---
title: "Stamford Select Board — May 16, 2024"
date: 2024-05-16
session: regular
speaker_labels: 1 cluster(s) named from the roll call and that meeting's chair in the minutes, 1 named from roster attendance, 7 of 9 clusters unnamed
voice_ids: {"SPEAKER_01":18,"SPEAKER_02":4,"SPEAKER_03":1,"SPEAKER_04":2,"SPEAKER_05":13,"SPEAKER_06":11,"SPEAKER_07":3,"SPEAKER_08":31,"SPEAKER_09":6}
duration_min: 75
audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUIfdsv5KJc
audio_source: YouTube (@jgramlin78)
minutes: https://townofstamfordvermont.org/mediaItems/Sbd%20Minutes%205-16-24.pdf
minutes_pending: false
present: [Nancy L. Bushika, Michael G. Denault, Kurt Gamari, Douglas Wright, John Dunn]
absent: []
transcribed: 2026-10-12 (faster-whisper large-v3, CUDA; names corrected per data/name_fixes.json)
diarization: pyannote/speaker-diarization-3.1 (automated; cluster labels may over-split a single voice; unattributed paragraphs have no reliable speaker)
---

# Stamford Select Board — May 16, 2024

**Session:** Regular · **Duration:** 75 min · [Audio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUIfdsv5KJc) · [Minutes](https://townofstamfordvermont.org/mediaItems/Sbd%20Minutes%205-16-24.pdf)

**Present:** Nancy L. Bushika, Michael G. Denault, Kurt Gamari, Douglas Wright, John Dunn

---
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for

**Speaker 1:** which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

**Speaker 1:** Thank you.

**Speaker 2:** YouTube.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** YouTube.

**Speaker 1:** Oh, nice, nice. I gotta behave that one more time. There you go, there you go. I think Rich was on, too, Jake. Common, civil.

**Speaker 3:** You've been live for a few minutes.

**Speaker 4:** Yeah, you've been live for a few minutes.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Reading and approval of records and orders regular minutes of May 2nd.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Motion.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Second. All in favor?

Second. Ayes. No conditions. Unfortunately, Dave Capetro's not here because I have a few questions for him.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** I will talk to him and see if he can come next meeting, then. I'm sure if you realize you have questions, too. Yeah, I assumed, and I should know, but I think it's important that he is here because the highway is one of our biggest budget items. Okay, recycling.

**Speaker 5:** Were we gonna hear a visitor?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** I just said, hearing visitors, nobody said anything.

**Speaker 1:** No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm giving you guys everything.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Oh, okay.

**Speaker 1:** You ready to hear me?

**Speaker 6:** Yeah.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Yeah, yeah, you're up here with the visitors, Dan. I was wondering, I said, come dance with us.

**Speaker 1:** Okay, okay. So, I'm gonna try to get this through in five minutes. So, my first word is resiliency, okay? And that word's a big word. Like, I didn't even learn it in school, but I've learned it after school. Resiliency has a lot of aspects, but it's like on the family level, but also on the town level, on the state level, and on the country level. And so, I'm gonna put Mike on the spot here. If Mike drops dead tomorrow, okay, resiliency. He's got two sons. A two, son-in-laws that will take care of things, okay? That's resiliency. You got it all of a sudden. That's resiliency, okay? And I have three sons, and they'll take care of business. I put out that letter for the planning commission. I see stuff coming down the pipe, and I see it like, like, like close. And one of the board members, you, you, you, you, you, you, you guys remember, I gave, that's why I gave out the January, the February 6th letter. Cause I gave that letter to the planning commission back in 2020, and I got shot down eight to one. They didn't want to go on up to the town people, it'll scare them. I came to the select board, I was on the select board, and I got this board to send it out to the town people. Okay? Everything I talked about during COVID, I was proved right. Absolutely, 100%. I'm not a brilliant fricking guy. It just, I can read these things, and I can see them. In my job, I feel, it's to let people know. Warn people and let people know. So, the planning commission is hesitating. They want to stop it. They want to get their job done. They want to do things that they can't do. They want their jobs out there, and they want to stay out of the way. And they will see their position, which is the best thing. And in the end, that's where they get the job done. So, the planning commission is that person, and they will be aware of that person. They don't want to go to the town people now, and they don't want them to leave. If they, they don't want to leave, they want to stay there. They want to be a part of the community. And so, they're going to make that decision. And they'll make the decision regarding this. Right? i'm beating up on the emergency commission the emergency board okay so resiliency resiliency if paul ether were to walk in this room right now and listen to me say to the townspeople everybody should have like four fire extinguishers in their house and have a plan to get out of the house if there's a fire and you think paul is going to say hey man that's my job you're stepping on my toes no no no the more people who that resiliency the more people who understand what to do in a situation it makes paul's job easier right he comes to your house david tetra if i came in and i said everybody should be in the culvert the low end of the culvert out of their ditch in the spring and in the fall and david's going to say hey man that's my job you're stepping on my toes no it's resiliency you have layers of protection okay so i need to keep going for myself um i do better standing up uh so i put this together and and everybody saw here the last three four days the big solar flares okay that's one possibility you're going to lose the grid this nation has no protection and and i mentioned this at the planning commission meeting 2008 congressional report you can all look it up the united states has no hardened grid back then there were two dangers emp and a solar flare grid goes down everybody's screwed unless you have a gravity feed well gravity feed subject okay this is reality now there's a third danger anybody know uh christopher ray okay he's ahead he's head of not even okay he's been talking publicly the last three four months there are 250 000 chinese military men in this country okay they're not here for tea and biscuits okay and and they're trained this is christopher ray i thought he was head of the cia or the fbi he was or one of the sheriffs in ohio was at the meeting and i listened to them they're openly warning from the biden administration now you might not be seeing it on cnn or anywhere else these people are here to take us down i can't do anything about the united states of america i can't do anything about the state of vermont but here in stamford i put together some things about um you know we weren't several families of people who worked so hard on that project they split that thing with friends who were um they didn't want it so we created some recipes for staff to use and um i guess a badyou know start at us on that things in case right that's a third one now emp is like gone um hacking right they can take down the grid they can take down infrastructure they can take down a lot of stuff and the chinese and the russians are brilliant at it what do you do the grid down tomorrow and you may have a generator kurt john you may have a generator in a week you run out of fuel how are you going to pump your water how are you going to run your subject how are you going to do stuff okay so so what i did is i put together a list of like six things that will help people okay not now i don't make any money off this

