abutment, keeping it in its existing location, and expanding to the east. It… because the western abutment ties in well with the existing rock armoring and existing, concrete wall downstream.

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Town of Plainfield: But, again, as we develop, we will, you know, refine that.

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Town of Plainfield: Again, There's the 2 to 3 foot rise in the profile.

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Town of Plainfield: We are currently showing, I guess, tangential,

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Town of Plainfield: kink points in the roadway profile. As we progress through so many plans, we've been putting in vertical curves and refining the profile. But, again, we're showing a 2% downward… upward and downward approaches on the roadway here, which could get steepened to 3% or 4% to limit impacts.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay.

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Town of Plainfield: So, we've identified 3 areas, or 3 traffic control schemes in which,

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Town of Plainfield: Both these bridge projects could get constructed. One of them will be a permanent roadway and bridge realignment upstream or downstream of the existing bridge.

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Town of Plainfield: Key advantages to this would be that the traffic would be minimal disruption to existing traffic and building everything offline.

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Town of Plainfield: key disadvantages…

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Town of Plainfield: I don't feel like it meets the village character to have, like, a S maneuvers in the,

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Town of Plainfield: In the roadway. And then, there would be major right-of-way acquisition for that.

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Town of Plainfield: A second traffic control scheme that we considered was a temporary road and bridge upstream or downstream in reconstruction.

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Town of Plainfield: of the existing bridge alignments. It'll add…

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Town of Plainfield: Major key advantages is that it allows for on-alignment construction,

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Town of Plainfield: But one of the major key disadvantages would be that it's cost… most costly for travel control.

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Town of Plainfield: Finally, another scheme we looked at was bridge closure with a detour.

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Town of Plainfield: Both bridges could be built on alignment. This would require the least amount of right-of-way. Does alignment mean at the same time?

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Town of Plainfield: I mean, horizontal alignment to the roadway.

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Town of Plainfield: Oh, I see.

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Town of Plainfield: And then it's the least costly. You don't have to maintain traffic.

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Town of Plainfield: The issue with this, though, is if you close one bridge, you would have to use the other bridge as part of the detour, and so it would have to be constructed sequentially.

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Town of Plainfield: Moving on to the next slide, again, it's just kind of depicting what I was trying to describe. One on the left would be a temporary road and bridge downstream. It could also be upstream, and building the Mill Street Bridge alignment.

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Town of Plainfield: The same thing, or vice versa, for Brook Road. And the picture on the right, I'm just trying to depict bridge closure with a detour on Brook Road, Creamery, and Hudson.

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Town of Plainfield: Wouldn't the detour make more sense just to go up Main Street rather than Hudson, which is a dirt road? Yeah.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay, yes. Yeah, it's just that… everything's paid except for… I guess I didn't take that into consideration, but yes, that makes sense to me.

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Town of Plainfield: And again, vice versa, swapping once one of the bridges is constructed.

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Town of Plainfield: Okay, next slide.

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Town of Plainfield: We found a few different superstructural alternatives, just to get an idea of what was going to happen. Rolled steel beams, northeast extreme T beams, or double T precast concrete, deck-billed Ts, precast concrete, precast concrete arches, and precast concrete deck slab beams.

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Town of Plainfield: I'll talk about each of those in a minute. I guess, next slide.

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Town of Plainfield: Rolled steel beams, the typical, historically easy to construct, contractors are generally familiar with them, issues with that, that we might run into, typical steel corrosion over the life.

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Town of Plainfield: You know, normal design life is, like, 50 to 75 years, but you will get corrosion with the exposed steel over time, regardless of what,

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Town of Plainfield: Sort of corrosion protection you have?

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Town of Plainfield: But that might be the quote-unquote simplest construction, with the lightest individual beams. You would, with that option, once you put the steel beams in over this van, you would need to do, concrete formwork and cast a full depth of concrete.

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Town of Plainfield: reinforced concrete deck, to work with the beams, so that'll extend out the, contractor's construction time a little, but that's not uncommon.

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Town of Plainfield: The other positive of that is I think we designed those, conceptually with about a 27-inch… 27-inch deep steel… steel beam. So figure a 27-inch beam, and…

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Town of Plainfield: An 8-inch concrete deck would be looking at a 35 inches plus or minus, total structure depth.

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Town of Plainfield: That would have to take into consideration, the hydraulic opening that, Brian was talking about before, and the raising of the roadway. So, in terms of that hydraulic, we want to keep the beams as shallow as possible.

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Town of Plainfield: I guess, next slide.

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Town of Plainfield: And, Northeast Extreme T-beams, or, their double T pre-stressed concrete beams, that would be the heaviest option, in terms of weight, so…

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Town of Plainfield: it's a… concrete in general is a nice option, because you kind of put it in there and forget it. You don't have to worry about corrosion issues, as long as it's constructed correctly and, you know, doing some minor maintenance. Downsides of that, it's generally a deeper beam, because it's a standardized

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Town of Plainfield: concrete section that they would have at a pre-caster shop, so we're kind of forced,

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Town of Plainfield: into the concrete depth that we have, so this would be deeper than the steel beam option. The beams, I think, are the shallow.

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Town of Plainfield: Those are, 36-inch beams, I believe, and if we went with this type of beam, which is an F designation, we would also need to install a concrete deck on top of it.

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Town of Plainfield: So, figure a 36-inch beam and a 6-inch deck, so we're looking at a 42-inch deep section total, so that would mean, like, one of the higher…

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Town of Plainfield: Raising of the road situations.

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Town of Plainfield: So…

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Town of Plainfield: again, like anything else, it has its positives and its benefits, and as I mentioned before, this is the heaviest option.

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Town of Plainfield: That number… double-team beams, it's pretty wide, and you're basically getting two beams in one, so we would only need

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Town of Plainfield: maybe 3 or 4 beams, depending, side by side, depending on the roadway design that's required, the number of lanes, lane width, and all that. So we'd only have to put 3 beams in place, but they're extremely heavy beams, on the order of, you know, 80-90,000 pounds.

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Town of Plainfield: So, you would need to have, like, a 350, 400 ton crane brought onto site, so that's a consideration. Like, Brian mentioned before, the mainstream bridge, it's… or posted somewhat. I don't think it… I think I looked at that, and it's…

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Town of Plainfield: Not anything out of the ordinary, but that would have to be a consideration for something like this, because we need to bring in a big crane on-site to do the lifts.

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Town of Plainfield: The next option, I think, the next slide, I think, talks about, bulbs, bulb tees. Similar, these are the same basic idea as the double tees. Precast concrete,

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Town of Plainfield: If we…

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Town of Plainfield: Double team, they're about the same depth. I think this option that we looked at is a…

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Town of Plainfield: forget exactly which beam option we looked at, but still, we're looking at somewhere between a 36 inch to a 42-inch total depth, once you consider any… the beam itself, and then the cast-in-place deck.

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Town of Plainfield: You can do… the option you have to do with selecting either the double T or the single T bulb, is that

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Town of Plainfield: They could be constructed, or the beam selected could either have the deck already cast in place, so once you put it in place, it's ready to get traffic right on top of it, or to get it slightly shallower, and then pour the deck in place. So if we're looking at speeding up construction, we'd want to…

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Town of Plainfield: Get them with the deck already cast in place. There's a little bit extra construction tolerances and closure points, or closure pores.

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Town of Plainfield: in between the beams, to make sure we have a nice, tight, side-by-side action, but those are some of the options we could look at. And again, beam weight, isn't as heavy as a double T, but it's still a pretty heavy beam, heavier than,

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Town of Plainfield: Definitely heavier than the steel option, so we would still need to keep the crane, required crane, erection in mind.

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Town of Plainfield: And the next option we're looking at is a precast steel arch.

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Town of Plainfield: Simple construction, this is kind of,

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Town of Plainfield: I'll call it relatively simple to construct. The arches can be as wide as the fabricator wants to make them, so theoretically, it could be an easy erection, once you put them inside. The downside I see to this is the hydraulic opening question, because obviously the arches dive down on the sides, so…

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Town of Plainfield: If we need a certain, you know, I'll call it an area for water to flow through, then we'll have to raise up the arches in order to get that above the bottom of the stream.

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Town of Plainfield: So this is kind of, in my opinion, this is probably not something we want to look at, but it is an option.

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Town of Plainfield: You said steel, and the slide says concrete. I'm sorry. Theoretically, we could do a steel, too, but we're looking at a concrete option. That would make more sense in this situation if we did do that. But steel, theoretically, would be an option, but I don't think we want to even bother investigating that.

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Town of Plainfield: I guess one other thing I want to mention is, on top of the superstructure depth, there's also the fill, the roadway fill material, and also considering, driving guardrail posts, potentially, so there's additional depth above the super,

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Town of Plainfield: the arch itself that would raise the roadway profile even further.

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Town of Plainfield: How much is that likely to be?

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Town of Plainfield: Usually minimum fill at the top, at the crown of your arch is about 2 feet, so figure whatever your arch is.

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Town of Plainfield: the top of the arch goes to. Yeah. Then you have to go up 2 feet for dirt. Okay. And then, you know, 6 inches, or whatever you need for the payment on that. Yep, okay. But guardrail posts, if it's a 6-foot standard guardrail post, it's 3 foot and change into the ground. And you probably want some room

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Town of Plainfield: From the top of the structure to the bottom of the… the guardrail. Okay.

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Town of Plainfield: So, next slide.

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Town of Plainfield: And, this is, voided Dex Labs, or Dex Labs, or whatever the terminology is.

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Town of Plainfield: This is a… again, a PCI standard. Sections are usually cast in either 3 foot widths, or 48… or 3 foot or 4-foot widths, depending, so that's what we have to play with. This conceptual

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Town of Plainfield: plan thrown together. I'm assuming, I think, the total roadway width was, like, 27 feet, for imagination purposes.

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Town of Plainfield: And I think we had 9 beams, so you'd need to do more beam erections, but compared to, like, the double T beams that we were looking at before.

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Town of Plainfield: These are a lot lighter, and a lot shallower. Like the double T beams, including the deck, was something on the order of 42 inches. And, slad beams,

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Town of Plainfield: The… the heaviest… the heaviest slab you can get is 21 inches deep.

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Town of Plainfield: So, and that's…

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Town of Plainfield: That 21 inches includes the riding surface, so you don't have to do a cast-in-place desk, necessarily. You just need to either put, you know, a… you can drive across the solid concrete, or you can put an asphalt overlay, or a concrete overlay to get a nice smooth riding surface, or something that's easy to repair in the future.

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Town of Plainfield: We didn't look at this initially, because we were looking at, you know, stream or bridge spans of, like, on the order of 60 or 70 feet, you know, because we're still doing preliminary hydraulic analysis, but now I think we're looking at 55 feet, so…

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Town of Plainfield: Textbooks-wise, 50 feet is on the upper limit, but running through the calculations we did, this should work fine for 55 feet in the section, so I think we're saying this is probably the best option. You know…

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Town of Plainfield: Shallower beam, a lighter beam, so you need a smaller crane, it's concrete, less corrosion to worry about than you would with the steel option, and…

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Town of Plainfield: this is probably the way we're gonna lead to go, or we're gonna recommend, I think.

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Town of Plainfield: the white circles, are those, like, cable holes? Are there cables running through? No, typically these are called… this is a PCI, the Precast Institute, the concrete fabricators, it's similar to the AISC, the American Steel Construction. The PCI is the precast, the concrete version of that. But this is their standard section. These are called voided slabs.

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Town of Plainfield: They actually have a… that's usually, like, a 10-inch void in there. Just to make them lighter. It's just to make them lighter? Yeah, basically to make them lighter.

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Town of Plainfield: They have… it's… it's not… they're usually not, like, a full-length void. They're… you have di… you know, solid section diaphragms along the beam, but with these voids in between, so it really lightens it up, because basically all your strength is becoming… coming from the rebar that's sitting up above the circles, and pre-stressing strands that are sitting below it.

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Town of Plainfield: And so it's kind of… like, in a traditional, you know, concrete T-beam, like, Book Road is, you know, there's all that concrete running through there, but theoretically, you don't… from a strength standpoint, you don't necessarily need all of it, so that's why we end up with these voids to make lighter.

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Town of Plainfield: Next slide.

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Town of Plainfield: And, substructures.

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Town of Plainfield: we're looking at, basically 3 options that we were throwing around and talking about, like Brian said before, and the whole reason we're here talking is because, you know, there's a… erosion's been a problem in the past and whatnot, and…

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Town of Plainfield: Soil erosion and scour is a real consideration, so a couple of the things we were looking at was a deep cast in place option.

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Town of Plainfield: Shallow casting place.

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Town of Plainfield: With some type of, permanent sheet piling around it, or a deep pile of foundation, or steel H piles, or something like that. I'll talk about each of these, next slide.

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Town of Plainfield: So, a deep casting place, concrete spread footing, it would theoretically just be a traditional, you know, reinforced concrete abutment, something like that. But, like, Brian mentioned before, the theoretical scour elevation on the stream is something like, what, 10 feet below 11 feet tall.

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Town of Plainfield: 11 to 12 feet below the existing stream bed. So, in order to…

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Town of Plainfield: rule out possible scour in the future, damaging the bridge substructure, you would need to drop down that… the bottom of that concrete, abutment, you know, 11 plus feet.

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Town of Plainfield: Because you need to get down to the theoretical, you know, take away 11 feet, you know, during a storm event, and then you want to be a few feet down from that, so that the concrete still has something to sit on. So, if we went with this option, it would be extremely tall. I'll put it that way.

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Town of Plainfield: So, next slide. Hold on. One thing I want to mention is there would need to be a supportive excavation

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Town of Plainfield: to get down to that depth, too, was like…

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Town of Plainfield: shooting? Yes, you'd have to… because, obviously, you'd need to get below the existing stream bed, so there's not a lot of water right now, but you have to allow for that, so the contractor would need some sort of temporary confidram situation, and then you have to go down 10 plus feet.

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Town of Plainfield: Which, that becomes a whole workers' safety issue that would need to be done.

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Town of Plainfield: Because it's basically… once you get down below the stream bed, if you're 11 feet below the stream bed, all that stream bed pressure from the earth and the fill and the dirt, it's still pressing against whatever that supportive situation he has, so that would be… have to be a pretty heavy contractor design. So that would be just another…

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Town of Plainfield: Pain in the butt in terms of construction, and just another expense.

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Town of Plainfield: The other option, or another option we're looking at was similar to… it's still a cast-in-place footing design, like the… what we just talked about, but if we put some sort of permanent or left-in-place sheeting around it, put it basically a steel box.

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Town of Plainfield: around…

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Town of Plainfield: debuffing. We can just come in, a contractor can come in and drive, with a vibratory… a heavy vibratory hammer. They can drive in steel sheeting into the grounds without having to do much, much excavation, and just get that down well below the scour depth, and that kind of rules out scour right there, so then…

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Town of Plainfield: It also… it serves as scour protection for the permanent bridge, and it also serves as a supportive excavation for any groundwork that the contractor has to do. And then, let's say, instead of going down 11 feet.

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Town of Plainfield: They only have to go down 4 feet, or whatever, and the steel sheet is gonna be there, so they can… and then they have a box to work in, and put a concrete option in that way.

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Town of Plainfield: And that works because you're not down to the bedrock level.

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Town of Plainfield: Yeah, basically, the geotechnical report we had, it said basically the in-place soil should be sufficient to handle spread footing for a bridge this size. So, theoretically, we don't need to worry about going down to the bedrock, which is greater than 80 feet, which is…

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Town of Plainfield: We don't want to go that way if we don't have to.

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Town of Plainfield: And on the next slide.

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Town of Plainfield: The other option we were talking about is a deep foundation, or a steel pile foundation, or a flexible foundation, where instead of doing… instead of concrete, resting and getting all that vertical support from the soils in place, you put big, long steel

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Town of Plainfield: You drive down into the ground, depending on the design, we could either do it to, say, 60 feet, and it would just be the friction of the sand and dirt in place holding everything up, or we'd have to go down to, like, 80 feet and hit the bedrock so it's basically standing on bedrock and holding everything up.

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Town of Plainfield: Generally, it's a good option because it's a deep foundation you don't have to worry about, but…

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Town of Plainfield: And it's relatively simple construction, but it's a lot very equipment intensive. So they'd have to bring in some big cabiners to drive stuff in place, and it's, you know.

295
00:45:49.620 --> 00:46:05.820
Town of Plainfield: from previous work experience, it's common to do in places like South Jersey and New York City, where you've got swirls like that and a lot of traffic, whereas I don't know how much, contractor, you know, availability is locally for when you're dealing with equipment like that.

296
00:46:07.840 --> 00:46:18.299
Town of Plainfield: The good thing about this option, theoretically, it handles the scour issue, where it's… the, you know, the piles are just way below the scour depth.

297
00:46:18.300 --> 00:46:35.789
Town of Plainfield: The theoretical problem with that issue, though, is if you did have a big storm come through and blew everything out, and it took out all the soil from underneath the bridge, the bridge, theoretically, would still be standing, but then you'd have kind of a big void space in between the steel piles that you'd have to fill back in with something.

298
00:46:36.450 --> 00:46:46.349
Town of Plainfield: We could do a similar thing with the slide we saw before, and just put in a, you know, stain-place steel sheeting to preclude that too, but then…

299
00:46:47.380 --> 00:46:57.619
Town of Plainfield: added work and added expense. It's a nice end product, but it's more difficult and more time-consuming and more expensive construction.

300
00:46:57.730 --> 00:47:09.290
Town of Plainfield: So probably, I think what we recommended in the report is the second slide we were at before. Basically a shallow foundation with a permanent steel sheeting left in place.

301
00:47:11.650 --> 00:47:13.389
Town of Plainfield: And I forget what the next slide was.

302
00:47:15.020 --> 00:47:17.530
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, Alternatives Matrix,

303
00:47:17.850 --> 00:47:39.879
Town of Plainfield: We compiled two tables based on the superstructure and the substructure, identify… identifying ways to compare them. In general, we thought that, for the most part, the roadway reconstruction was the same, with the exception of the slab beams, because the depth of the superstructure is less, so the roadway

304
00:47:39.940 --> 00:47:42.700
Town of Plainfield: approach limits will be less.

305
00:47:43.320 --> 00:47:53.959
Town of Plainfield: However, the superstructure itself is probably slightly more expensive than the next beams because of the amount of concrete

306
00:47:54.170 --> 00:47:56.740
Town of Plainfield: required in comparison to the next beat.

307
00:48:01.990 --> 00:48:05.000
Town of Plainfield: For the,

308
00:48:07.750 --> 00:48:16.140
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, for the, shell spread footings with permanent sheeting and the deep foundations, we thought it was very similar in cost.

309
00:48:16.430 --> 00:48:26.370
Town of Plainfield: At $500,000 and $550,000. One of the things I wanted to really point out is we're identifying costs in these tables.

310
00:48:27.720 --> 00:48:28.849
Town of Plainfield: Those are just…

311
00:48:29.630 --> 00:48:44.229
Town of Plainfield: Comparative costs, when you… I wanted to point out the note at the bottom, that I… we believe that anything you select is going to be, construction-wise, at a minimum $2 million, but could go higher in the $2 to $4 million range.

312
00:48:44.690 --> 00:48:49.730
Town of Plainfield: And also, I wanted to mention… For the two bridges.

313
00:48:49.870 --> 00:49:03.370
Town of Plainfield: For each. Each branch. Each, yeah. I also wanted to mention, and I don't know if you heard this or not, for these projects, I believe it's 80% FHWA funds.

314
00:49:03.370 --> 00:49:10.419
Town of Plainfield: 10% state is… will kick in money, and the remaining 10%, I think, needs to be funded by the town.

315
00:49:11.770 --> 00:49:12.780
Town of Plainfield: So…

316
00:49:12.920 --> 00:49:27.930
Town of Plainfield: we've come up with all these lists of rankings, or, criteria, and then ultimately, if we move on to the next slide. Well, the next slide is Brook Road, but it's… it's basically the same slide, the same information.

317
00:49:29.130 --> 00:49:31.749
Town of Plainfield: Moving on to recommendations.

318
00:49:32.860 --> 00:49:37.799
Town of Plainfield: We are recommending the concrete deck slab. I think the key points is it's…

319
00:49:37.910 --> 00:49:55.989
Town of Plainfield: Comparably, one of the lowest costs in comparison to maybe the next beam, and then it has the least amount of roadway approach impacts, so that's what we're thinking about that. For the substructure, we were leaning towards the shallow cast-in-place concrete spread footings with permanent sheet piles.

320
00:49:56.180 --> 00:49:58.389
Town of Plainfield: To rent scour.

321
00:49:58.540 --> 00:50:02.250
Town of Plainfield: Again, this has a similar cost to the piles, and it…

322
00:50:02.530 --> 00:50:09.400
Town of Plainfield: Has more scour protection for the roadway than piles.

323
00:50:09.550 --> 00:50:22.019
Town of Plainfield: I do want to mention, though, is if this was a VTrans project, I think they'd automatically go with a pile foundation, and if it's… if a scour event curves, it just… they just sacrifice the road.

324
00:50:23.100 --> 00:50:42.670
Town of Plainfield: And just let the road go. So there's no… there's no, structure. There's no pre-stressed, footing. Is that what you're saying? I mean… It… it… a pile of foundation is… there's the… there's the beams in the ground, and then, so if the scarab event occurs beneath the abutment, it will get behind

325
00:50:42.750 --> 00:50:47.749
Town of Plainfield: the road. Yeah. By the Obama, and eat into the road, right? Yep, okay.

326
00:50:47.860 --> 00:50:58.430
Town of Plainfield: Another thing is, we are treating the sheet proven and sheet piling. If this was to be as a structural element, we would need some type of

327
00:50:58.510 --> 00:51:08.699
Town of Plainfield: whaler, or some type of resistance. If the scour event occurred, there would be, movement on the sheepine because the soil isn't there to resist it.

328
00:51:09.200 --> 00:51:14.430
Town of Plainfield: So, we would need to incorporate some type of design element so that it's no movement.

329
00:51:14.650 --> 00:51:28.510
Town of Plainfield: And you mentioned a whaler. Yeah, normally what you do in a situation is you put your shoe in the ground, and it has a steel whaler on it, or basically a steel strap or strengthening arm, so that, you know, it's…

330
00:51:28.640 --> 00:51:29.550
Town of Plainfield: like…

331
00:51:29.840 --> 00:51:36.090
Town of Plainfield: Kind of following the theory that if you push on a force on this side, instead of just the sheet holding itself, it's…

332
00:51:36.110 --> 00:51:47.160
Town of Plainfield: spreading all that load across the entire wall. Usually, it ends up being, you know, a small, short H-pile section, or a C-channel.

333
00:51:47.170 --> 00:52:05.829
Town of Plainfield: But it's… and that's, you know, bolted and or welded to the sheep bioface, and then possibly strapped to a dead man or something that goes back landward. That's, you know, gonna be there. But that's, relatively… in comparison to putting sheets in the ground, that's a relatively simple…

334
00:52:06.090 --> 00:52:07.050
Town of Plainfield: Yep.

335
00:52:07.160 --> 00:52:26.099
Town of Plainfield: And then, finally, for traffic control, we're recommending sequential bridge closure. We just don't think there's enough room for… to maintain traffic off to the side, and contractor operations with putting in a crane or storing equipment in a village setting like this.

336
00:52:26.250 --> 00:52:32.439
Town of Plainfield: And the other added benefit, it's, you know, the least amount of right-of-way, and it still will be the least costly.

337
00:52:35.050 --> 00:52:38.179
Town of Plainfield: Schedule,

338
00:52:38.730 --> 00:52:48.249
Town of Plainfield: One of the requirements for… would be for this project is to get to bid phase or authorization to bid about one year from now.

339
00:52:48.480 --> 00:53:06.170
Town of Plainfield: with a goal of constructing in spring of 2027. One of the things that we would do as the project, both projects are advanced, would be adding details, to the plans about, or directions to the contract about making,

340
00:53:06.430 --> 00:53:11.300
Town of Plainfield: the bridge prefabricated? Yes, could you…

341
00:53:11.700 --> 00:53:27.540
Town of Plainfield: ABC, Accelerated bridge construction, is a buzz term that's been floating around the past several years, just for projects that are on a tight schedule for either budgetary reasons, funding reasons, and or traffic reasons.

342
00:53:27.670 --> 00:53:33.659
Town of Plainfield: It's basically get the contractor out there and have them do the bridge as quickly as possible.

343
00:53:33.760 --> 00:53:39.479
Town of Plainfield: You know, that can mean either the entire project, you know, or…

344
00:53:39.600 --> 00:53:45.129
Town of Plainfield: Just the road closure time, but usually, that…

345
00:53:45.980 --> 00:53:50.750
Town of Plainfield: That would entail, precast… more precast elements than just the,

346
00:53:50.910 --> 00:53:59.369
Town of Plainfield: the superstructure. Like, when they bring in the beams for any projects, you know, even if they're concrete, they're considered precast.

347
00:53:59.370 --> 00:54:11.829
Town of Plainfield: So you don't have to do anything with them on site, you just drop them in place, and that's it. But whereas for a normal bridge construction, and what we were originally conceptually thinking is for, you know, a cast in place, abut… concrete abutment.

348
00:54:12.020 --> 00:54:23.179
Town of Plainfield: You know, it takes a couple weeks for them to form it up on site. It takes, you know, a couple days for them to put a rebar cage in there, and then it takes 7 days, or, you know.

349
00:54:23.190 --> 00:54:47.740
Town of Plainfield: once I pour the concrete, it's got to be at least, you know, 14 to 28 days before they can put any real weights on it, so that's a project, whereas you can do pre-cut elements, for the substructure so that they go quick, too. It just… contractor comes in, does all the excavation, then they drop in all the pieces, tie them all together, and they're good to go, they're strong and ready to grow, and you drop the beams on top of that.

350
00:54:47.740 --> 00:54:55.039
Town of Plainfield: and you basically kind of compress your construction time into that. Downside of a situation like that is it's more expensive.

351
00:54:55.040 --> 00:54:59.639
Town of Plainfield: Because you're basically kind of doing… building the bridge twice, per se. You're…

352
00:54:59.800 --> 00:55:11.350
Town of Plainfield: You know, the shop is casting everything in place, so that costs money, and then they have to actually put it in place on-site, so that's going to cost money. But… you're paying for the speed of construction.

353
00:55:12.270 --> 00:55:13.210
Town of Plainfield: Okay.

354
00:55:16.760 --> 00:55:33.300
Town of Plainfield: I guess one final thing is, I said this in the beginning, I'll say this at the end before questions, comments, you know, I think we've… this is our end of our presentation, my questions, comments. I'm hoping maybe this evening, or shortly after, the town could make a decision on

355
00:55:33.380 --> 00:55:37.480
Town of Plainfield: How to proceed with which direction you'd like us to go with.

356
00:55:37.670 --> 00:55:39.870
Town of Plainfield: I'm sorry, on what timeline, did you say?

357
00:55:42.450 --> 00:55:57.039
Town of Plainfield: I would prefer, within a… I would prefer tonight, but I understand, you know, that might not happen. Stay on schedule, I think we'd need a decision maybe in a couple weeks. Yeah. Max.

358
00:55:58.230 --> 00:56:10.510
Town of Plainfield: We are currently ahead of schedule. This meeting was scheduled for one month later in the previous slide, so I think we are one month ahead of schedule. So if we approved this at our October 28th meeting, we'd still be…

359
00:56:11.400 --> 00:56:20.079
Town of Plainfield: If there's lingering questions, I'm not saying no. I guess, I prefer early knock. Two weeks, two weeks from today, that's two weeks from today. Yeah.

360
00:56:20.520 --> 00:56:37.510
Town of Plainfield: Questions? This is all fascinating about the superstructure and the substructure and all that stuff. What about what, aesthetically, we're gonna see above ground when we're done, in terms of, you know, the…

361
00:56:37.720 --> 00:56:58.510
Town of Plainfield: the bridge… the walls, you know, that we see when we go across the Main Street Bridge here. You know, most of the bridges in town have a similar kind of concrete wall, many of them have to date 1927 or something close, close by. Just in terms of historical aesthetics. Any thought on that?

362
00:56:59.230 --> 00:57:00.849
Town of Plainfield: Well, I mean.

363
00:57:01.420 --> 00:57:13.069
Town of Plainfield: The superstructure itself, like, if we go with the slab beams, that's 21 inches below the riding surface, that's just going to be a concrete rectangle, so kind of similar to what you see on

364
00:57:13.490 --> 00:57:33.469
Town of Plainfield: Brook Road, whereas, as far as the… what comes above that, what you're going to see walking across there, if we go with standard plain stuff, it's just going to be plain concrete, but what we can do with that is, I'm… we did… er, I've been involved in many projects with that, is they'll put enough… because,

365
00:57:34.180 --> 00:57:38.910
Town of Plainfield: The guardrail is a, it's a cash-in-place item, you know, which is…

366
00:57:39.200 --> 00:57:49.499
Town of Plainfield: And so, what they can do is they can… contractors can put a form liner in there so that you get a nice railing feature on the outside, so it kind of gives that bit of a historic look.

367
00:57:50.080 --> 00:58:00.170
Town of Plainfield: Eastmont Pillier did that. Eastmont Pillier did that, and it looks nice. Can a concrete parapet be added to any of the superstructures we

368
00:58:01.160 --> 00:58:02.130
Town of Plainfield: Booked at.

369
00:58:02.780 --> 00:58:12.700
Town of Plainfield: Possibly, yes. Concrete is the concrete bridge railing. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yes. That's, yes, standard… for those standard beam, it's,

370
00:58:12.790 --> 00:58:23.439
Town of Plainfield: We could do a steel rail. Steel rail would be an option, or… but it's all… it's put a cast-in-place concrete, guardrail, with the form liner.

371
00:58:23.990 --> 00:58:41.010
Town of Plainfield: But that's an aesthetics issue more than anything. So, like, yeah, again, it's an aesthetics question, and we have these, like, nice bulbous lights here on this Main Street Bridge, so we could do… nothing that you're talking about here would get in the way of doing…

372
00:58:41.160 --> 00:58:53.999
Town of Plainfield: those kinds of things above ground. Any… anything aesthetically, I would refer back to maybe VTRANS as for the final approval, whether or not they would be kicking in.

373
00:58:54.390 --> 00:58:56.850
Town of Plainfield: for that aspect.

374
00:59:01.400 --> 00:59:04.100
Town of Plainfield: I had a question first, and then I'll get you.

375
00:59:04.650 --> 00:59:08.939
Town of Plainfield: We've had a lot of work done on this brook for the last

376
00:59:09.400 --> 00:59:27.479
Town of Plainfield: 40 years, and flow rates and so on. So, have you been working with the folks who have been doing the studies on the Brook, so you really feel comfortable with the flows and understanding the trees that come down with the flows? I'm just concerned about

377
00:59:27.710 --> 00:59:36.510
Town of Plainfield: jam-ups and damming the bridges. Our hydraulic and H&H sub-consultant, Elena Smith, was

378
00:59:36.670 --> 00:59:47.139
Town of Plainfield: coordinating with… I think George Springsten has been involved, as well as other state agencies, and prior to her coming up with the flow rates.

379
00:59:47.470 --> 00:59:51.310
Town of Plainfield: those coordination efforts on their end. Okay. And I will say, though.

380
00:59:51.680 --> 01:00:03.600
Town of Plainfield: is she had a high confidence interval in her determination of the flow rate, so there is a factor of safety in there, in the amount of flow rate. Okay.

381
01:00:03.690 --> 01:00:20.280
Town of Plainfield: That's just a concern. Just to add, I… I was in, meetings with… with her and Stacey Pomeroy and others from UVM, and made sure that it was coordinated with George and, and then,

382
01:00:23.100 --> 01:00:30.209
Town of Plainfield: west from SLR, so… everyone who's looking at this watershed as, like, you know.

383
01:00:30.630 --> 01:00:40.170
Town of Plainfield: she had good access to all of the previous… Okay. I mean, there's no guarantee, I realize, but we want to be smart about this, make sure we have enough

384
01:00:40.330 --> 01:00:45.250
Town of Plainfield: height, or width, or flow rate through the, through the bridge.

385
01:00:45.760 --> 01:00:56.209
Town of Plainfield: Do you have a question? Yeah, so what up for the two bridges, what's the total project cost, and did I hear we have a 10% match required by the time? Yes.

386
01:00:58.520 --> 01:01:03.369
Town of Plainfield: 4 to 8 million, I think. 4 to 8 million. So we're gonna have to have $400,000 to $800,000.

387
01:01:03.570 --> 01:01:12.209
Town of Plainfield: So… Okay, so there's multiple costs for these projects. There's preliminary engineering costs, which…

388
01:01:12.400 --> 01:01:17.609
Town of Plainfield: are Dean K's cost as a design consultant. There are…

389
01:01:18.320 --> 01:01:34.489
Town of Plainfield: VHB's cost as a municipal project manager, and then there's other engineering costs. So once we are done with bid phase and we put this out to construction, the town is going to need to hire a construction engineer for near full-time inspection of the project. So there's all those costs.

390
01:01:34.840 --> 01:01:38.779
Town of Plainfield: And then there's potential right-of-way costs,

391
01:01:39.500 --> 01:01:46.739
Town of Plainfield: If you have a female buyout, and you own the parcel, you don't need a right-of-way, right-of-way cost.

392
01:01:46.970 --> 01:01:54.470
Town of Plainfield: Those are relatively inexpensive. And then there's state permit costs, which are relatively inexpensive.

393
01:01:54.620 --> 01:01:56.739
Town of Plainfield: But the big, big thing is construction prep.

394
01:02:00.020 --> 01:02:01.610
Town of Plainfield: So, to speak to that.

395
01:02:01.940 --> 01:02:18.829
Town of Plainfield: the, so we think about what we've already expended, right? In the… in overall, like, on the flood, emergency relief between what we've, you know, expended up to, say,

396
01:02:18.930 --> 01:02:25.730
Town of Plainfield: July 1st, was about $1.7 million, 1.8 million. Let's call it… call it 1.8 million.

397
01:02:27.670 --> 01:02:40.870
Town of Plainfield: we have this loan from the, the Mont Bond Bank at a half percent. So, in terms of cash flow, as we receive the reimbursements back from,

398
01:02:41.290 --> 01:02:46.019
Town of Plainfield: from FEMA and Federal Highway, that, that…

399
01:02:46.160 --> 01:02:58.230
Town of Plainfield: that financial instrument has a half percent interest rate, which is very nice. So we'll have that half percent interest rate on that cash flow, for…

400
01:02:58.380 --> 01:03:08.870
Town of Plainfield: up to 5 years. And then, we only, we were only in receipt of, like, a, 8.

401
01:03:10.540 --> 01:03:23.530
Town of Plainfield: a million-dollar short-term loan. The other $800,000 came from, like, other sources of funds that we… we paid out, diverted from

402
01:03:24.230 --> 01:03:37.450
Town of Plainfield: the, you know, for example, the letter that you wrote about ARPA, and and so, the… the… what's gonna happen is, as we get the… get these reimbursements back.

403
01:03:37.450 --> 01:03:49.469
Town of Plainfield: we can hold that, like, half of that reimbursement, like, because half we're obligated to pay back to the bond bank, we can hold half of that. And,

404
01:03:49.810 --> 01:03:57.360
Town of Plainfield: And have, have that available to pay these ongoing costs. So, like…

405
01:03:57.360 --> 01:04:12.840
Town of Plainfield: the, you know, the permanent work, we pay out as, you know, things get billed to us. So, people get paid, and that is where we will pay that… that 10% share. So…

406
01:04:12.840 --> 01:04:31.939
Town of Plainfield: this, like, above that million, that $800,000, we… that is, like, essentially our money, and in the worst case scenario for these two bridges, you know, that could be the match for these two bridges. Now, we have other projects to do, but I don't, anticipate the,

407
01:04:32.800 --> 01:04:34.220
Town of Plainfield: like…

408
01:04:35.360 --> 01:04:52.780
Town of Plainfield: And yesterday, I met with the… a different municipal project managing firm and a different, design firm to get, you know, working… were behind these two projects. These were the… the fronted projects. So I feel like,

409
01:04:53.330 --> 01:05:01.389
Town of Plainfield: Even in the worst case scenario for this, we will be able to sustain the cash flow up to that 10% match.

410
01:05:01.570 --> 01:05:08.300
Town of Plainfield: In, in terms of, like, the, the permanent project overall.

411
01:05:08.470 --> 01:05:09.490
Town of Plainfield: Now…

412
01:05:10.290 --> 01:05:22.960
Town of Plainfield: 8 million is a pretty big number, but $4 million for a 50-foot bridge seems, like, excessive, but I understand you have to keep

413
01:05:23.330 --> 01:05:26.160
Town of Plainfield: You know, on the edge of the margins.

414
01:05:26.340 --> 01:05:29.009
Town of Plainfield: I guess we have not done a detailed

415
01:05:29.010 --> 01:05:50.479
Town of Plainfield: measurement of patterns or our unit cost evaluations, if you give us direction, that's when we will start designing things and measuring and have a clearer picture of how much we think this is going to cost. But I feel like, you know, overall, if we're looking at projects being in the $8 to $10 million range.

416
01:05:50.480 --> 01:05:59.049
Town of Plainfield: Over the next… 5 years, or potentially more. That is like a,

417
01:05:59.220 --> 01:06:18.569
Town of Plainfield: you know, we have a good capacity of cash flow to manage these projects. You know, that's part of what this, you know, above the $800,000, the half a million we have at a half percent that we can carry that year over year. And, you know, and that's on…

418
01:06:18.790 --> 01:06:24.329
Town of Plainfield: you know, that's not over the whole span. That will, you know, what we're paying interest on will

419
01:06:24.480 --> 01:06:32.460
Town of Plainfield: will get smaller as we get reimbursements. One thing I forgot to say at announcements was.

420
01:06:32.620 --> 01:06:50.509
Town of Plainfield: we did get the first payment back from Federal Highway for the Mill Street Bridge last week at $210,000. So we're holding, like, you know, $105,000 in unobligated funds that we should hold in reserves.

421
01:06:50.510 --> 01:06:58.550
Town of Plainfield: to… in anticipation of some of these, projects. So as these come back, we'll be able to kind of

422
01:06:58.550 --> 01:07:00.390
Town of Plainfield: Move that money forward.

423
01:07:00.760 --> 01:07:15.619
Town of Plainfield: So, just one other question. So, you are making two recommendations, which is the pre-stressed and the permanent pile. Are those optimized for overall safety, longevity, cost? Like, what…

424
01:07:16.660 --> 01:07:22.819
Town of Plainfield: like, our… I guess I'm trying to, like, definitely want to take experts' recommendations, but it's just, like.

425
01:07:22.840 --> 01:07:38.800
Town of Plainfield: I don't know. Twice the cost for one of these things and another, but it's, like, I don't know, not twice as long-lasting. I don't know how these, like, how you decide on these recommendations. The slides went by pretty quick. Let me try to answer, and then you can supplement.

426
01:07:39.230 --> 01:07:46.650
Town of Plainfield: A concrete superstructure will have a longer design life than a steel superstructure.

427
01:07:47.600 --> 01:08:00.200
Town of Plainfield: disagree. He's the bridge guy. But in this case, we were thinking the superstructure is one of the least expensive options. Okay. For the substructure.

428
01:08:01.180 --> 01:08:15.440
Town of Plainfield: we were recommending, shallow, shallow spread footing with sheeting, and then as a potential alternative would be piles. They were comparable in our initial review, comparing the two.

429
01:08:15.630 --> 01:08:20.420
Town of Plainfield: Longevity and, strength and… reliability.

430
01:08:21.330 --> 01:08:22.220
Town of Plainfield: Okay.

431
01:08:22.220 --> 01:08:46.250
Town of Plainfield: Oh, no, just pretty much on, for, I think, design life, for steel structures, it's usually about 50-plus years, as for what the federal, requirements, design requirements are, and then for precast concrete, it's usually estimated at 75 plus years. So, I mean, you know, just having, you know, inspected, you know, bridges from the 1930s and forward.

432
01:08:46.290 --> 01:08:48.920
Town of Plainfield: Over the past year, you know, the years,

433
01:08:49.020 --> 01:09:03.419
Town of Plainfield: with today's concrete, the corrosion properties are gonna be better with the concrete versus the steel. You know, I mean, that's not going to be any of our problems. I'm hoping to be retired by that day. But but in terms of the lifespan, the…

434
01:09:03.420 --> 01:09:10.540
Town of Plainfield: you know, the… with the, you know, the… being over the water. Granted, it's not salt water, but still.

435
01:09:10.540 --> 01:09:20.240
Town of Plainfield: Concrete option would be better in terms of the town, and there's less maintenance costs to it over the time, whereas steel will have more exposed stuff, and, you know.

436
01:09:20.270 --> 01:09:31.480
Town of Plainfield: You know, town inspectors will see stuff, and then residents will see stuff that has to get taken care of, but concrete is just concrete. You either have a big problem, or you don't have a problem.

437
01:09:31.979 --> 01:09:34.689
Town of Plainfield: the, the town of Bethel put in a…

438
01:09:34.910 --> 01:09:45.489
Town of Plainfield: truss galvanized arch bridge, I think partly because it reduces the amount of depth of the roadbed.

439
01:09:45.640 --> 01:09:50.859
Town of Plainfield: Is that more expensive? I mean, is that an expensive option?

440
01:09:51.229 --> 01:10:04.430
Town of Plainfield: a con… or the steel arch, it would be the cheaper option, but it's also more, we didn't look at it, I'm not familiar with that project, but for a 50-foot, you'd have… it's…

441
01:10:05.110 --> 01:10:24.200
Town of Plainfield: Okay. You need thicker, thicker material. Yeah. But then, you also have corrosion issues that are gonna be on the bottom with all the water exposure, so it's just gonna corrode over time. There's no way, really, way around that, whether it's galvanized or not, they're all… any protection's gonna need to get touched up or redone over time. Yeah. And then,

442
01:10:25.000 --> 01:10:35.849
Town of Plainfield: I do not see the steel arch being any better option than the concrete, as far as… maybe it might be a little cheaper, but then you might lose some longevity, I imagine.

443
01:10:35.850 --> 01:10:50.450
Town of Plainfield: Okay. You're talking about the one right there by Peavine Park, right where you turn on one… Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's galvanized, and it's not that old, but that's what they chose. And I was thinking the depth, I mean, this, the pre-stressed…

444
01:10:50.750 --> 01:10:55.570
Town of Plainfield: Panels that you're talking about, concrete, are only 21 inches, so that's…

445
01:10:55.570 --> 01:11:20.289
Town of Plainfield: That's pretty good, but even a truss bridge would lead me even less, I would think, because it's just the road bridge above the water. I'd be curious to find out what they were doing, but trusses, as far as the federal highway is concerned, you can't build trusses anymore. Oh, okay. So, that would be another… that would be another… They look nice, but they're not on… Well, they're kind of traditional Vermont, too, I guess. They're fairly critical.

446
01:11:20.290 --> 01:11:25.439
Town of Plainfield: And because, you know, one portion of the trust fails, theoretically, your entire bridge trust fails.

447
01:11:25.550 --> 01:11:38.599
Town of Plainfield: There are design ways around it, but… to make it work, and meet all federal standards, but it's a lot of fudging in terms of design work. We don't want to be fudging.

448
01:11:38.920 --> 01:11:41.870
Town of Plainfield: Don, did you want to say something?

449
01:11:42.230 --> 01:11:43.820
Dawn Fancher: Yeah, I, I…

450
01:11:44.590 --> 01:12:02.709
Dawn Fancher: I think I have a question. I'm Dawn Fancher, and I just want to say, for my parents, or Bob and Kathy, they live at the corner of Mill Street and Brook Street. It was on the maps, their names are on there. And I just had a question. I don't remember all the specific

451
01:12:02.750 --> 01:12:11.580
Dawn Fancher: terms and phrases, so please bear with me, it all went by kind of fast, but for the substructure, I noticed on the option that was recommended, which was the second one, there were

452
01:12:11.860 --> 01:12:22.800
Dawn Fancher: the… I forgot what the way they are, but there were the blue lines that were indicating where the stuff was, was going out almost to my parents' property line, and I… in the description of what

453
01:12:23.320 --> 01:12:39.350
Dawn Fancher: of what was recommended, and mentioned that, oh, the V-trans wouldn't do it, they'd just sacrificed the roadway, which led me to have a question, which is that hopefully the new bridge will be sized enough for any flood that we would face. But, but, let's imagine

454
01:12:39.350 --> 01:12:43.470
Dawn Fancher: Just catastrophic flood, bigger than last year, huge.

455
01:12:43.530 --> 01:13:02.869
Dawn Fancher: And it starts to back up at that bridge, are you saying, like, what would then happen in that case? Like, because, like, having seen the roadway be sacrificed on Mill Street several times since I've lived here, like, I'm just concerned about would water start to back up? Would it threaten upstream homes that aren't bought out?

456
01:13:02.870 --> 01:13:12.580
Dawn Fancher: You know, that was my question, like, what happens… what happens if the bridge isn't… is… is, like, what's the fail state if there is a catastrophic, catastrophic flood?

457
01:13:12.640 --> 01:13:14.570
Town of Plainfield: Thanks.

458
01:13:14.760 --> 01:13:19.460
Town of Plainfield: I wish I brought the hydraulics engineer with me this evening.

459
01:13:19.720 --> 01:13:24.480
Town of Plainfield: If the water surface elevation approached and it was above the low cord.

460
01:13:24.620 --> 01:13:30.039
Town of Plainfield: And there's debris. Debris would halter the passage of water, and there would be, you know.

461
01:13:30.990 --> 01:13:45.099
Town of Plainfield: probably a surge upstream. That being said, it would probably go above the top of the bank and into the overlying neighborhood. I believe the velocities would be less, though, in the

462
01:13:45.330 --> 01:13:48.659
Town of Plainfield: The floodplain or flat area versus the channel itself.

463
01:13:50.460 --> 01:13:54.960
Dawn Fancher: I guess… I guess my question is, would that design be…

464
01:13:55.150 --> 01:14:08.580
Dawn Fancher: trying to prevent the roadway on the sides of the bridge from washing out, like has happened to us at Mill Street multiple times in, like, in… like, would it be trying to prevent that at the expense of more water backing up? That was my question.

465
01:14:08.850 --> 01:14:09.810
Town of Plainfield: Island.

466
01:14:10.730 --> 01:14:26.760
Town of Plainfield: We were… we were envisioning installing the sheet piling in somewhat of a U-pattern, if the river was ever to migrate in the future, but in the Mill Street location, it's not prone to channel migration so much as Brook Road.

467
01:14:30.390 --> 01:14:32.840
Town of Plainfield: It sounds like it's been considered, Don.

468
01:14:33.200 --> 01:14:34.490
Town of Plainfield: Okay.

469
01:14:34.490 --> 01:14:47.400
Dawn Fancher: I'm not… I asked my question, I got the answer I'm getting, but that didn't sound reassuring to me at all. I wasn't talking about stream migration, I was talking about, like, a flooding event and flooding of the village versus who's.

470
01:14:47.400 --> 01:14:48.100
Town of Plainfield: the road.

471
01:14:48.100 --> 01:14:50.730
Dawn Fancher: Temporarily, which we've all had to do, but.

472
01:14:50.730 --> 01:14:51.930
Town of Plainfield: Okay.

473
01:14:51.930 --> 01:14:52.810
Dawn Fancher: Reassuring thing.

474
01:14:52.810 --> 01:15:04.139
Town of Plainfield: We're raising the roadway 2 to 3 feet, and in doing so, we'd be creating low points on either side for the tie-in, so at a certain level, the water would be flowing

475
01:15:04.360 --> 01:15:07.030
Town of Plainfield: Across the roadway during a certain sort of event.

476
01:15:07.030 --> 01:15:07.670
Dawn Fancher: Okay, thanks.

477
01:15:08.210 --> 01:15:09.719
Dawn Fancher: That's more reassuring.

478
01:15:11.360 --> 01:15:12.720
Town of Plainfield: Not getting up.

479
01:15:12.890 --> 01:15:22.659
Town of Plainfield: current, the, you know… Yeah, it… the cross-section is much larger than the previous constructions.

480
01:15:22.980 --> 01:15:32.750
Town of Plainfield: Just to give you a comparison, I've walked, like, when the… in a low-water situation, I walked underneath the Brook Road Bridge, and that's…

481
01:15:33.020 --> 01:15:46.450
Town of Plainfield: I was standing on solid ground with a little bit of water, and I was like this, and trying not to bang my head on the beams, whereas we're gonna need something that… I don't know what, but… Yeah, so that's gonna be… we're going from this to…

482
01:15:46.760 --> 01:15:56.910
Town of Plainfield: And 55 wider, yeah, and a wider, much wider, opener.

483
01:15:56.910 --> 01:15:58.719
Dawn Fancher: Thanks, thanks, that answers my question.

484
01:15:59.060 --> 01:16:06.139
Town of Plainfield: Another, another thing, and I, this might be opening a can of worms, is I spoke with VTRANS this morning.

485
01:16:06.350 --> 01:16:12.739
Town of Plainfield: And you're… And then everyone is concerned with, you know, the hydraulic opening and the flow rates.

486
01:16:13.030 --> 01:16:18.670
Town of Plainfield: If the town wanted to consider a larger, clear span,

487
01:16:19.090 --> 01:16:22.480
Town of Plainfield: Be trans may be open to it.

488
01:16:22.680 --> 01:16:26.269
Town of Plainfield: That there's a quite… there's a little bit of a problem, though, because…

489
01:16:26.380 --> 01:16:44.030
Town of Plainfield: We're about maxed out at the superstructure depth, so if you did want to go to a larger span, you might need to change the superstructure recommendation, which would change the profile, potentially, and it would potentially get more costly. You gave us a span of, right now, what the bridges had that backed up.

490
01:16:44.160 --> 01:16:54.039
Town of Plainfield: 24. 24, so 55's more than twice. Yeah. Okay, you've been waiting, Aaron. I just would recommend that, I mean.

491
01:16:54.140 --> 01:17:05.170
Town of Plainfield: I think it's worth looking at this design alternative. It's a substantive question that is similar to the one that you brought up, Carl, and if the design flood is a 50-year flood.

492
01:17:05.340 --> 01:17:09.110
Town of Plainfield: And we've had the last 2 years have been over 100.

493
01:17:09.870 --> 01:17:15.990
Town of Plainfield: It would seem that we should maybe consider a different design flood possibility.

494
01:17:19.180 --> 01:17:29.870
Town of Plainfield: Yep. Although we're calling it a Q50, I mentioned earlier, there is a high… there's a factor of safety in there, and the flow rate that our hydraulic consultant

495
01:17:30.030 --> 01:17:36.640
Town of Plainfield: Estimated that for the confidence interval was 2,800 cubic feet per second.

496
01:17:37.010 --> 01:17:41.719
Town of Plainfield: the July 2024 storm events of state agencies

497
01:17:41.920 --> 01:17:46.170
Town of Plainfield: So that was around that same flow rate. Okay.

498
01:17:46.430 --> 01:17:59.669
Town of Plainfield: 2,800, 3,000, 3,200 CFS? Yep, I think it's the debris that worries everybody, and we will get debris next time, for sure. Go ahead.

499
01:18:00.060 --> 01:18:04.299
Town of Plainfield: One of the opportunities we have with the new

500
01:18:04.880 --> 01:18:14.699
Town of Plainfield: layout of the… the brook and things upstream from that. We… we have the ability to create,

501
01:18:14.820 --> 01:18:34.140
Town of Plainfield: more, floodplain upstream. So some of the projects that we're gonna talk about in the future, like, can have a component where we're looking at allowing the water to spread out more, like, before it gets to that location. And so.

502
01:18:34.890 --> 01:18:36.540
Town of Plainfield: Unfortunately, because

503
01:18:36.650 --> 01:18:48.599
Town of Plainfield: we're at the mercy of the Municipal assistance service from VTRANS, we can't have a one big project day, which would be great, because it's all the same water. But,

504
01:18:48.600 --> 01:19:11.640
Town of Plainfield: But my… my anticipation is that when we get to this point in those projects, it'll… will show that, like, we can create more area for the water to spread out upstream. And slow down. And thus slowing it down. And, like, inches of floodplain restoration…

505
01:19:11.640 --> 01:19:17.380
Town of Plainfield: will, will prevent feet of flooding.

506
01:19:17.580 --> 01:19:23.649
Town of Plainfield: And that's been the thing that I've really taken home from so many of these

507
01:19:24.700 --> 01:19:28.620
Town of Plainfield: You know, watershed conversations, and

508
01:19:29.570 --> 01:19:34.420
Town of Plainfield: that, you know, like, you and I went to Garo for the Winooski,

509
01:19:34.590 --> 01:19:47.750
Town of Plainfield: flavored, like, that was one of the things they stressed, was floodplain. And I think, like, in the immediate adjacent, project, you know, that's where we're going to be sort of looking at.

510
01:19:48.520 --> 01:20:06.210
Town of Plainfield: what is the constriction of the roadway doing in that location? So that's kind of the next… one of the next projects that will come up. How to prevent that channeling, which accelerates the water, too. And does the most damage, yeah.

511
01:20:06.810 --> 01:20:08.850
Town of Plainfield: Yahoo, yeah. You don't need that.

512
01:20:10.010 --> 01:20:22.140
Town of Plainfield: Speak up. Yeah, I think it's probably better for the folks in Lewis Law. Do you guys anticipate places that you're gonna have for the water to spread out?

513
01:20:23.240 --> 01:20:31.480
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, there are, you know, in the areas where, between, you know.

514
01:20:31.830 --> 01:20:45.490
Town of Plainfield: in the locations near where Ernie Gray's is, where it's created that large floodplain, and then the bridge there, created a constriction point.

515
01:20:45.490 --> 01:20:52.190
Town of Plainfield: And the, where it makes that hard turn at Cameron Road to go around.

516
01:20:52.190 --> 01:21:00.250
Town of Plainfield: One of the options, and I'm not the designer, so I can't really say, but the…

517
01:21:00.330 --> 01:21:15.369
Town of Plainfield: is sort of changing how that, that, the road is in relationship, and then whether or not to even, you know, if we go with a road realignment, and this is getting off topic, but,

518
01:21:15.530 --> 01:21:21.360
Town of Plainfield: Would it present options to kind of create more space for the brook to read?

519
01:21:21.410 --> 01:21:36.259
Town of Plainfield: So, one of the places is where Ernie Grays is, does that mean that you will not be fixing the remainder of the road? We will. We need a road. It's very important because we only have the one now, and so,

520
01:21:36.360 --> 01:21:41.029
Town of Plainfield: like, absolutely, we're going to put a road in. It's just a question of, like.

521
01:21:41.330 --> 01:21:59.930
Town of Plainfield: at that, it's probably not feasible to put it where it was. It would be realigned in, you know, up… away from things. But, I can talk to you further about it. I don't want to take too much time on that, but that's… it's all being considered.

522
01:21:59.960 --> 01:22:03.769
Town of Plainfield: Any other thoughts here?

523
01:22:05.390 --> 01:22:15.129
Town of Plainfield: I guess the question is, is… do we take a vote on this tonight, or if we don't, what happens between now and two weeks from now that would change how we would vote tonight, I guess.

524
01:22:15.550 --> 01:22:23.359
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, I'd feel more comfortable a little more time, personally, but I don't want to… I don't want to delay things. I'd like to revisit it on the 27th.

525
01:22:23.610 --> 01:22:25.610
Town of Plainfield: Okay. If I revisit…

526
01:22:28.220 --> 01:22:34.330
Town of Plainfield: I guess I'd like to, I'd like to sleep on it. I'm asking, I'm asking, I wanna…

527
01:22:34.700 --> 01:22:38.040
Town of Plainfield: I'm fine with whatever. So folks are going to…

528
01:22:38.040 --> 01:22:56.020
Town of Plainfield: review all the materials, like, we're not gonna have a whole other presentation on the 27th, we're just gonna have a short discussion and a vote. Would you send a copy of this presentation to us, please? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, I was particularly interested in the side-by-side slides where you, you know, ended up with them.

529
01:22:56.030 --> 01:23:05.140
Town of Plainfield: one at the bottom of each… what the pros and pros and cons were. And I should say, I support these,

530
01:23:07.340 --> 01:23:16.980
Town of Plainfield: plates that you put in the ground that are permanent. What was the term? The permanent… Sheet piles. Or sheet piles. Yeah, the permanent sheet piles.

531
01:23:17.080 --> 01:23:23.859
Town of Plainfield: I think the bridge on Brook Road that… our newest bridge that went out was because

532
01:23:24.130 --> 01:23:33.420
Town of Plainfield: The, supports were undercut, and so the sheep piles would… Prevent some of that.

533
01:23:33.950 --> 01:23:35.019
Town of Plainfield: That was good.

534
01:23:35.610 --> 01:23:38.260
Town of Plainfield: But that's a lot of little things like that I'd like to…

535
01:23:38.260 --> 01:24:00.100
Town of Plainfield: I'd like to have a little time with. Are sheet piles what they used here at the band by Route 2? Yeah. And the grounded soil nails them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They enter, they enter logs, and they drive them in, and… Yeah, they have knuckles, so you drive one sheet into the ground, you turn another one into the knuckle, and try that down, too. Yep, and so they're now, they're bonded, and you're talking about an additional

536
01:24:00.100 --> 01:24:05.799
Town of Plainfield: frame around the top to keep them all together. Yep. All of which

537
01:24:05.860 --> 01:24:19.159
Town of Plainfield: Is that part of the… I mean, that's part of what you would recommend? Yeah. And that's just going down to the… what do you call it, like, that scour line at 12 feet, or whatever it was? Yeah, you'd want to put it below that, so that, theoretically, you'd be designing…

538
01:24:19.870 --> 01:24:34.829
Town of Plainfield: that sheet pilings, assuming that all that scour is gone, so you want the sheets deeper than that, so that when it does… all that stuff does disappear, that it loses its support at the top, it'll still have that theoretical support. I guess so…

539
01:24:35.080 --> 01:24:52.799
Town of Plainfield: typically, I think it's one-third exposed, two-thirds, two-thirds in and around, so if we're down 6 feet, you need to, allow for another 6 feet or more, so we're talking 18 feet driven from top of… top of footing down to bottom.

540
01:24:52.840 --> 01:24:55.520
Town of Plainfield: Depth, and maybe slightly longer.

541
01:24:56.100 --> 01:25:02.159
Town of Plainfield: And that's one of the things, that's where railways come into consideration, that… You know, if you…

542
01:25:02.160 --> 01:25:23.459
Town of Plainfield: consider the design of a whaler at the top that's providing support for your wall, so it might not need to go as deep, you know, but the convention is, you know, a cantilevered wall, you know, a freestanding wall. It's two-thirds in the dirt, one-third above, whereas you can sometimes usually reduce that with a steel whaler up top.

543
01:25:25.590 --> 01:25:27.010
Town of Plainfield: Well, we're,

544
01:25:27.140 --> 01:25:34.920
Town of Plainfield: We're very appreciative of you coming and talking to us about this, and it's obvious you've done a lot of work, and you have recommendations for us.

545
01:25:34.980 --> 01:25:40.519
Town of Plainfield: But I think we'd… I'd like, personally, to just have a little time,

546
01:25:40.520 --> 01:25:58.900
Town of Plainfield: And just decide to vote on the next meeting. Do we agree to that? I'm not trying to be pushy with the recommendation, it's only that there's a… you might be aware, there is a deadline that we are under the gun to complete our services by, so that's why I…

547
01:25:59.110 --> 01:26:05.249
Town of Plainfield: I'm saying that. Can we… can we wait to wait to vote? I don't…

548
01:26:05.440 --> 01:26:21.159
Town of Plainfield: A lot of the heuristics around, you know, why this or that, like, one of the big things is, because of the location and the, and the consecutive nature of the bridges.

549
01:26:21.410 --> 01:26:27.490
Town of Plainfield: A lot of that decision tree collapses to, you know.

550
01:26:28.210 --> 01:26:46.360
Town of Plainfield: We need to make something that's buildable, fairly easy to put up, where you were speaking to, like, you know, who is going to bid on it, who do we have available to build it, and so that's what kind of collapsed that decision matrix, is like, you know, yes, like.

551
01:26:46.440 --> 01:26:55.249
Town of Plainfield: I mean, there are other things that are more costly, but really, I think, when we get into, like, looking at some of this, it's just the nature of, like.

552
01:26:57.330 --> 01:27:16.699
Town of Plainfield: you know, we didn't look way outside of the right-of-way, even though we have all the buyouts. And we need something that can go fast so we can do one after the other. And we need something that, you know, we need to have a plan. So, like, that's kind of the… those are sort of the things that are driving into the recommendations, is like, what can we get done

553
01:27:16.700 --> 01:27:20.960
Town of Plainfield: And, designed efficiently and quickly.

554
01:27:21.070 --> 01:27:34.770
Town of Plainfield: And so, like, I don't really think that, like, and the recommendations in some regard, is, like, also the cheaper options would be one exception, but the,

555
01:27:34.770 --> 01:27:43.360
Town of Plainfield: And so, that part, too, like, you know, the recommendation is the less costly option as well. So, I think, like.

556
01:27:43.500 --> 01:27:55.080
Town of Plainfield: I… I'm comfortable with the recommendations, and I've been, you know, like, looking through the reports, and so I… I think it's a good…

557
01:27:55.200 --> 01:27:57.580
Town of Plainfield: a good alternative record.

558
01:27:57.730 --> 01:28:15.780
Town of Plainfield: I think they're… what they are recommending is appropriate. It sounds like you think we shouldn't wait 2 weeks. What are we going to learn in two weeks? I don't think there's… you know, even if, like, we kind of go back and look at it and say, like, well, we like this other idea more.

559
01:28:15.780 --> 01:28:17.750
Town of Plainfield: The…

560
01:28:17.990 --> 01:28:32.130
Town of Plainfield: you know, those… those reasons not to go for some of those other alternatives is… is really down to getting things over the line quickly. Let me ask… let me ask this question.

561
01:28:32.640 --> 01:28:36.550
Town of Plainfield: If we were to give the go-ahead, whether tonight or in two weeks.

562
01:28:36.830 --> 01:28:40.070
Town of Plainfield: And say, yes, we like your recommendations.

563
01:28:40.520 --> 01:28:46.780
Town of Plainfield: What does that take off the table in terms of any other options?

564
01:28:47.250 --> 01:28:51.510
Town of Plainfield: to us. What does it… what does it then box out?

565
01:28:52.850 --> 01:29:00.339
Town of Plainfield: I kind of mentioned this a few moments ago. We are proposing a… Slab deck, or…

566
01:29:00.450 --> 01:29:03.760
Town of Plainfield: That Dex, Dex Lab.

567
01:29:03.850 --> 01:29:10.660
Town of Plainfield: If you wanted to talk to VTrans and get a quick approval to go to a longer span, I don't know if we could do that.

568
01:29:10.690 --> 01:29:25.080
Town of Plainfield: for that superstructure. Because you're kind of at the limit of that design. So you might want to go to our next ranking, which was that next T, that double TB. Yeah, yeah. Which would have a higher… More footing, more expenses.

569
01:29:25.230 --> 01:29:38.719
Town of Plainfield: But are we locking ourselves into any of the traffic control alternatives by saying, yes, we want to go with this design model?

570
01:29:40.560 --> 01:29:45.580
Town of Plainfield: If you gave us the go-ahead tonight, I'm just checking out loud, I think we'd get started on…

571
01:29:46.010 --> 01:29:54.730
Town of Plainfield: plan production tomorrow. We'd probably start figuring out… formalizing the roadway profile, and…

572
01:29:54.920 --> 01:30:03.079
Town of Plainfield: Grafting in plan view, and coming up with either a roadway template or a model for ourselves, coming up with some details.

573
01:30:04.930 --> 01:30:10.770
Town of Plainfield: I think there's certain things that we could get done, sorry, right now, that don't matter about your decision.

574
01:30:11.360 --> 01:30:27.249
Town of Plainfield: But it comes down to the superstructure, the substructure type. If it's… depending on the traffic control, we might come up with a detour package plan that would be out showing all the, you know, detour this way, detour that way.

575
01:30:27.490 --> 01:30:34.069
Town of Plainfield: But some of these things that you're still deciding on, I think we could delay being… it being worked on.

576
01:30:35.580 --> 01:30:41.949
Town of Plainfield: But you… if we gave the go-ahead, you would be able to get started on certain things, not tomorrow.

577
01:30:42.670 --> 01:30:44.580
Town of Plainfield: If you got the go-ahead tonight.

578
01:30:45.540 --> 01:30:48.690
Town of Plainfield: I think we're limited, though.

579
01:30:48.790 --> 01:31:05.730
Town of Plainfield: We're limited in what we can do. As soon as you give us the go-ahead for which type of superstructure you would like, I would start… not starting a formal profile. Evan? Evan?

580
01:31:06.300 --> 01:31:23.720
Evan Detrick (VHB): Yeah, hi everyone. Just wanted to let you know that Du Bois and King prepared the alternatives analysis in a draft form, and was… that was provided to VHB. So, I, along with a bridge engineer in our office, peer-reviewed the work that Du Bois and King did.

581
01:31:23.720 --> 01:31:33.559
Evan Detrick (VHB): And with the updates that they made in the presentation tonight, we're all in agreement that what they've proposed tonight is the best option for the town.

582
01:31:33.560 --> 01:31:51.809
Evan Detrick (VHB): It will work hydraulically, and it's the lowest rise in elevation, with the shallow beams, and because of the very erodible soils here, scour is a big concern, so they've addressed that with these sheet piles to protect the bridge.

583
01:31:51.850 --> 01:32:06.249
Evan Detrick (VHB): And, as far as VHB's perspective on this is, it's a good decision that D&K has made for their recommendation, and we would recommend that the board can go ahead, forward with the project.

584
01:32:06.790 --> 01:32:08.119
Evan Detrick (VHB): That would be our recommendation.

585
01:32:08.120 --> 01:32:14.409
Town of Plainfield: Okay, thank you. That's important to know. We're just seeing it kind of for the first time.

586
01:32:14.410 --> 01:32:15.040
Evan Detrick (VHB): Yeah, sure.

587
01:32:15.040 --> 01:32:17.200
Town of Plainfield: A little overwhelming.

588
01:32:17.200 --> 01:32:18.669
Evan Detrick (VHB): I want to let you know, you know, you're

589
01:32:19.140 --> 01:32:22.599
Evan Detrick (VHB): They're not operating in a vacuum, you know, it has been peer-reviewed.

590
01:32:22.680 --> 01:32:28.040
Town of Plainfield: Yep, that's great, I appreciate that. Dan? Yeah, I mean, I'll just say, I mean, obviously.

591
01:32:28.200 --> 01:32:34.739
Town of Plainfield: The engineering firm is looking at it, a project management is looking at it, a town staff member has looked at it.

592
01:32:35.080 --> 01:32:47.569
Town of Plainfield: I personally don't know. I mean, I think traffic control, which is going to happen in spring of 2027, we can figure out in the future. I don't know, it actually seems like, looking at the maps, I'm not real sure.

593
01:32:47.670 --> 01:32:58.780
Town of Plainfield: that the amount of hassle it would take to do one of the other traffic control methods would be even worth it. So, to me, I'm perfectly comfortable going with the triple-checked experts on this, and I don't know what more we would

594
01:32:58.790 --> 01:33:09.399
Town of Plainfield: learn or figure out in the next two weeks that's worth a delay in their ability to do the work. That's my opinion, so I would be willing to vote tonight, but that's just one opinion.

595
01:33:09.440 --> 01:33:17.950
Town of Plainfield: I… I go along with Dan with that. I feel like you guys did all the work, and figured out a recommendation for us that would work.

596
01:33:18.030 --> 01:33:20.659
Town of Plainfield: I feel like I'm comfortable going along with that, too.

597
01:33:23.300 --> 01:33:24.610
Town of Plainfield: I'm fine.

598
01:33:25.990 --> 01:33:27.459
Town of Plainfield: Somebody want to make a move?

599
01:33:28.290 --> 01:33:40.470
Town of Plainfield: Go ahead. Alright, I was gonna say, I'm happy to make… or you can make a motion. Do we have to put the technical terms of the recommendation, or just say with… go with the recommendation? I just want to make sure we have the motion proper.

600
01:33:40.840 --> 01:33:57.989
Town of Plainfield: I think we can just say go with the recommendation. S5 and F1B. F1B, alright. Just to confirm… Then if you want to make a motion, that would be great. You would mention that there was some, relative similarity in cost between the steel footings, and the…

601
01:33:58.030 --> 01:34:00.859
Town of Plainfield: Shallow concrete with the metal box.

602
01:34:00.920 --> 01:34:04.309
Town of Plainfield: The metal box, shallow concrete, is the recommendation.

603
01:34:04.670 --> 01:34:06.610
Town of Plainfield: Shallow spread flames.

604
01:34:06.870 --> 01:34:11.739
Town of Plainfield: Cheating… Yeah, okay, just making sure. Thank you, yes.

605
01:34:20.550 --> 01:34:33.919
Town of Plainfield: You're gonna go in consideration, are you? I'm just gonna say most of you approve the proposal from the Boys and King for Bridge 21 and the Mill Street Bridge.

606
01:34:34.720 --> 01:34:37.079
Town of Plainfield: Do we need anything more than what I'm looking at Josh?

607
01:34:37.730 --> 01:34:43.029
Town of Plainfield: Second. Alright. Do we have a motion and second?

608
01:34:43.200 --> 01:34:49.430
Town of Plainfield: All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. And Peter said yes.

609
01:34:49.560 --> 01:34:57.929
Town of Plainfield: So we have a decision to move ahead, and I appreciate, again, all this work you've done. Thank you, thank you. And Ethan, thank you. Indeed, thank you.

610
01:34:58.360 --> 01:34:59.350
Town of Plainfield: Oh, boy.

611
01:34:59.910 --> 01:35:02.089
Town of Plainfield: For your input.

612
01:35:02.320 --> 01:35:06.099
Town of Plainfield: And Josh. Thank you.

613
01:35:06.770 --> 01:35:08.820
Town of Plainfield: Okay.

614
01:35:09.000 --> 01:35:13.040
Town of Plainfield: Thank you. Have a good evening. Thank you very much.

615
01:35:13.210 --> 01:35:16.449
Town of Plainfield: How quickly for it. This can kind of slide back down.

616
01:35:19.590 --> 01:35:22.909
Town of Plainfield: He didn't hear you? No.

617
01:35:24.190 --> 01:35:27.999
Town of Plainfield: He didn't hear you. Try again. Bram, did you, do you have the town clerk.

618
01:35:28.000 --> 01:35:35.320
Town Clerk: Oh, yes. Town folks report, I'm gonna make this, pretty brief. The election is November 4th.

619
01:35:35.710 --> 01:35:49.930
Town Clerk: there's a little bit of confusion because the state had mailed out absentee ballots to everyone. That's not the case in this election. If you're interested in an absentee ballot, you can, either contact the clerk's office or go to

620
01:35:49.930 --> 01:35:56.919
Town Clerk: I think it's, online. They're on our website. It gives detailed instructions, if you want to register.

621
01:35:57.090 --> 01:36:05.940
Town Clerk: online. I would also, just, on a couple of other, town matters.

622
01:36:06.260 --> 01:36:25.769
Town Clerk: Two members of the three-person cemetery commission are leaving, so just a shout out, if anybody's interested in stepping up, we really need support in that department. In addition, it would be great to get a zoning administrator in training.

623
01:36:25.870 --> 01:36:36.770
Town Clerk: There is compensation with that. If anybody's interested, please let me know. Those are two areas that we really, could use help in. That's it for me.

624
01:36:38.500 --> 01:36:48.189
Town of Plainfield: Thanks, Graham. I hope we can get that word out, too, because there's a lot of help needed there. Okay,

625
01:36:48.650 --> 01:36:51.070
Town of Plainfield: Constable report.

626
01:36:51.130 --> 01:37:03.569
Dan Caddy: Hello! In the interest of keeping it brief, because I know the bridge discussion went on long, were there any questions on the support report I submitted to you in writing? I know we went back via email.

627
01:37:04.830 --> 01:37:13.130
Town of Plainfield: It was very thorough. Can you… We do have, someone here who lives on Brook Road near the, site of,

628
01:37:13.460 --> 01:37:17.089
Town of Plainfield: The site that you've been monitoring, and

629
01:37:17.440 --> 01:37:22.570
Town of Plainfield: Can you give us anything new there that was not on the report?

630
01:37:22.830 --> 01:37:38.230
Dan Caddy: So with the situation on Brook Road, it leads into one of the major things I want to talk about, is differentiating what should be reported to me, and as a constable matter, versus what should be relayed to Vermont State Police.

631
01:37:38.400 --> 01:37:49.650
Dan Caddy: So, to clarify, Vermont State Police is the responding agency for Plainfield. The Sheriff's Office provides patrol, but they are not the response agency for reports.

632
01:37:50.120 --> 01:37:59.579
Dan Caddy: So the thing with Brook Road, things are escalating. Bram and I both get emails of additional stuff, and we keep telling the people.

633
01:38:00.520 --> 01:38:07.919
Dan Caddy: Understood, please report to Vermont State Police and let us know, you know, date and time that it's been reported.

634
01:38:08.550 --> 01:38:11.940
Town of Plainfield: Because those calls is what generates a response.

635
01:38:11.940 --> 01:38:17.949
Dan Caddy: So when I call and talk to the patrol sergeant, and I go, hey, there's been 7 reports about X,

636
01:38:18.180 --> 01:38:20.750
Dan Caddy: You know, when, what's going on with that.

637
01:38:21.480 --> 01:38:27.470
Dan Caddy: Oftentimes when I call with an issue after directing people to call VSP, it's the first time they've heard about it.

638
01:38:28.060 --> 01:38:33.679
Dan Caddy: They can't act all that much on secondhand information, even if it's coming from me?

639
01:38:33.850 --> 01:38:39.769
Dan Caddy: So I highly encourage people, if it involves criminal activity at a misdemeanor or felony level.

640
01:38:40.140 --> 01:38:43.239
Dan Caddy: Calm report to Vermont State Police.

641
01:38:43.240 --> 01:38:46.810
Town of Plainfield: Dan, can people do that anonymously?

642
01:38:47.190 --> 01:38:48.730
Dan Caddy: Yes, they can.

643
01:38:48.730 --> 01:38:51.790
Town of Plainfield: Okay. That's important, I think. Yeah.

644
01:38:51.790 --> 01:39:07.599
Dan Caddy: Yeah, and I understand the… if you live nearby, not wanting to get caught up, I definitely don't blame you. You can report anonymously. They also have a, like, a submit a form to make a report on their website, which you can do.

645
01:39:08.070 --> 01:39:25.739
Dan Caddy: So if somebody wants to send that to me via, you know, a generic email, or even a text message, where I don't know the number on the other end, so I don't know who it is, so it's fairly anonymous, and I have enough going on where I'm not gonna reverse Google search to find out which concerned citizen sent me a report.

646
01:39:25.810 --> 01:39:29.900
Dan Caddy: But those things then give me a leg to stand on so I can…

647
01:39:30.550 --> 01:39:36.159
Dan Caddy: follow up with BSP, say, hey, I'm tracking there's been 7 reports about this issue.

648
01:39:36.290 --> 01:39:43.960
Dan Caddy: From this date to this date, this started on this date, things are escalating, can we please get more of a response?

649
01:39:44.610 --> 01:39:45.530
Town of Plainfield: Nope, okay.

650
01:39:45.880 --> 01:39:50.719
Town of Plainfield: Yes. Dan, in your conversations with Vermont State Police.

651
01:39:50.760 --> 01:40:01.910
Town of Plainfield: And I don't know what kind of detailed, information they're sharing with you, but I'm just wondering, based on what you know and your conversations with them.

652
01:40:01.940 --> 01:40:12.380
Town of Plainfield: Would it, be, would you recommend that the Select Board request an executive session with someone from Vermont State Police to get an update?

653
01:40:14.190 --> 01:40:26.279
Dan Caddy: Let me reach back out to their patrol sergeant. I had sent an email late last week, I haven't heard back, so I'm gonna try to reach via phone and see, hey, what reports have you guys been getting?

654
01:40:26.870 --> 01:40:32.269
Dan Caddy: The last time I checked, had not received any direct reports.

655
01:40:32.390 --> 01:40:35.440
Dan Caddy: Just my relaying of the situation.

656
01:40:35.960 --> 01:40:41.519
Dan Caddy: So I will check in and follow up on that. Unfortunately, I can't tell you about that.

657
01:40:41.670 --> 01:40:45.149
Dan Caddy: That particular situation, that's not one where…

658
01:40:46.040 --> 01:40:53.640
Dan Caddy: I'm gonna go make that contact in person, one, because I have no authority to affect any of those things, especially when you deal with

659
01:40:53.800 --> 01:40:55.770
Dan Caddy: Criminal activity.

660
01:40:55.900 --> 01:40:56.940
Dan Caddy: Bad death.

661
01:40:57.050 --> 01:41:05.980
Dan Caddy: that alleged level. Two, it's not safe, and I wouldn't recommend anybody do it. We have state police, that's what they're there for.

662
01:41:06.270 --> 01:41:18.009
Dan Caddy: But going back to that, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so if there is enough of a volume, even if it's the same person continually reporting, it does drive a response.

663
01:41:18.320 --> 01:41:26.549
Dan Caddy: You gotta remember, VSP has a very large area to cover, and a lot of towns without police forces that they are responding to.

664
01:41:27.110 --> 01:41:30.679
Dan Caddy: So… I would highly, highly recommend

665
01:41:30.860 --> 01:41:32.850
Dan Caddy: Make as much noise as possible.

666
01:41:33.320 --> 01:41:40.560
Town of Plainfield: Dan? So, at this property, right, Dan, there's stuff that you are tracking.

667
01:41:40.650 --> 01:41:47.570
Town of Plainfield: drug use, potentially, firearms, things like that. Then there's the campers being on the property, it's private property.

668
01:41:47.600 --> 01:41:49.309
Town of Plainfield: I'm guessing that it's…

669
01:41:49.320 --> 01:41:54.350
Town of Plainfield: falls under the same rule as the Bean Road Rule, which is, like, I don't know how many months that is.

670
01:41:54.350 --> 01:42:12.490
Town of Plainfield: They're allowed to have campers on a property up for a certain number of months. Six months. Six months, so the campers themselves, as long as they're on the private property, if they're on the road, that could be a different case, but if they're on the private property, you can't do anything for six months. And then there's the wastewater issue, if there's a pipe going to the brook.

671
01:42:12.490 --> 01:42:22.069
Town of Plainfield: the state won't look at it. Is there a public health officer, someone else who can look at that? It's layers of things, right? Like, not all of these are the same purview of the same…

672
01:42:22.270 --> 01:42:24.939
Town of Plainfield: I'm just wondering if, like, it sounds like Dan's doing…

673
01:42:25.420 --> 01:42:31.770
Town of Plainfield: Everything we can on that piece, and we can't really do anything about the campers until 6 months if they're on the private property.

674
01:42:32.390 --> 01:42:51.190
Town of Plainfield: I guess it just… maybe the… I don't know if… and Graham may know, I don't know if Graham's still with us, if Jody or… or… there are other… other things that we can do around this property. Obviously, we would want Jody or others to go with VSP or sheriff deputies.

675
01:42:51.660 --> 01:42:57.400
Town of Plainfield: to do any of that stuff, because of safety issues. Yeah, yeah, they can't go by themselves.

676
01:42:57.760 --> 01:43:00.179
Town of Plainfield: Do you know anything about it, Graham?

677
01:43:00.880 --> 01:43:12.500
Town Clerk: Well, I will, I will report, what Louis said regarding, people directly discharging into the stream, and perhaps that will motivate

678
01:43:12.660 --> 01:43:22.909
Town Clerk: the water enforcement people, I must say that the state severely underfunds. I mean, the guy went into a whole big thing about how

679
01:43:22.930 --> 01:43:40.679
Town Clerk: in terms of his enforcement, his budget is exponentially smaller, and he has to cover so many more, so I'm fighting an uphill battle, but I will report to him tomorrow that there's an additional camper, and that there's stuff going right in the stream.

680
01:43:41.430 --> 01:43:46.770
Town Clerk: I've mentioned this situation to Jody, but I also warned her not to go down there, so…

681
01:43:46.770 --> 01:43:53.169
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, okay, thank you. Dan, do you have, further, information to… on other subjects?

682
01:43:53.790 --> 01:43:55.949
Dan Caddy: On other side, yeah,

683
01:43:56.390 --> 01:44:03.549
Dan Caddy: Once again, the… the park and ride, and camping issues, that was resolved,

684
01:44:03.840 --> 01:44:11.459
Dan Caddy: We had folks that have been there before that have always been polite and respectful. They reached out to me, said, hey, we're gonna be there for…

685
01:44:11.760 --> 01:44:12.630
Dan Caddy: Beautiful.

686
01:44:12.770 --> 01:44:16.129
Dan Caddy: X amount of days, and then we're leaving to head south.

687
01:44:16.620 --> 01:44:21.159
Dan Caddy: Cool, appreciate it. Some other folks showed up with 3 campers, and…

688
01:44:21.550 --> 01:44:25.379
Dan Caddy: Other things, and they were not as polite of guests.

689
01:44:26.000 --> 01:44:38.659
Dan Caddy: Litter of refuse, loud dogs, verbally harassing residents, people not feeling like they could make use of their property outside due to noise and negative interactions with the people.

690
01:44:39.520 --> 01:44:52.740
Dan Caddy: Luckily, you know, I was able to have that conversation, serve them written notice via the parking ordinance, pay 72 hours, and due to that conversation, which I shared more details with you.

691
01:44:52.990 --> 01:44:59.630
Dan Caddy: Vsp ended up getting involved to further make my point of, yeah, this isn't the place you should be.

692
01:45:00.240 --> 01:45:07.060
Dan Caddy: Also with the gentleman camping at the Mill Street Park.

693
01:45:07.060 --> 01:45:10.689
Town of Plainfield: It feeds into the larger discussion, and I know we're working on.

694
01:45:10.690 --> 01:45:16.630
Dan Caddy: a camping ordinance and stuff like that. I did take the liberty of looking further into a mechanism for

695
01:45:17.370 --> 01:45:22.579
Dan Caddy: Some additional enforcement in the form of how the no trespass process works in Vermont.

696
01:45:23.140 --> 01:45:30.349
Dan Caddy: Where that's not a blanket, you can't trespass on public land. There's specific circumstances, such as…

697
01:45:30.520 --> 01:45:35.359
Dan Caddy: Public nuisance, noise issues, health and safety,

698
01:45:35.480 --> 01:45:49.770
Dan Caddy: Threatening other people or otherwise unsafe behavior, where if the town owns the property, they can issue a written notice to that person that they are not able to trespass, and that can be served by law enforcement and enforced by law enforcement.

699
01:45:50.410 --> 01:46:07.269
Dan Caddy: So through my research, I put together a… kind of an overview and a draft policy, along with the written notice forms and the enforcement mechanisms that's all cross-referenced, not just with Vermont statutes, but also relevant case law from around the U.S.

700
01:46:07.680 --> 01:46:11.490
Dan Caddy: So I will be getting that to the Select Board next week to take a look at.

701
01:46:11.590 --> 01:46:18.739
Dan Caddy: It's not one of those that would substitute a comprehensive thing of what do we want to do as a town with regard to camping.

702
01:46:18.850 --> 01:46:24.630
Dan Caddy: Because things are tough, I get it, but it does provide a mechanism when we have folks who

703
01:46:26.270 --> 01:46:35.510
Dan Caddy: Are taking advantage of that and providing… or presenting a safety or health or otherwise threat where they're not being good stewards of

704
01:46:35.960 --> 01:46:37.300
Dan Caddy: the public space.

705
01:46:40.060 --> 01:46:41.739
Town of Plainfield: Okay, well, great.

706
01:46:44.620 --> 01:46:45.310
Town of Plainfield: Thank you, Dan.

707
01:46:45.310 --> 01:46:47.250
Dan Caddy: And that… the fun continues.

708
01:46:47.570 --> 01:47:00.840
Town of Plainfield: Yes, well, thank you very much for your work. We have, the EVAC report. Is that you, Liz? Go ahead.

709
01:47:02.830 --> 01:47:06.700
Liz Perreault: Oh my goodness, I've got… I've gotten so lost in your… your…

710
01:47:06.870 --> 01:47:16.329
Liz Perreault: meeting that I forgot what I was here for. So, thanks for having me, and, I'm sorry I'm not in person, but, you know.

711
01:47:16.870 --> 01:47:32.100
Liz Perreault: So I think I'm gonna start with the, the way our notes are, being done in the past, and I think it was a request, we believe, as a group, we believe that it was requested that

712
01:47:32.100 --> 01:47:49.790
Liz Perreault: the, minutes have, like, a summary or something like that. So, highlights were created in how the minutes were taken for our meetings. And that rose some concerns at our last meeting.

713
01:47:49.830 --> 01:48:00.830
Liz Perreault: The thinking behind… Having highlights in general tends to… The concern is it editorialize…

714
01:48:01.220 --> 01:48:12.380
Liz Perreault: I can't say the word at the moment, editorializes the minutes, so if somebody just glances at the highlights, they only see what

715
01:48:12.750 --> 01:48:25.070
Liz Perreault: was chosen to be highlighted, and there was concern that the things that were being highlighted may not be what everybody thinks should have been. So anyway.

716
01:48:25.760 --> 01:48:33.130
Liz Perreault: After much discussion, we voted as a group to remove the highlights, but…

717
01:48:33.480 --> 01:48:44.550
Liz Perreault: It then, came up that we thought that that, request came from the Select Board, so we won't remove them. Well, we did for this last

718
01:48:44.550 --> 01:48:58.089
Liz Perreault: bit of this last minutes, but if the Select Board prefers us to continue to have a summary or highlights of some sort, then we will do so, and we'll figure it out. But if,

719
01:48:58.310 --> 01:49:06.759
Liz Perreault: if you guys don't, have a strong feeling one way or the other, if we could eliminate the highlights, I think it would

720
01:49:07.310 --> 01:49:09.650
Liz Perreault: Please, our group.

721
01:49:09.840 --> 01:49:11.030
Town of Plainfield: Go ahead, Dan.

722
01:49:11.030 --> 01:49:11.970
Liz Perreault: But we'll do what you want.

723
01:49:11.970 --> 01:49:21.080
Town of Plainfield: So I think the thinking was, for the summary, I don't know that it was meeting-specific, is you all come.

724
01:49:21.080 --> 01:49:43.069
Town of Plainfield: one time a month to report to us, and what we're asking for the town clerk, the constable, everyone, is before, Wednesday before the meeting, a summary of what you're going to present on. So not a summary of every single thing that you've done, but a summary on what the presentation to the select board is going to be. And so I don't know how you all.

725
01:49:43.070 --> 01:49:43.620
Liz Perreault: Oh.

726
01:49:43.620 --> 01:50:00.890
Town of Plainfield: what the presentation of the select board will be in these things, but the idea was then we would have it ahead of time, we could look at them, and then if we had questions, or we could lessen the amount of needing to, like, just read through a list of things that have happened, and we can really dig into certain issues. So, that was the summary request.

727
01:50:01.240 --> 01:50:01.870
Liz Perreault: Gotcha.

728
01:50:01.870 --> 01:50:06.170
Town of Plainfield: Meeting-specific, but, monthly specific for reporting.

729
01:50:06.170 --> 01:50:14.189
Liz Perreault: Gotcha. Alright, well… Well, look at us misunderstanding our direction.

730
01:50:14.190 --> 01:50:27.770
Town of Plainfield: So I don't know, yeah, I don't know what process you all use, Liz, to decide what gets reported to us on a monthly basis, but if there's, like, a… you've decided what you're gonna report, if you just send us that ahead of time, that's pretty much all we need.

731
01:50:27.770 --> 01:50:40.800
Liz Perreault: Okay, gotcha. Understood. All right. So… so there was that that I wanted to bring up. One of the other big things that we wanted to bring to your attention is,

732
01:50:40.800 --> 01:50:50.920
Town of Plainfield: You know, the list of deliverables that you were expecting from our group, and there were a number of them.

733
01:50:51.550 --> 01:50:53.320
Liz Perreault: And to grab my sheet that…

734
01:50:53.700 --> 01:51:00.629
Liz Perreault: that spelled that all out, just so I'd have it for reference for my own sake. But, we reviewed

735
01:51:00.800 --> 01:51:08.719
Liz Perreault: Together that list, and we discovered that a lot of what was asked for us to do

736
01:51:09.150 --> 01:51:15.429
Liz Perreault: was done in the work of, applying for the grant, the CBDG

737
01:51:16.690 --> 01:51:28.470
Liz Perreault: DR grant. So we will be going through… well, the chairs will be reviewing that grant, pulling out the pieces.

738
01:51:28.790 --> 01:51:30.099
Liz Perreault: And kind of…

739
01:51:31.160 --> 01:51:38.029
Liz Perreault: Writing a report based on all the things that are in the, the things that you've asked us to do.

740
01:51:38.260 --> 01:51:49.839
Liz Perreault: and to look into, and, where to find it in the grant. And then there are some things that still need to be, discussed and looked into further, and the

741
01:51:50.230 --> 01:51:59.020
Liz Perreault: Three, we pulled out were the public feedback on designs, public and,

742
01:51:59.880 --> 01:52:07.650
Liz Perreault: I think it was actually public and professional feedback on designs. The lot sales and pricing plan, we still have to,

743
01:52:08.310 --> 01:52:17.260
Liz Perreault: Dig into that a little bit more, and then, of course, permitting applications, then we need to finalize the design, and then start the permitting.

744
01:52:17.670 --> 01:52:20.000
Liz Perreault: At least getting that lined up.

745
01:52:20.010 --> 01:52:23.160
Liz Perreault: So…

746
01:52:23.160 --> 01:52:48.080
Liz Perreault: That is… that was a bit of a discussion, but we… we will be getting the Select Board something tangible that you can review and see where we've, gotten to this point, because we do understand that this group is supposed to, you know, have an end time, and that's what we're working towards. And the other thing I wanted to bring to you guys is that

747
01:52:48.080 --> 01:52:59.280
Liz Perreault: that we, discussed shifting our, committee, our advisory board meeting to once a month for October and November.

748
01:52:59.650 --> 01:53:11.310
Liz Perreault: Instead of twice a month, while we wait for the results of the grant. And, the subgroup work will continue, but as far as meeting as a whole group.

749
01:53:14.260 --> 01:53:23.540
Liz Perreault: We were thinking meet once in October, once in November, and then resume, twice a month in December. And then the…

750
01:53:24.890 --> 01:53:32.809
Liz Perreault: other thing we talked about, that I wanted to bring to your attention was the,

751
01:53:34.900 --> 01:53:41.780
Liz Perreault: Oh… Oh, the paper ballot… or not paper ballot, but the, Oh.

752
01:53:41.800 --> 01:53:42.290
Town of Plainfield: It's.

753
01:53:42.290 --> 01:53:47.770
Liz Perreault: That's actually on your agenda, sending out information…

754
01:53:48.890 --> 01:53:51.050
Liz Perreault: Through the mail, and we support that.

755
01:53:51.170 --> 01:53:55.750
Town of Plainfield: Okay, great.

756
01:53:56.130 --> 01:53:57.280
Town of Plainfield: It is…

757
01:53:57.280 --> 01:53:58.090
Liz Perreault: Oop, go ahead.

758
01:53:58.090 --> 01:54:09.759
Town of Plainfield: Liz, you mentioned, public and professional feedback on the design. You said that's still being worked out, you're still kind of creating a process for that to happen, or did I miss the content there?

759
01:54:09.760 --> 01:54:10.220
Liz Perreault: Nope.

760
01:54:10.220 --> 01:54:11.259
Town of Plainfield: That's, that, that.

761
01:54:11.260 --> 01:54:14.900
Liz Perreault: That is… we… I mean, there was the initial…

762
01:54:15.310 --> 01:54:33.229
Liz Perreault: discussion around the design that we've been working from all along, but we haven't had an official, opportunity for, the public or anybody to look at what is now the design with the different changes, like the, the drive is different.

763
01:54:33.270 --> 01:54:52.440
Liz Perreault: The new proposed drive is, is moved down on East Hill, closer to, Main Street Extension. There was some, accommodations made for wetlands and the buffer zone, so, so there are, some changes.

764
01:54:52.440 --> 01:54:53.360
Liz Perreault: That…

765
01:54:53.360 --> 01:55:00.540
Town of Plainfield: Understood. And I guess, those are the changes that have already happened, and I guess I'm wondering…

766
01:55:00.770 --> 01:55:13.060
Town of Plainfield: Is there going to be a forum or a time for community members, professionals, as you say, to offer additional feedback from this new place of, like, present design?

767
01:55:13.060 --> 01:55:21.519
Liz Perreault: So that is my… yes, that is my understanding that, because we haven't offered an opportunity, and that is part of the… our directive.

768
01:55:21.520 --> 01:55:23.299
Town of Plainfield: But…

769
01:55:23.300 --> 01:55:37.230
Liz Perreault: So, I don't know… we didn't get into the discussion around that. We just highlighted that as something we haven't done in the list of things that we're required to do.

770
01:55:37.230 --> 01:55:46.180
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Liz. That's great. And thank you, Dan, for the clarification on what we're after here.

771
01:55:46.180 --> 01:55:47.139
Liz Perreault: Yeah, thanks, Sam!

772
01:55:47.140 --> 01:55:59.339
Town of Plainfield: Next item is the authorization of the paper mailing, on the bond authorization. Folks, some folks aren't,

773
01:55:59.730 --> 01:56:02.130
Town of Plainfield: Can't access,

774
01:56:02.650 --> 01:56:20.079
Town of Plainfield: format of email or whatever, so, we wanted to consider mailing. And we want to decide whether it's, we mail to everybody, or we mail to those who request it, or how… what we should… we do want to decide tonight.

775
01:56:20.880 --> 01:56:38.649
Town of Plainfield: I can't offer any framing, because I think if… it's an investment, of about $1,000, near as we can tell, to do a direct mailing that is a bond vote explainer to the entire town.

776
01:56:38.660 --> 01:56:41.550
Town of Plainfield: We've received a large volume.

777
01:56:41.670 --> 01:56:43.309
Town of Plainfield: And a high volume.

778
01:56:43.520 --> 01:57:00.389
Town of Plainfield: Of feedback about excluding, particularly elder members of our community who are not on the mainstream digital channels that many… most of the rest of the town is on.

779
01:57:00.730 --> 01:57:08.959
Town of Plainfield: And so they are seeing these announcements, they are seeing the conversations, so how to, bring in

780
01:57:10.000 --> 01:57:27.000
Town of Plainfield: the attention of those who are, just more removed physically, digitally, or analog, I suppose, from the functions of the town, so as to be able to include them in the democratic process that is this project and that is this town.

781
01:57:27.420 --> 01:57:34.420
Town of Plainfield: It is not reasonable to do a $1,000 mailing every time there is a question.

782
01:57:34.680 --> 01:57:54.430
Town of Plainfield: Or a comment. And so, the idea has grown to stack functions whereby one side of the mailer, it would be like a 8.5x11 piece of paper, one side is the bond explainer, and the other side are instructions about how to…

783
01:57:55.820 --> 01:58:08.649
Town of Plainfield: get in the channels of support that we do offer as a town for folks. The town office and the select board keep a list of folks who get, direct mail.

784
01:58:08.840 --> 01:58:19.749
Town of Plainfield: When important things come up from people who have requested that, a very small number of people have requested that. We believe that there are probably more.

785
01:58:19.850 --> 01:58:31.069
Town of Plainfield: And so this mailer would be both a bond explainer and an opportunity to grow that list that is intended to be only for those who really need it.

786
01:58:31.180 --> 01:58:33.670
Town of Plainfield: Not to have our town staff

787
01:58:33.800 --> 01:58:36.210
Town of Plainfield: You know, stuff envelopes for it.

788
01:58:36.250 --> 01:58:55.590
Town of Plainfield: people who just don't want to check their email, but for people who really need that. Meanwhile, over and above an additional staff function, the Accessibility Committee has been trying to reach those members of our community who have special access needs.

789
01:58:55.590 --> 01:59:09.029
Town of Plainfield: that are unknown, and they can't be reached because we don't know who they are, or the Accessibility Committee doesn't know who they are. An additional staff function on the flip side of the bond explainer would be

790
01:59:09.170 --> 01:59:26.389
Town of Plainfield: directing contact from any of those parties to the Accessibility Commission, so that they could be in direct contact, and share more specifically about the kind of access needs they're working with.

791
01:59:29.780 --> 01:59:35.250
Town of Plainfield: Yeah. That's, yeah, that's, that's pretty, pretty well explained. So,

792
01:59:36.060 --> 01:59:52.869
Town of Plainfield: Is there any other discussion here? I would just jump in, this is what you… the last version, I think, of what you prepared, which is the mailer, and it looks like it's designed to fold in half rather than a tri-fold, because that's the accessibility

793
01:59:53.270 --> 02:00:01.760
Town of Plainfield: piece on the back. I think it's gonna be more expensive to mail something that's a half-fold rather than a tri-fold.

794
02:00:01.760 --> 02:00:16.890
Town of Plainfield: And so I guess I wonder… I don't mind if there's a poll in the middle of the… Yeah, I mean, having done bulk mailings, when you do this, you have to have two circles on one and one on another. They have to be sealed in order to go through the mailing machines.

795
02:00:16.890 --> 02:00:40.209
Town of Plainfield: So, I'm not sure what the tri-folds are, but I think it's only one sticker. And so, you know, that's gonna have to be different. We also had some feedback about the contact information, and we had suggested, you know, that if people were interested, they could call the town office. Town office staff said they don't want to answer these calls, they don't want to answer the questions.

796
02:00:40.210 --> 02:00:54.169
Town of Plainfield: And I said, don't answer the questions. You can pass the questions on to us, but receive the message. But we could drop the phone altogether and just have attention to Lisa Weiss.

797
02:00:54.340 --> 02:01:01.000
Town of Plainfield: P.O. Box 217, the town office. This is for that. And just for the accessibility piece. Which is that?

798
02:01:01.150 --> 02:01:05.659
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, yeah, but there's a phone number… this is the phone number they're talking about. It's the same number.

799
02:01:06.070 --> 02:01:13.630
Town of Plainfield: Well, yeah, I don't know if they mean that for the accessibility piece as much as they mean it for the EDEXC piece.

800
02:01:13.630 --> 02:01:38.570
Town of Plainfield: I mean, I wonder, there's definitely an EVEAC email, I think the whole point is if somebody has accessibility issues, then they're going to want to call the phone number. I don't know that the EVAC has a phone number. This is a mailing from the select board, not the EVEAC. No, no, I know, but we have to decide who we want to answer questions, and we're being told by our office staff that they don't want to answer. Well, that they don't want the questions to come to them, they don't want to have to deal with sorting through that.

801
02:01:38.570 --> 02:01:39.810
Town of Plainfield: I, I mean, I'm just…

802
02:01:39.810 --> 02:01:50.500
Town Clerk: I think… can I just interject here? I think that… this is Bram Tobin, the town clerk. There are a couple of issues regarding why the town office doesn't want to answer these questions.

803
02:01:50.620 --> 02:02:09.650
Town Clerk: One is that, because I myself am an interested party, I think it's best to avoid calling the town clerk's office about this issue. Now, as Peter is saying, you wouldn't have to answer the question, you can just direct. Well.

804
02:02:09.800 --> 02:02:16.990
Town Clerk: We get a fairly large volume of phone calls and are pretty busy. Why not create a Google number

805
02:02:17.330 --> 02:02:26.929
Town Clerk: and basically monitor the answering machine, you and the Accessibility Committee could monitor the answering machine, and then contact those people directly.

806
02:02:29.720 --> 02:02:32.769
Town of Plainfield: doable? I mean, so…

807
02:02:32.770 --> 02:02:35.429
Town Clerk: In other words, you can create a phone number

808
02:02:35.740 --> 02:02:39.619
Town Clerk: Yeah. That answers… that has, like, an answering machine.

809
02:02:39.750 --> 02:02:55.469
Town Clerk: And so, the people can look at the mailer, and if you have an accessibility question, or about the, about the other project, you can specifically say what it is. It can be monitored by somebody from

810
02:02:55.600 --> 02:03:08.689
Town Clerk: the committees that have the answers to the questions. It's not about not wanting to do the work or answer the question, it's about having the people get directed to those people, and what's the most efficient way of doing that.

811
02:03:08.820 --> 02:03:27.890
Town of Plainfield: No, that's a good idea, bro. Doable? I mean, it seems simpler to have folks direct mail than P.O. Box. Instead, for the Accessibility Commission Committee care of Alicia Weiss, the chair of the Accessibility Committee, we could also

812
02:03:28.090 --> 02:03:33.970
Town of Plainfield: Direct mail care of… Select board. Select board.

813
02:03:34.980 --> 02:03:56.970
Town of Plainfield: The problem is just, like, speed, because all of our mail is going to Boston and coming back. So, yeah, based on the way the post office works now. So, like, if I mailed you something, Francis Rose, it would go all the way out of state, two states over, and come back. That's how it works. And so, if someone wants to get an answer to a question, and it's, you know, 5 days before the election.

814
02:03:57.080 --> 02:04:05.600
Town of Plainfield: we… who knows when we would get in the office to actually then be able to answer their question. And I know I've also heard of many people who've started to lose mail.

815
02:04:05.600 --> 02:04:29.250
Town of Plainfield: So, I just don't know if that's, like, the… as the only choice, it's not the most, reasonable choice right now in the current atmosphere we're in. So, I do think we need to have an email. My thing, and we can always try to fix this, I just tried to set up a Google Voice right now, Bram, and it says my system administrator hasn't allowed that permission for our Select Board, email… Gmail, so there's something we have to do in the back end, so…

816
02:04:29.250 --> 02:04:42.760
Town of Plainfield: it's a possibility, but we don't actually… like, last time I tried to do it with a different Gmail account, it said that there were too many voice numbers, and they weren't letting me do it, so I don't know if it's a 100% thing. Don has her hand up. Oh, yeah, Don.

817
02:04:43.640 --> 02:04:58.809
Dawn Fancher: Hi, I've seen the back of this mailer, like, Francis sort of shared that with me, in the Accessibility Committee over email. I don't know what the front looks like, but the back, I mean, it's looking… for there, for directing people to call the town clerk's office, that looks like it's…

818
02:04:58.810 --> 02:05:04.970
Dawn Fancher: That's if you want to be included on either of these two mailing lists. And I guess my question is.

819
02:05:05.030 --> 02:05:08.819
Dawn Fancher: Does the town office staff feel that they are… that they have the capacity to take

820
02:05:09.440 --> 02:05:12.800
Dawn Fancher: You know, several names to be included on a list.

821
02:05:13.430 --> 02:05:29.400
Dawn Fancher: Like, questions about the vote is a whole other thing, but as far as the, like, gathering addresses for snail mail or for accessibility outreach, that seems like that would just be someone just leaving their name and address.

822
02:05:29.720 --> 02:05:42.029
Town Clerk: Well, I don't know if there's a more efficient way of doing that. I don't know. I mean, in terms of what Dan was talking about with Google voicemail challenges, I would only say that this issue came up before.

823
02:05:42.610 --> 02:05:55.340
Town Clerk: when we had a, emergency alert system, and under the emergency alert system, you were required to call the town office, and unfortunately, that triggered

824
02:05:55.530 --> 02:06:10.250
Town Clerk: you know, 200 people one day calling the town office, and the solution to that was to… I did it on my own thing and set up a voicemail box to direct that. Perhaps we could set up

825
02:06:10.250 --> 02:06:20.360
Town Clerk: a Google Mail account, which people can email if they want to be on an email list. I think that's… I think it's best to do these things the most efficient way possible, that's all.

826
02:06:20.360 --> 02:06:43.940
Town of Plainfield: Well, I mean, the whole point behind the… so there's two ones. There's questions about the EDAC, and then there are the bond vote, and then there's the, the accessibility. The whole point on the accessibility question is that these are people that don't use technology, and so setting up a way for them to email to get on a paper list when they don't use technology doesn't make much sense. So I think that's gonna have to be

827
02:06:43.940 --> 02:06:48.360
Town of Plainfield: A paper opt-in or a phone call opt-in, just based on the nature of that.

828
02:06:48.360 --> 02:06:53.269
Town of Plainfield: So, I want to agree with Don that there exists a spreadsheet

829
02:06:53.400 --> 02:06:56.510
Town of Plainfield: Where the folks who are simply not online.

830
02:06:56.510 --> 02:07:20.550
Town of Plainfield: Not a part of the digital world. The town office and the select board manage this spreadsheet. It does make sense to me that someone should be able to call the town office and simply have their name and contact information input on the spreadsheet, done, completely. And then there remains the lingering question of who is the contact

831
02:07:20.680 --> 02:07:23.850
Town of Plainfield: For the bond vote questions.

832
02:07:24.150 --> 02:07:27.680
Town of Plainfield: And I'm seeing Pashar Labra's hands. Well, so I think,

833
02:07:27.930 --> 02:07:35.230
Town of Plainfield: I think the answer is either, because we have the website, people can go there, is we just give people the email.

834
02:07:35.230 --> 02:07:54.719
Town of Plainfield: on this, because the front part of this is not solely about accessibility, it's about information about the vote. That's true. For the general population. That's true. And there is an EVAC email, and if they ask you questions that the EVAC chairs don't feel comfortable answering, they can always send it to the select board, to ask one of the select board members to answer, I think. I'm looking at Arian, who's one of the chairs.

835
02:07:55.000 --> 02:08:06.539
Town of Plainfield: Sitting here. That seems like the easiest way in just taking a phone number off of that piece. It does seem like we need to have the town phone number for the accessibility piece. And I do have something to say about the actual physical mailer when…

836
02:08:06.540 --> 02:08:18.149
Town Clerk: I just want to say that this is the first I've heard of this accessibility email thing, and I really don't appreciate, being sandbagged like that. I just want to say that.

837
02:08:18.150 --> 02:08:19.520
Town of Plainfield: Do what you want.

838
02:08:19.520 --> 02:08:20.560
Town Clerk: That's fine, that's fine.

839
02:08:20.560 --> 02:08:24.410
Town of Plainfield: You… this actually came from a request from Carol.

840
02:08:24.440 --> 02:08:47.409
Town of Plainfield: who ask that we email or we send more people physical mail when they need it, and we make sure that we're getting to everyone, and that we get requests from people to mail things, and this is a offshoot of that conversation with Carol to us actually being as accessible as possible to the rest of the town. There's no sandbagging going on. This is literally a conversation that's been happening over the course of months.

841
02:08:49.310 --> 02:08:50.930
Town Clerk: Well, I haven't heard it. Thanks.

842
02:08:52.430 --> 02:08:55.419
Town of Plainfield: Can we,

843
02:08:55.420 --> 02:09:20.409
Town of Plainfield: We're supposed to be voting on this tonight. So, what was your thought about this? Well, it's just, so when you do a tri-fold, right, like, wherever you want to put the information, you have to keep it to that, because the middle of the tri-fold is the mailer. Like, they have to put your name and whatever. You can't have printing that's not the mailing on that, so you would have to keep… you would have to just shorten the accessibility piece so that it fits. Or maybe we do the half-fold, I guess.

844
02:09:20.410 --> 02:09:23.650
Town of Plainfield: I don't know how much… I don't know what the cost difference is. Neither do I?

845
02:09:23.650 --> 02:09:32.979
Town of Plainfield: But yeah, that's the only thing, they're usually with the mailer, so you'd have to just have either this side, or more likely you'd want it this side. Charlie?

846
02:09:33.890 --> 02:09:52.860
Charles Cogbill: Yeah, this is slightly tangential, but I'm wondering if there's any movement to have an informational meeting before the Australian ballot that is required in some circumstances. That would, maybe replace some of the need for the mailer?

847
02:09:53.730 --> 02:10:00.219
Charles Cogbill: Would, maybe, be another opportunity to involve the public.

848
02:10:03.270 --> 02:10:18.239
Town of Plainfield: We hear you. I don't know if people have the capacity for more meetings. Didn't we have to… we should look at the warning. I think there might be a hearing on the schedule already. There might be a… I think there's a hearing.

849
02:10:18.320 --> 02:10:38.900
Town of Plainfield: I think the day before the vote, or two days before the vote, there's a hearing. Yeah, there is a hearing, yeah. The thing is, people are voting now. Well, yeah, that's the thing. People don't… won't hold onto their ballots all the way until that point, but we've already noticed, we've already warned the hearing. I'd have to go back to our warning to see what… I think it's down… posted at the door here, but…

850
02:10:38.920 --> 02:10:45.649
Town of Plainfield: And for those who aren't tracking the regular channels of hearing announcements, they're gonna miss it.

851
02:10:46.650 --> 02:10:48.040
Town of Plainfield: Yep.

852
02:10:48.110 --> 02:10:57.479
Town of Plainfield: And also on process, I want to say that we can authorize the mailer without having the language utterly finalized.

853
02:10:57.520 --> 02:11:11.509
Town of Plainfield: we can… we can continue to refine the mailer for the next few days, taking in the feedback. Yeah, being sensitive to the office, calls, and… and making sure that people have… have a way to reach

854
02:11:11.600 --> 02:11:13.729
Town of Plainfield: Somebody for an answer.

855
02:11:14.570 --> 02:11:23.320
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, I thought I heard consensus that we should drop the phone number from the inside for the,

856
02:11:23.850 --> 02:11:37.259
Town of Plainfield: It's clear that the town office does not want to receive bond questions. They don't want to receive bond questions. I feel fine about that. And drop that, and we could put the EVAC's email in its place, which is on the… their website.

857
02:11:37.800 --> 02:11:58.680
Town of Plainfield: Again, this is a mailing from the select board, not the EVEA. And so we're giving them… And so why don't we tell people to… Email you? Email the select board. No, we're not going to put 5 emails on a piece of paper. We don't have to put any on the piece of paper. You can say, go to the town website and email the select board person of your choice, if you want.

858
02:11:59.250 --> 02:12:20.179
Town of Plainfield: But part of this is… All of our emails are on the website. Yeah, but part of this is to try to make it as easy as possible for people who are not technically savvy as well. So to have them to go look on a website to find our emails, rather than providing one. Well, we could drop the whole last thing that says, have any ask questions, just drop the whole last thing. We could just say that there's information. So here's some information, period. Yeah, that's fine.

859
02:12:20.790 --> 02:12:40.570
Town of Plainfield: I think that's the easiest thing. Yeah, I just think that, you know, it's obviously our appointed committee, so I don't think it's a strange thing to… if we had a conservation question, it wouldn't be strange for us to say the conservation committee is somebody you can get more information from. Like, I don't… They have more knowledge than we do, yeah.

860
02:12:41.250 --> 02:12:43.880
Town of Plainfield: Do we want to have a vote on this?

861
02:12:44.360 --> 02:12:48.870
Town of Plainfield: I'll make a motion to authorize the Select Board to

862
02:12:48.980 --> 02:12:54.549
Town of Plainfield: Send a direct mail informational bond voting.

863
02:12:54.740 --> 02:13:05.140
Town of Plainfield: informational to the entire voting population of the town, or all residents? Voting population, and we make sure we household it.

864
02:13:05.250 --> 02:13:12.580
Town of Plainfield: Yeah. There's no reason for, like, me and Mo to get two and process twice as much for the postage.

865
02:13:12.890 --> 02:13:29.569
Town of Plainfield: Can you phrase that? Yeah, did you just… And also, you know, Plainfield residents, they need to be in voting residence and not mailing residents, because there are some people who live in Barry that get Plainfield mail, right?

866
02:13:30.370 --> 02:13:41.120
Town of Plainfield: I'm wondering if the, town clerk's office has such a householded list already.

867
02:13:42.590 --> 02:13:45.079
Town of Plainfield: Like, when we send out the town report.

868
02:13:45.270 --> 02:13:56.889
Town of Plainfield: Right? That's… we don't get two at our house, we don't get 3 at our house, we get one at our house. Right. And, so that must exist. Yeah.

869
02:13:56.890 --> 02:13:59.929
Town Clerk: I think, just as for clarity.

870
02:14:00.540 --> 02:14:10.469
Town Clerk: There are a number of, people, I myself included, who don't have a mailing address in the town who,

871
02:14:10.730 --> 02:14:19.959
Town Clerk: don't get, certain mailings when they go through. There is a way of,

872
02:14:20.070 --> 02:14:38.010
Town Clerk: sending things to one address if the addresses match, that's true. But unfortunately, having a crystal clear map of who gets the mailings that are Plainfield residents and voters is not 100%.

873
02:14:38.610 --> 02:14:46.889
Town of Plainfield: Yep. Did you make a motion? I did make a motion. Second. We have a motion and a second.

874
02:14:47.430 --> 02:14:50.000
Town of Plainfield: Any further discussion on it?

875
02:14:50.340 --> 02:15:03.199
Town of Plainfield: All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Can I… since we're gonna mess up language anyway, I do think we should, instead of putting more questions, we give a number, we should just say more questions.

876
02:15:03.200 --> 02:15:17.569
Town of Plainfield: there's going to be a hearing on whatever date. I mean, we have that date, it's down in the notice at a certain time. We should just put that information at the bottom. People can come to the… That's a good solution. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, let's, keep moving. We're already…

877
02:15:17.780 --> 02:15:23.530
Town of Plainfield: past our time. Town Treasurer Report.

878
02:15:24.320 --> 02:15:32.860
Town of Plainfield: Everything's cool, right? Everything's great. We gotta… so…

879
02:15:33.220 --> 02:15:35.639
Town of Plainfield: As I said earlier, we have,

880
02:15:35.910 --> 02:15:49.230
Town of Plainfield: First, first large payment from one project on Brook Road. There's 11 more to go, plus the funds that we expect to receive from, FEMA, and,

881
02:15:49.670 --> 02:16:00.190
Town of Plainfield: the emergency, the reimbursements for what is called Category B, which is the emergency phase.

882
02:16:00.220 --> 02:16:11.230
Town of Plainfield: work, the expenses that we've incurred for that, we should see, back shortly. We have a new,

883
02:16:11.950 --> 02:16:29.239
Town of Plainfield: a new person at FEMA who we're working with who's been, actually wonderful, to work with, really is moving things a lot faster, and I, and, you know, and…

884
02:16:30.160 --> 02:16:37.900
Town of Plainfield: closing a lot of the loops that have sort of hindered some of our reimbursements, and I think in terms of, like, what I've seen on the

885
02:16:38.750 --> 02:16:51.450
Town of Plainfield: the FEMA portal, certain things are committed already, so it's like, that money is essentially, like, waiting for us to… waiting for it to come down. And, and then…

886
02:16:51.450 --> 02:17:05.340
Town of Plainfield: So, what that's going to allow me to do is to, you know, we have a few things that, have not been funded that were in the budget in fiscal year 25 that need to get,

887
02:17:05.530 --> 02:17:23.879
Town of Plainfield: funded in terms of reserves. So, you know, we're waiting… essentially, like, this is the first step out of what is essentially the emergency, still… this is the first step out of emergency, like, that we've had from a fiscal standpoint.

888
02:17:23.930 --> 02:17:29.350
Town of Plainfield: Which is, like, thank goodness. And,

889
02:17:29.600 --> 02:17:32.730
Town of Plainfield: But, with that money comes other costs.

890
02:17:32.980 --> 02:17:36.840
Town of Plainfield: One of which is,

891
02:17:37.340 --> 02:17:39.430
Town of Plainfield: We are required to have a…

892
02:17:39.870 --> 02:17:50.369
Town of Plainfield: what's called single federal audit. And so the audit that, so I had put out a proposal RFP, like, because

893
02:17:50.600 --> 02:18:07.050
Town of Plainfield: And I've gotten two different stories about this, and I haven't reconciled it. The state says that we need a single federal audit based on the date of the grant agreement, and the, the CPA, who responded to the proposal.

894
02:18:07.219 --> 02:18:21.039
Town of Plainfield: Didn't think that was correct. You thought that that was incorrect, it would be timed to the… When the money arrives. When the money arrives, which would be this fiscal year, which would be much better for us, because we can budget for that. So, I'm gonna get some…

895
02:18:21.530 --> 02:18:23.800
Town of Plainfield: I'm gonna have to reconcile that.

896
02:18:24.700 --> 02:18:28.839
Town of Plainfield: A couple of things, that we're working on that are not…

897
02:18:29.020 --> 02:18:40.319
Town of Plainfield: per se, directly related to the Treasurer's role is, we're doing some cost-saving measures, things are getting, we're…

898
02:18:40.600 --> 02:18:54.920
Town of Plainfield: we have a new, internet, phone plan that we're negotiating with Spectrum, and the brand's taking the, first part of all of that legwork, and then I've just,

899
02:18:55.219 --> 02:19:00.749
Town of Plainfield: Getting some of the things, coordinated, but we stand to save,

900
02:19:02.100 --> 02:19:15.859
Town of Plainfield: I think it's, saving of about $1,700, and, in the, you know, for,

901
02:19:17.080 --> 02:19:30.250
Town of Plainfield: what we are, you know, what we're spending out, on all the phone and internet for all of the locations. So, and the other,

902
02:19:31.110 --> 02:19:35.629
Town of Plainfield: Another piece that, let's see…

903
02:19:36.540 --> 02:19:41.990
Town of Plainfield: Otherwise, it is kind of a bit of a…

904
02:19:42.559 --> 02:19:50.789
Town of Plainfield: a quiet period in terms of the treasurer's work, because we're between the municipal and education tax collection, so…

905
02:19:51.150 --> 02:19:55.650
Town of Plainfield: My focus has been a lot on… Throw to bridges and things.

906
02:19:56.330 --> 02:20:00.679
Town of Plainfield: Okay. But I did forward that, to you all, the,

907
02:20:01.060 --> 02:20:08.470
Town of Plainfield: the proposal that came in, and we still have, I think, a couple of weeks to receive proposals for the deadline.

908
02:20:08.700 --> 02:20:10.090
Town of Plainfield: Yep.

909
02:20:10.670 --> 02:20:16.040
Town of Plainfield: Have you prepared a budget versus actual year to take through September 30?

910
02:20:17.010 --> 02:20:26.569
Town of Plainfield: Say again? Have you prepared a budget versus actual year-to-date through September 30? No, I'll probably put that together next… next time. Thank you.

911
02:20:26.860 --> 02:20:28.700
Town of Plainfield: Nope.

912
02:20:28.840 --> 02:20:42.100
Town of Plainfield: Okay, thank you. There was, just to bridge the last conversation in this one, so we've just authorized the spending of upwards of $1,000 for the mailing. I said I would ask you about that.

913
02:20:42.260 --> 02:20:53.229
Town of Plainfield: We can do that? Yeah. How is it paid for? What is the optimal, like, way that it is… that money is delivered to… is the bill just sent to you at the town office?

914
02:20:53.500 --> 02:21:02.430
Town of Plainfield: That's the direction? Invoices at plainfieldvt.com. Thank you. Okay,

915
02:21:04.210 --> 02:21:12.970
Town of Plainfield: We're looking for a managed position. I just want to say, that number was per month, that's $1,700 a month.

916
02:21:13.230 --> 02:21:17.069
Town of Plainfield: Oh, that's important clarification.

917
02:21:17.260 --> 02:21:24.839
Town of Plainfield: So we… the new internet plan is saving us a considerable amount of money every month. Fantastic.

918
02:21:25.190 --> 02:21:33.919
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, that's great. And better internet. Viber, here, too. Fantastic. By the way, here's this… Well done.

919
02:21:34.200 --> 02:21:38.210
Town of Plainfield: I'm sorry? It could go in a yellow folder. Oh, yeah.

920
02:21:39.370 --> 02:21:45.019
Town of Plainfield: Okay, this next piece is also you, Jazz. You're the one who, suggested this.

921
02:21:45.130 --> 02:21:46.140
Town of Plainfield: Oh, jeez.

922
02:21:46.600 --> 02:21:58.090
Town of Plainfield: The Recovery and Revitalization Manager position. Do you want to speak to it? So… You know, like, in…

923
02:21:59.200 --> 02:22:01.959
Town of Plainfield: In kind of the…

924
02:22:02.220 --> 02:22:16.860
Town of Plainfield: the amount of work, you know, that is currently present in the office. A lot of the driver for that work is, you know, each of these projects have their own grant, they have their own

925
02:22:17.010 --> 02:22:23.260
Town of Plainfield: Their own paperwork and their own, path. And, you know, the…

926
02:22:23.360 --> 02:22:30.949
Town of Plainfield: Under normal circumstances, the role of, like, a road commissioner and grants administrator and,

927
02:22:31.610 --> 02:22:48.319
Town of Plainfield: you know, the executive functioning of the various commissions and committees, like, are more than enough, I think, to handle the town business, but over the next few years, what we're going to

928
02:22:48.430 --> 02:22:50.699
Town of Plainfield: You know, find is that…

929
02:22:51.040 --> 02:22:59.400
Town of Plainfield: This is only… you know, this is just, like, the first part of this, but as things progress, we are going to have a…

930
02:22:59.700 --> 02:23:11.740
Town of Plainfield: We're going to need, the Select Board either to… You know, authorize the…

931
02:23:11.740 --> 02:23:28.539
Town of Plainfield: creation of, like, this position that I'm proposing to essentially act as a town administrator, and you can put some constraints on that, you know, relative to, like, the special recovery work, or…

932
02:23:28.700 --> 02:23:42.210
Town of Plainfield: Or another option would be just to create a town administrator position, and, which would reduce the role of the treasurer considerably, and would take some of the responsibilities

933
02:23:42.210 --> 02:23:53.580
Town of Plainfield: pulling responsibilities from the assistant treasurer, the, town clerk, and the administrative assistant, and… reshuffling. Now, the…

934
02:23:53.840 --> 02:24:03.950
Town of Plainfield: you know, I see, like, a lot of the driving action behind this being, like, the… you know, what we're up against for the next,

935
02:24:04.400 --> 02:24:11.300
Town of Plainfield: 5 to 7 years. And… so…

936
02:24:11.300 --> 02:24:27.639
Town of Plainfield: you know, under kind of typical Vermont town structure in a town administrator position, essentially a town administrator is just a select board saying, you, person, you are now

937
02:24:27.880 --> 02:24:36.630
Town of Plainfield: Here's a… here's a very, like, detailed list of what… what we are delegating to you to administer for…

938
02:24:36.630 --> 02:24:55.659
Town of Plainfield: for us all. Is there any way to chart this out? Because, you know, you have it in your head, but we have no idea. Well, in the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, they have an explainer about the differences between town administrator structures, town managers, and they're very different in,

939
02:24:55.920 --> 02:25:02.539
Town of Plainfield: They, in day-to-day practice, are very similar, but in their authority, like,

940
02:25:02.830 --> 02:25:19.730
Town of Plainfield: the town manager position would essentially take on the… a lot of the executive authority that the select board holds. Okay. Administrators are delegated that authority… that executive authority, and,

941
02:25:19.730 --> 02:25:23.880
Town of Plainfield: But it… it is really… administrators are…

942
02:25:24.440 --> 02:25:35.600
Town of Plainfield: Those positions are designed specific to the needs of the town, and I would say that the… like… like…

943
02:25:36.150 --> 02:25:37.640
Town of Plainfield: the…

944
02:25:37.960 --> 02:25:51.810
Town of Plainfield: the problem we're having is that we're running up against capacity, even with the addition of, like, a part-time position, splitting the treasurer. It's a… and it's a matter of, like, things like this here…

945
02:25:51.870 --> 02:25:58.400
Town of Plainfield: expedite, you know, he is saying, you know, this is an example, right? Like, this evening. He's like.

946
02:25:58.400 --> 02:26:17.170
Town of Plainfield: Two weeks is… two weeks right now is a lot of time, and can spill into, like, a huge amount of delay downstream, in terms of, like, moving these things forward. And it is within the power of the select board to create a paid position to do those things.

947
02:26:17.170 --> 02:26:23.929
Town of Plainfield: So… That's why I say a chart, if we're gonna have to consider something like this, we need to see…

948
02:26:24.050 --> 02:26:34.370
Town of Plainfield: how… how that administrator would function. I… I… and I… and you've told me about it, so I kind of have an idea, but… And I would… I would recommend that you…

949
02:26:34.720 --> 02:26:45.140
Town of Plainfield: you all, you know, get in touch with VLCT and talk about, like, you know, there is the municipal,

950
02:26:45.910 --> 02:27:08.489
Town of Plainfield: It is the… Okay, we could… Municipal Assistant, or Municipal Services, I don't remember. Municipal Assistant Center. Yes. Okay. And, like, you know, they can get into it more in depth, and, you know, I'm sure that… I mean, we pay them dues for a reason. They can come here and explain it better than I can, or help, you know, help the Select Board design a role

951
02:27:08.490 --> 02:27:10.820
Town of Plainfield: And,

952
02:27:10.830 --> 02:27:35.459
Town of Plainfield: you know, that… that's what I would say would be best. Okay. We're really running late, and I don't want to… yeah, go ahead. I'll just say, I… definitely, we should talk to Vermont League Cities and Towns about just generally what administrators… there's some other towns that have admin… or have administrators that we could talk to. I think, from your perspective, Josh, what would be helpful? You said, like, oh, this person can take some stuff off of the treasurer's load, some stuff off…

953
02:27:35.460 --> 02:27:45.709
Town of Plainfield: the road commissioner, some stuff off the ground administrator, some stuff off the assistant treasurer. What stuff? What are those things? In the way that we're working right now, and I don't… you don't have to answer tonight.

954
02:27:45.710 --> 02:28:01.020
Town of Plainfield: what are the places we're hitting capacity? Who is hitting capacity? Which staff members? So, what are those roles? Like, so, like, I think we… we need more of a demonstrated need based on right now, and maybe showing how this new role will make

955
02:28:01.080 --> 02:28:17.889
Town of Plainfield: the assistant treasurer's role more manageable, we'll make the treasurer's role more manageable, we'll make whoever's role more manageable. Like, I'm sure we could design all sorts of great things, but I'd like to do it based on where we're actually having friction points now, rather than, like, whatever else.

956
02:28:18.860 --> 02:28:41.410
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, I would hardly second that. I got an email from someone who was asking, saw this agenda item and was asking about it, and I said, I don't know, I hadn't heard, you know, some kind of a town administrator has come up with, talks with Karen Hatcher and whatnot and stuff.

957
02:28:41.700 --> 02:28:53.560
Town of Plainfield: If we get the CDBGDR grant, we have a 5-year, or 5- or 6-year funded project manager position to oversee that big thing. For each of these

958
02:28:54.200 --> 02:29:12.229
Town of Plainfield: federal highway projects. There is a project manager, Evan Dietrich was here tonight, and I'm there like, okay, so where is the need? And just to use the ballpark number that was in the CDBG grant of $100,000 a year to support that position, I'm there like.

959
02:29:12.610 --> 02:29:23.230
Town of Plainfield: If we were to ask the taxpayers to pay that, that's a 7.7% tax increase for that one position right there. I need to be convinced

960
02:29:23.240 --> 02:29:30.989
Town of Plainfield: That we're either gonna find that money by taking it from existing positions, or find it by efficiencies.

961
02:29:31.000 --> 02:29:46.229
Town of Plainfield: that are gonna come from funding this, because we've already added another road crew person who wasn't in the budget this year, taking some from overtime and, you know, some reimbursements, but that has to be built into the base. We haven't actually, like.

962
02:29:46.240 --> 02:30:04.959
Town of Plainfield: had more than 3 people on at one time, so even though they're hired, it's… But they're authorized positions, which are now in the base budget going forward. You made a good sales pitch there for why it's better to have two crews of two for safety reasons than otherwise out there, and efficiency reasons.

963
02:30:04.960 --> 02:30:23.540
Town of Plainfield: We need that same level of detail and defined need to go here, because, you know, Dan asked the question earlier about where's the $400,000 to $800,000 10% match coming for these things, and it's like, okay, maybe the first $800,000 is paid for, but for the other 12 projects.

964
02:30:23.610 --> 02:30:29.519
Town of Plainfield: You know, that's… that we're going to be asking the taxpayers for as well. And so, you know.

965
02:30:29.750 --> 02:30:40.630
Town of Plainfield: I think we need a much more defined need here. Typically, a town administrator position, you know, they will take on all of the HR,

966
02:30:40.670 --> 02:30:49.760
Town of Plainfield: role, and, which is currently the town clerk's role. Correct. And, and then the…

967
02:30:49.770 --> 02:31:04.530
Town of Plainfield: you know, the… a lot of the administrative work that I currently do would get pulled out. And my job description is for 32 hours a week, so… and I… let me tell you, that does not happen.

968
02:31:04.610 --> 02:31:14.739
Town of Plainfield: So, like, so in the budget we wrote this year, we wrote, we carried the budget at a higher,

969
02:31:16.950 --> 02:31:27.879
Town of Plainfield: higher level than what, you know, in a normal 32-hour week at my current hourly rate, like, we're not gonna spend that budget.

970
02:31:27.990 --> 02:31:33.359
Town of Plainfield: Right? But… Not knowing exactly what level of

971
02:31:33.890 --> 02:31:47.659
Town of Plainfield: excessive work we're carrying. The other thing we lose… so, like, you know, what we would need to budget for town clerk and town treasurer, and the treasurer's role could be very… is actually under this

972
02:31:47.880 --> 02:31:58.640
Town of Plainfield: structure would be very minimal. And, you know, so it kind of flip the structure we have, where instead of administrative assistant, you put the administrator at the top.

973
02:31:58.640 --> 02:32:23.570
Town of Plainfield: And then you have the roles of… Josh, you don't have to detail it tonight. Okay. Okay? But, I mean, I'm telling you, you know, there's a lot of work… We'll want detail at some point. Right. Yeah, yeah. And I think there's also gonna be the budget defense moment. We're coming on budget… budgeting season, and so, like, making it also makes sense. Yeah, that's gonna be when the decision's gonna be made, if there's any…

974
02:32:23.570 --> 02:32:27.330
Town of Plainfield: And I think it's maybe incumbent upon us as a select board

975
02:32:27.330 --> 02:32:31.070
Town of Plainfield: to figure out the piece you said, Josh, which is talk to other towns

976
02:32:31.070 --> 02:32:47.540
Town of Plainfield: And talk to the LCT. But I think that since you are making the request and proposal, I think we just need to have something that shows, like, the need, and then obviously we're gonna have to, you know, in budget season, talk about the actual… our actual ability to pay for it.

977
02:32:47.540 --> 02:33:00.669
Town of Plainfield: Yeah. And then, is this something that's time-limited to our recovery time? Is this a time-limited position? Is this a… yeah. I think that makes sense. And,

978
02:33:00.820 --> 02:33:12.999
Town of Plainfield: So we'll move… we'll move on that, but we'll deal with it more during the budget. Discussion about the disability insurance. Is that something you want to talk about, or is that brand?

979
02:33:13.280 --> 02:33:30.460
Town of Plainfield: Graham's got it, but Dan and I were also a part of a subcommittee… Oh, oh, that's right. Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead. Tell us about that. This came up, and Graham… we had gotten initial quotes a couple of months ago, back in June, I think, from,

980
02:33:30.460 --> 02:33:33.690
Town of Plainfield: Madison National Light, and then.

981
02:33:33.690 --> 02:33:34.880
Town Clerk: There's a revised quote.

982
02:33:34.880 --> 02:33:52.180
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, the original quote we had was for 9, town employees, and now it was 10, and so the budget numbers went up just slightly. But there's a basic life and accidental death and dismemberment. For 10 people, it's $1,260 a year.

983
02:33:52.180 --> 02:34:15.560
Town of Plainfield: Long-term disability is $2,380 a year. Short-term disability is $1,745 a year. That's a total of $5,313. And this would go into effect January 1st, which is why the folks are pushing for a decision. Right. Now, so it can go into effect. Bram, I had a question, I don't know,

984
02:34:15.560 --> 02:34:22.059
Town of Plainfield: The… do we have to pay 100% of the fee up front, or is it billed monthly or quarterly, do you know?

985
02:34:22.060 --> 02:34:25.759
Town Clerk: I assumed quarterly, but I will get clarification on that tomorrow.

986
02:34:25.760 --> 02:34:32.779
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, because it… if it is quarterly, then it wouldn't all fall… it would only half fall in this fiscal year.

987
02:34:32.780 --> 02:34:43.389
Town Clerk: I thought it was quarterly, but I will double-check with them tomorrow. The other thing I just want to say is I have not gotten

988
02:34:43.390 --> 02:34:55.179
Town Clerk: it's tangential, but I haven't gotten the Blue Cross Blue Shield renewal numbers, and, but we can expect a significant increase in overall health costs, as everyone

989
02:34:55.180 --> 02:34:56.639
Town Clerk: She probably knows.

990
02:34:57.220 --> 02:34:59.540
Town of Plainfield: Yep, yep.

991
02:34:59.760 --> 02:35:02.390
Town of Plainfield: up there still?

992
02:35:02.610 --> 02:35:05.009
Town of Plainfield: Are we… we're supposed to vote on this,

993
02:35:05.620 --> 02:35:07.930
Town of Plainfield: Josh, do we have this money?

994
02:35:09.070 --> 02:35:09.900
Town of Plainfield: Yeah.

995
02:35:13.130 --> 02:35:15.130
Town of Plainfield: Well, I would move that we…

996
02:35:15.810 --> 02:35:22.859
Town of Plainfield: Offer these long-term disability and basic life, short-term disability for our 10 employees.

997
02:35:23.200 --> 02:35:27.739
Town of Plainfield: But a total of $5,313 a year through Madison Life.

998
02:35:28.140 --> 02:35:29.620
Town of Plainfield: One sec at that.

999
02:35:31.300 --> 02:35:33.670
Town of Plainfield: Any further discussion?

1000
02:35:33.770 --> 02:35:37.660
Town of Plainfield: All those in favor, say aye. Aye.

1001
02:35:40.830 --> 02:35:55.999
Town of Plainfield: Question, sorry. No, I just want to thank Bram for not only bringing this to us, but continuing to stay on us until we had time to work on it, and then getting us new quotes so that we could have this ready to go in time for January 1st.

1002
02:35:56.000 --> 02:35:56.350
Town Clerk: favorite.

1003
02:35:56.350 --> 02:36:00.909
Town of Plainfield: Thank you, too, for being on the committee to work on that.

1004
02:36:01.430 --> 02:36:03.160
Town of Plainfield: Okay.

1005
02:36:03.530 --> 02:36:11.649
Town of Plainfield: We're gonna skip the road commissioner report. We said… well, we were gonna add… the…

1006
02:36:12.630 --> 02:36:19.810
Town of Plainfield: The ADA paving? Oh, the ADA paving, yes, I…

1007
02:36:19.810 --> 02:36:44.179
Town of Plainfield: Isn't that kind of settled, or do we need to… No, no, that is not settled. Okay. So this is about the handicapped parking space here at the Opera House. Right. It was installed by a private contractor who installed it not to spec, not to ADA spec, and not to the design specification that they were given, this contract.

1008
02:36:44.470 --> 02:36:57.330
Town of Plainfield: They're… right now, so Michael Billingsley has been our, point of contact to this private contractor. He has held back $1,500.

1009
02:36:57.330 --> 02:37:09.899
Town of Plainfield: To… they have not finished the work, they have not done what they were asked for. Meanwhile, though, they have also been non-responsive for over a month to…

1010
02:37:09.910 --> 02:37:23.340
Town of Plainfield: fixing it, because that's the real ask. There was already, like, an awkward scene where someone in a handicapped van pulled up and tried to get a wheelchair out, but it's not wide enough to do it. Right, needs another 2 feet. And so…

1011
02:37:23.340 --> 02:37:31.160
Town of Plainfield: what Michael is asking us to do is to reach out to our town attorney to

1012
02:37:31.200 --> 02:37:40.740
Town of Plainfield: contact the contractor on the town's behalf to put more pressure on the contractor to fix it and make it right.

1013
02:37:40.940 --> 02:37:58.220
Town of Plainfield: I'd be willing to connect to the town attorney if that's… if that's what the board wants to do. Is… is… was… I sent an email out, to Michael, and I hadn't received anything back. Was… my question was, was there an actual contract with the town?

1014
02:37:59.190 --> 02:38:08.309
Town of Plainfield: Give me a moment. That's a good question. The attorney would want to know that, I would think, right off the bat. Yeah, we'd have to send him the contract, probably.

1015
02:38:08.520 --> 02:38:13.590
Town of Plainfield: You know, or was it just… Was it verbal? Yeah. Yeah.

1016
02:38:14.140 --> 02:38:23.209
Town of Plainfield: Even if Michael said to the contractor, do it to ADA specs, that doesn't guarantee… that's not really a contract.

1017
02:38:23.320 --> 02:38:36.220
Town of Plainfield: There was an architectural drawing, is my understanding, that the contractor was supposed to conform to. Oh, well, if that's… that is true. Whatever written record there is, we're gonna need, so… Yeah.

1018
02:38:40.080 --> 02:38:51.090
Town of Plainfield: Well, let's, so, Carl, you… Yeah, I'll chase down Michael and find… and I'll get in touch with the attorney if, if we have a… get the information together, so…

1019
02:38:52.190 --> 02:38:55.649
Town of Plainfield: We can give that to the attorney. If, if you're…

1020
02:38:55.670 --> 02:39:12.730
Town of Plainfield: If we want to proceed with an attorney. I mean, does this need a motion, or is this just… We're just gathering information. …investigation? Yeah, I think if there's a point where we have to file something, or do, like, take an action, then we want to do an executive session, and… But a phone call to an attorney is not something you need to make a motion about?

1021
02:39:13.110 --> 02:39:28.259
Town of Plainfield: No, I don't think so. And we've called this person and given him time to make it right. Emailed, yeah. I'm on at least one of the emails so far. Yeah. As the president of Plainfield Arts, who oversees the building here, I was on the email. Yep. Yep.

1022
02:39:29.620 --> 02:39:33.770
Town of Plainfield: Okay, so we won't, I'll follow up with the attorney.

1023
02:39:33.920 --> 02:39:36.109
Town of Plainfield: Town attorney on this, and just ask…

1024
02:39:36.290 --> 02:39:49.429
Town of Plainfield: once we get some information and ask what they would need, too, I can just have a conversation with them. And you could also ask Michael what's available. And I'll ask Michael what he has, yeah. Thank you, Carl, for offering to do that.

1025
02:39:50.430 --> 02:40:05.840
Town of Plainfield: Okay, from VTRANS next steps to Route 2 intersection. Better connections. Oh, I'm sorry. There's a… there's… I think there's an example of the letter we need to sign in the yellow folder in the left pocket.

1026
02:40:06.970 --> 02:40:11.799
Town of Plainfield: Is that brand Pinkish for us, I believe? Yes, right. Yes.

1027
02:40:11.920 --> 02:40:22.490
Town of Plainfield: It also requires a vote of the Planning Commission and the Chair of the Planning Commissioner's signature. And I don't know if they're aware of that.

1028
02:40:22.640 --> 02:40:29.410
Town Clerk: I can contact Will tomorrow and let him know. If you guys pass it and sign it, I can get him in.

1029
02:40:32.820 --> 02:40:52.220
Town of Plainfield: I also went on the website and looked up this grant, and I know you've been working in some meetings and stuff like this. One of the questions that's on there is, is this a multi-municipal project? And because this talks about a connection to the new co-op location, I'm wondering.

1030
02:40:52.220 --> 02:40:56.889
Town of Plainfield: If this is a plainfield-only application, or whether

1031
02:40:57.010 --> 02:41:15.630
Town of Plainfield: you know, I mean, I could easily, see us just asking East Montpelier for a letter of support, and we'll do all the work, you know, type of deal. I think… I think we decided at one of our meetings we… it is an interim municipal, so they may need a resolution. There's a deadline coming right up, so… Yeah.

1032
02:41:15.790 --> 02:41:19.040
Town of Plainfield: Those are the two questions I have. Yeah.

1033
02:41:19.990 --> 02:41:35.669
Town of Plainfield: for the public who don't know what we're talking about, we were approached by Rose Paul of the Conservation Commission, who was offered to write a grant on our behalf to, it's a grant to study

1034
02:41:36.120 --> 02:41:44.280
Town of Plainfield: Sidewalk, traffic calming, water management along the Route 2 corridor.

1035
02:41:45.060 --> 02:41:47.320
Town of Plainfield: All the way to the co-op.

1036
02:41:48.110 --> 02:41:50.780
Town of Plainfield: And… haha…

1037
02:41:51.980 --> 02:42:08.820
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, and so I think, the grant is due October 31st. We're going to be seeing this again from before us to informally approve it or not on the 27th, but this motion now is to activate, to, like.

1038
02:42:08.820 --> 02:42:14.759
Town of Plainfield: let Rose Paul know that she has our support to… Petition for this grant.

1039
02:42:15.780 --> 02:42:28.700
Town of Plainfield: Right, yeah, that's what she's looking for. And her proposal was to take the Mad… there's, like, a 25% match, I think, required, and she's suggesting that comes out of the Conservation Commission's reserve. Right.

1040
02:42:29.000 --> 02:42:31.389
Town of Plainfield: Sorry. And then the, the…

1041
02:42:31.570 --> 02:42:40.190
Town of Plainfield: water shed… I'm not using the right… Oh, the additional $30,000? 30,000, which is unmatched. Unmatched. Right.

1042
02:42:40.900 --> 02:43:02.380
Town of Plainfield: I mean, this to me sounds like an easy yes. Yes for now, you know, it's like… And did she volunteer to be the designated local project manager, the person with overall administrative responsibility for the program? I believe she has. Well, she volunteered herself to write the grant. I don't know if that includes… This form is asking for us to designate

1043
02:43:02.630 --> 02:43:18.910
Town of Plainfield: a local project manager. I guess maybe she's… I don't know, I don't know if we'd rather tell her. Hmm. She's… I know they're on vacation, she's on vacation right now, so… Oh, so we can't get an answer?

1044
02:43:19.560 --> 02:43:31.909
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, our road commissioner would be a fine project manager… project manager. Well, this is… this is looking for the board to support her going for the grant, correct?

1045
02:43:32.220 --> 02:43:38.369
Town of Plainfield: That's my understanding. That's my understanding. I make a motion, may I make a motion? Yes.

1046
02:43:38.400 --> 02:43:52.679
Town of Plainfield: To authorize Carl Bissex, board chair, to sign on behalf… I think it's… we all sign. Oh, we all sign? Yeah, it's all… everybody signs. Authorize that we sign. I authorize that we sign…

1047
02:43:52.880 --> 02:43:57.679
Town of Plainfield: this authorization to apply for the Better Connections grant.

1048
02:43:57.840 --> 02:43:59.259
Town of Plainfield: It's take a gap.

1049
02:43:59.790 --> 02:44:04.740
Town of Plainfield: All those in favor, say aye. Aye.

1050
02:44:05.620 --> 02:44:12.859
Town Clerk: So tomorrow, I'll email… I'll contact Will and get him to put it on the agenda for their meeting and so forth.

1051
02:44:12.980 --> 02:44:20.439
Town of Plainfield: But they have a meeting on the 20th, I think. Yep. It could be… it could be helpful to get us more connected.

1052
02:44:20.440 --> 02:44:22.480
Town Clerk: let him know. I'll send him a copy of the letter.

1053
02:44:22.780 --> 02:44:24.680
Town of Plainfield: Okay, great, thanks.

1054
02:44:25.870 --> 02:44:27.550
Town of Plainfield: Okay…

1055
02:44:30.390 --> 02:44:49.029
Town of Plainfield: And what was the other that was handic… VTRANS now. Okay, VTRANS, that's, you and Patty? Yeah. So, I think we forwarded to you all the pictures that their traffic committee gave us, so,

1056
02:44:49.090 --> 02:44:52.179
Town of Plainfield: This is part of…

1057
02:44:52.340 --> 02:45:03.209
Town of Plainfield: the response that VTrans came with their new project for the blinking light intersection. And they have yet to come back to us with,

1058
02:45:03.350 --> 02:45:17.229
Town of Plainfield: a… any responses to the suggestions we've given to them on crosswalks and sidewalks and things like that. She did… Patty Coburn did say that,

1059
02:45:17.400 --> 02:45:19.530
Town of Plainfield: VTRANS has assigned

1060
02:45:19.530 --> 02:45:44.299
Town of Plainfield: a new person to oversee the 2029 paving project, and I couldn't find that email earlier today, so I don't have the guy's name at my fingertips. But she said, he's getting briefed and, you know, we'll get… we'll hear from them once he's briefed and, and whatnot. In the meantime, they sent out their traffic safety people, and they did a study of

1061
02:45:44.300 --> 02:45:52.180
Town of Plainfield: all the signage along Route 2 from, basically from the Goddard sign down to Maple Fields.

1062
02:45:52.250 --> 02:45:56.290
Town of Plainfield: And there's about 13 pictures that they gave us.

1063
02:45:56.290 --> 02:46:12.580
Town of Plainfield: I looked this over, and I thought… I didn't have anything that I disagreed with in here, and I think it's fine. Are these ideas that they would suggest, or are these things you think we should do? They are suggestions. This is their suggestions, you know, so, like, you know…

1064
02:46:12.740 --> 02:46:16.829
Town of Plainfield: if… if… I drove this the other day, and…

1065
02:46:16.830 --> 02:46:35.250
Town of Plainfield: our road is actually pretty cluttered with signs, some of which aren't terribly helpful. And so, they are saying, take some down, we can consolidate, you know, the park and ride sign, the electric vehicle charging station, etc. But,

1066
02:46:35.250 --> 02:46:46.810
Town of Plainfield: The, watch for turning vehicles is a sign that they use now instead of blind drive. They don't use, like, just some style changes. They also,

1067
02:46:47.430 --> 02:47:02.400
Town of Plainfield: gave us two locations where we could put up those, feedback signs, driver feedback signs. Now, those are something that we have to do as the town. I think we have to apply through the Regional Planning Commission and…

1068
02:47:02.660 --> 02:47:22.429
Town of Plainfield: Something or other, but… So, those would be up to us, but the rest of… the rest of them, I think… But they've suggested locations. Yes, yes, they did, yeah. So, so I would… and… and she would like, feedback so that they can get that done this fall before snow flies, so…

1069
02:47:22.430 --> 02:47:34.819
Town of Plainfield: it's not going to change the intersection, but I think it'll improve the signage and safety a little bit, so… It'll make it safer. And this is all through meetings that we had, that they made these suggestions, so it's… Yeah, yeah. So you two are…

1070
02:47:35.040 --> 02:47:38.299
Town of Plainfield: Well, and Josh. Okay, well, that's great. Yeah.

1071
02:47:38.440 --> 02:48:01.939
Town of Plainfield: So, we need to give them feedback to do, like, the… they'll do some of these signs. The electronic signs we would need to do. We need to do that. And so we would need to price those out, and they're giving us the locations we should put them. Yes. We just need to actually pay for them and have our right to put them. There's a permit we have to apply for. Okay. So that's where regional planning is. We'd say, what, a 111 permit or something like that?

1072
02:48:01.940 --> 02:48:03.639
Town of Plainfield: That's correct. Yeah, so…

1073
02:48:04.110 --> 02:48:15.279
Town of Plainfield: So I would… I would move that we approve their recommendations, and I'm happy to get in contact with Pat and let her know.

1074
02:48:15.650 --> 02:48:35.060
Town of Plainfield: Moved and seconded. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Can we say hooray? Hooray. Thank you, too, for, pushing on this, and we'll continue on it, but at least it's a step. Yeah, there's a lot more to go there. Yeah, but it's a beginning, it's a start, it's like you're listening. Well, it's a safety issue, I appreciate that.

1075
02:48:35.060 --> 02:48:35.780
Town of Plainfield: Yes.

1076
02:48:36.580 --> 02:48:40.369
Town of Plainfield: Municipal ticketing, I don't know if we wanna…

1077
02:48:40.890 --> 02:48:44.760
Town of Plainfield: That was the next item. Is Bram still here? Yeah.

1078
02:48:46.750 --> 02:48:47.500
Town of Plainfield: Or not.

1079
02:48:47.500 --> 02:48:49.009
Town Clerk: Yeah, yeah, yeah, what do you need?

1080
02:48:49.280 --> 02:48:53.419
Town of Plainfield: Municipal ticketing underway? Just progress on that?

1081
02:48:53.420 --> 02:49:04.500
Town Clerk: We're… I think we have to, getting back, we have to, go over the ordinances, and we're working on that. That… that's the springboard to,

1082
02:49:04.660 --> 02:49:10.369
Town Clerk: effectively having the municipal ticket. Once we get the ordinances, in place.

1083
02:49:10.590 --> 02:49:18.149
Town Clerk: Our people are all signed up, and we have the books and all that, but we have to get the ordinances together.

1084
02:49:18.150 --> 02:49:26.590
Town of Plainfield: And just an update on that, okay. Bram did put together a draft on the,

1085
02:49:26.690 --> 02:49:36.810
Town of Plainfield: traffic and parking ordinance. We have the current ordinance, and Dan Caddy said he was also going to do a draft. Basically, we need to,

1086
02:49:36.810 --> 02:50:00.690
Town of Plainfield: go over that and, you know, crosswalk the three of them and see. Okay. But the… the gist of the ticketing is that you… you want to incentivize compliance, and so our current ordinance says, if you violate it, here's a fine, etc. What they want to do is basically say, but the fine's cut in half if you agree to just take care of it, and thus the legal stuff goes away, and it keeps you out of court.

1087
02:50:00.690 --> 02:50:12.429
Town of Plainfield: And this is what the judge told us in the Bean Road bill, which is, well, go get this thing. It should save us thousands of dollars in court fees and legal fees and years' worth of time. To have something like this, this works.

1088
02:50:12.430 --> 02:50:22.320
Town of Plainfield: Trevor Whipple, who works at the League of Cities and Towns, former Barry City Police Chief, came up. He's met with all of the four people who are proposed to have ticketing authority.

1089
02:50:22.320 --> 02:50:38.599
Town of Plainfield: And met with Bram and I, and we went over, over kind of stuff. I would say this, I'm available for the next two weeks to meet with Bram and Dan on this, and then I'm gonna be gone until November 21st, so anything else?

1090
02:50:38.600 --> 02:50:44.400
Town of Plainfield: That happens. You guys are gonna have to pick that slack up.

1091
02:50:45.060 --> 02:50:46.769
Town of Plainfield: Who was it,

1092
02:50:48.030 --> 02:51:08.020
Town of Plainfield: who's our town hall? Jody Velarde sent an email, of trying to get, and I was pushing her to try and get something for before tonight, or by our next meeting, and we'll just have to keep poking there. Peter Yassis sent something this afternoon, I frankly didn't have a chance to…

1093
02:51:08.020 --> 02:51:20.249
Town of Plainfield: see what he said, as the animal control officer. Bram's hope, I think, was to get the traffic and parking, the animal control, and the health officer stuff together, because

1094
02:51:20.250 --> 02:51:29.519
Town of Plainfield: we have to put in newspaper warnings of the proposed ordinances. We don't have to hold a public hearing, but

1095
02:51:29.650 --> 02:51:40.079
Town of Plainfield: We have to propose the ordinances, publish them publicly, and then we can adopt them as a select board, and then… and if you look at our current ordinances now, the last paragraph says.

1096
02:51:40.340 --> 02:52:03.089
Town of Plainfield: a… the town, up to 5% of the town can petition to actually have a vote on that, but if they don't, then it goes into effect, I think it's 60 days after we adopt. So, that's the… that's the process for adopting or amending ordinances. So, the big one is zoning ordinances, and, that's a bigger lift.

1097
02:52:03.090 --> 02:52:11.200
Town of Plainfield: It's a much more complicated list, because right now we have, you know, the same penalty for a sign that's a…

1098
02:52:11.200 --> 02:52:22.740
Town of Plainfield: you know, 1 inch, square inch too big is the same penalty as building a house without a permit. You know, so it's… you need to go through and,

1099
02:52:22.950 --> 02:52:47.040
Town of Plainfield: kind of parse things out and make it a little more proportional in terms of your penalties, but… So you'll work on that as you can, but somebody else will step in. Yeah, I mean, Karen's story has met with Trevor Whipple, but there's been no specific progress on that. I'm remembering Ram speaking in the clerk report about the need to train up a new zoning administrator. Yes.

1100
02:52:47.040 --> 02:52:49.110
Town of Plainfield: And I'm wondering… F.

1101
02:52:49.320 --> 02:52:54.580
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, we could, wrap these functions together. That's a good point, yeah.

1102
02:52:54.580 --> 02:52:58.429
Town Clerk: a new person coming in would be great. That's an excellent idea.

1103
02:52:58.430 --> 02:53:04.680
Town of Plainfield: Well, and just on that subject, I mean, there were a couple other people Bram mentioned.

1104
02:53:04.810 --> 02:53:22.410
Town of Plainfield: We have other offices that are going to become open as of town meeting, and I'm wondering if we might not want to start some soft recruiting on the town website page. You know, we have a job opening listing or something like that, but…

1105
02:53:22.410 --> 02:53:46.499
Town Clerk: I also want to point out that we're losing… Gary is not going to be a lister. He's one of our best listers. He's not going to sign up, and one of the reasons for that has to do with state-mandated training, which is fairly onerous. But I… I really would be great to get people in the loop, in the thing for being listers as well.

1106
02:53:46.710 --> 02:53:52.949
Town Clerk: And just for future reference, we ought to also consider the idea of

1107
02:53:53.090 --> 02:54:05.720
Town Clerk: I can't remember the terms, but going from, elected lister to appointed assessor, it's a higher bar, it's more expensive, but we might run out of people, so…

1108
02:54:07.230 --> 02:54:20.150
Town of Plainfield: Okay. You, Peter, were just talking about utilizing the town website to kind of passively fish for new candidates? Is that what I was hearing? Yeah, like, on our homepage right now, like, we've had…

1109
02:54:20.150 --> 02:54:28.139
Town of Plainfield: there's, like, a request for an auditor, we've listed, you know, the road crew and stuff. There's usually a positions.

1110
02:54:29.150 --> 02:54:47.960
Town of Plainfield: And, like, you know, I think there are some, you know, Michael Billingsley has told us he wants to step down as a town meeting, so, Carl's stepping down, so, you know, we're gonna have openings, and so, I think the sooner that the word gets out, that we're looking for people for various places, the better. Yep.

1111
02:54:48.090 --> 02:54:52.119
Town of Plainfield: So I guess I'm wondering who's contacting Bob Pancher about that.

1112
02:54:52.120 --> 02:54:55.829
Town Clerk: I can… I can contact Bob tomorrow and just give him a heads up on this.

1113
02:54:56.570 --> 02:55:02.859
Town of Plainfield: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it seems like make the asks as wide as R.

1114
02:55:02.980 --> 02:55:12.400
Town of Plainfield: It sounds like many positions, many commissions, many roles in town are needed. Well, and I think there's… there's definitely a role, I mean, we might even want to… so…

1115
02:55:12.520 --> 02:55:14.740
Town of Plainfield: The Lister is elected.

1116
02:55:15.110 --> 02:55:31.660
Town of Plainfield: so we don't really, as a select board, we don't choose that person. Carl is elected, we don't, as a select board, choose that person. But a bunch of the other roles we do, and I wonder if we even might want to look, to having just, like, a… some sort of nomination, kind of just like a work group, like we've been doing with other things, where two of us

1117
02:55:31.770 --> 02:55:34.539
Town of Plainfield: Plus… Bram, if you want, plus…

1118
02:55:34.900 --> 02:55:48.010
Town of Plainfield: maybe there's other people in the community who have helped us find, you know, people to serve in roles, like, get together and start to brainstorm and start to make sure that we're… it's not mid-March, and we realize there's all sorts of roles we don't have filled, and we're…

1119
02:55:48.010 --> 02:56:12.960
Town of Plainfield: Yeah. We're in trouble. I think it's wise. I mean, with Carl not being a select board member anymore, he could probably take on multiple volunteer roles, like emergency… I'll hand my phone out. Emergency management director, like, I think there's a lot of stuff that we could probably… Like, we could just take him, he could be like Josh. Like, we could just, you know? I'm gonna need an administrator. Everything else… I think you have to sign…

1120
02:56:12.960 --> 02:56:23.240
Town of Plainfield: to Dan to come up with a great idea. No, I do like the subject, but… Yeah.

1121
02:56:23.320 --> 02:56:32.520
Town of Plainfield: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, there's, like, a dead zone there, and so it would be good to, like, get something out before the holidays. Yeah, definitely.

1122
02:56:32.520 --> 02:56:49.660
Town of Plainfield: Dan? Can I make a motion to approve the minutes from the September 22nd Regular Select Board meeting, the September 25th CDBGDR grant application hearing, and the September 30th Select Board… Special Select Board meeting?

1123
02:56:50.510 --> 02:57:00.620
Town of Plainfield: Second. Yes, you can. Second? And all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Peter, you have to sign this. And can I also make another motion? Do it.

1124
02:57:00.690 --> 02:57:15.849
Town of Plainfield: Yes. Can I make a motion to approve the accounts payable for September 29th, 2025, and October 2nd, 2025, along with payroll for September 25th, 2025, and October 9th, 2025? Yes.

1125
02:57:16.010 --> 02:57:21.229
Town of Plainfield: I second. And in those seconds, all those in favor, say aye. Aye.

1126
02:57:22.810 --> 02:57:31.669
Town of Plainfield: The next date of our Select Board meeting is 10-27, that's a Monday, back to Monday, 6 o'clock. And,

1127
02:57:32.270 --> 02:57:51.700
Town of Plainfield: Can I ask the agenda people what's kind of queued up for them? Anything that you know about yet? If you give me a moment… Are we going to talk about the rec field? We, we… I think we should talk about the rec field. We should talk about the rec field, because there's going to need to be budgeting items, perhaps, for that.

1128
02:57:51.700 --> 02:57:52.710
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, that's true.

1129
02:57:52.710 --> 02:58:08.030
Town of Plainfield: Yeah, we're getting close to budgeting. Yeah. If we're gonna cover the rec fields, can we see if, a representative from the Public Art… Recreation and Public Art Committee would be present to discuss that with us? Yeah, that would be…

1130
02:58:08.720 --> 02:58:11.619
Town of Plainfield: We should do that yet.

1131
02:58:12.870 --> 02:58:14.810
Town of Plainfield: We have…

1132
02:58:15.880 --> 02:58:33.190
Town of Plainfield: The grants group is both, offering their report and also wanting to talk about short- and long-term funding goal identification. Priorities, yeah. Yeah. There is… I believe there was something…

1133
02:58:33.420 --> 02:58:40.219
Town of Plainfield: From the Accessibility Committee? Oh, they were talking about… what was it?

1134
02:58:40.590 --> 02:58:45.380
Town of Plainfield: It's so hard to read on telephone.

1135
02:58:45.380 --> 02:58:51.650
Town Clerk: Just one other thing for that meeting, we're required… the Board of Civil Authority is to… is required

1136
02:58:52.980 --> 02:59:00.499
Town Clerk: the non-JP election workers, and so I'd like to try to have that right before the Select Board meeting, if that's okay.

1137
02:59:01.820 --> 02:59:06.199
Town of Plainfield: Yeah? I'm sorry, what was that, Bram? I missed that. It won't be part of…

1138
02:59:06.200 --> 02:59:06.869
Town Clerk: The floor.

1139
02:59:06.870 --> 02:59:23.420
Town of Plainfield: party will meet directly before the next meeting. Just throwing out a pro forma thing. Oh, and I was wrong about the Accessibility Committee. Apparently, that's 10-14. Dan? Two things. One, just because I think I said this, but just, it is,

1140
02:59:23.420 --> 02:59:41.830
Town of Plainfield: The informational meeting for our November 4th, bond vote is on Monday, November 3rd at 6pm at this location here, hosted by the Select Board, so everyone might want to put that on their calendars. Peter, it's going to be a long ride back from your vacation to get here.

1141
02:59:41.830 --> 02:59:44.180
Town of Plainfield: And…

1142
02:59:44.320 --> 02:59:55.609
Town of Plainfield: I'll still be here that time. Okay. I would like to make a motion… Monday the 3rd at 6pm. Yep. I would like to make a motion to adjourn at 8.59 PM. A second ballot.

1143
02:59:55.610 --> 03:00:09.350
Town of Plainfield: And all those in favor, say aye. Aye. That's November 30th. We almost, we almost got an hour extra.

1144
03:00:10.370 --> 03:00:18.839
Town of Plainfield: Peter, where are you going on vacation? We're going to Japan. Ariam, are you at the REV conference tomorrow? I am. Are you gonna be there again? I'll be there.