**Speaker 3:** is it

**Speaker 7:** that's

**Speaker 1:** that's that's that's back checker this is my town okay and i don't care what side of the fence you're on politically i fought with almost everybody in this town right but at the end of the day i don't want to see people like suffering and having hardships and and there's some simple things that i put on this list that people can do and against resiliency emergency management care the more people who are prepared when i don't like to use bad language but crap you can say crap if the crap hits a fan okay you know what i was gonna say the more people who are prepared to know what they're doing the less trouble is going to be for the environment and i think it's going to be a big deal for us because we're going to have a lot of emergency management. Would you agree? Yes. Okay. I'm not trying to step on anybody's toes. Everybody's got a position, but as people in town, the more we're self-reliant. And I have to mention this. It's like Jim Sullivan and I, for 15 years, we used to talk about getting people to grow food locally so we're more self-sufficient. You just said the keywords.

**Speaker 3:** Can I interject for one second? Sure. So I've had this brainstorm that I haven't quite worked all the way through yet. And it's a brainstorm, which I'm pretty good at. I'm not good at organization or putting it into place. But like a self-reliance festival, right? Where we showcase different businesses that can help you attain these goals. Different things that maybe there's a... Maybe if you stay in agriculture there, that'll sell you shares because you can't garden yourself. Maybe there's someone there that can sign you up for hunter safety training. Maybe there's someone there that sells many water turbines. Maybe there's solar panels. Anything that can help you be more resilient.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I love it. I went through a fair, I guess you would call it, of a main. And the state of Maine sponsored it. It was huge. It's three days. And that's exactly what it was. It was everything you can imagine. People selling walking sticks, seeds, teaching you how to shear sheep.

**Speaker 3:** I mean, we started a huge popular craft fair right here. You know, this is kind of what I'm saying. There's no concepts as that. You know, I don't know how we would go about putting all this together. But anything that can help you be more sustainable, right, in any way.

**Speaker 1:** I love what you're saying.

**Speaker 3:** Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think that long term, that's something, you know, I don't know how we would go about organizing such a thing. I would be on board helping organize that. You know, the diamonds are endless, right? They go on forever.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Not to be a negative part of it, is the biggest negative part is volunteers. Right. So, you just mentioned hunter safety. Right. I did hunter safety 21 years. I resigned this year. When I resigned, the other two instructors resigned. There is no... There is no hunter safety in Northern Berkshire, so. Okay. Doesn't Mike Sinek go do it? That's right.

**Speaker 8:** I'm on him.

**Speaker 3:** That's right.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Oh, hold on.

**Speaker 3:** So, we get a... I get in mass. Oh, wow. Anyone can have a booth, really. But it's...

**Speaker 1:** But no, to your point, I think that that is brilliant, and you can count me in. Right. I'm being very interested in organizing and helping set that up. Right. Okay. So, I just want to run down my list quick now and give you guys bullet points. Okay? The Lehman's Amish store. I've been buying stuff from them for 25 years. Thank you. They make a hand water pump that will draw water from 125 feet. Now, most of you people in town, not me, but you have a drilled well. Your grid goes down. How are you going to have water? You're not. Okay? Okay. Somebody at the planning commission meeting, they mentioned they checked the static level, and their level was above 125 feet from... I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do it. Right? Right? But your drilled well is going to have a static level where the water maintains a level. If it's less than 125 feet, you can just put this on the top of your well, draw water. Okay? And your water is purified. So, that's... I put that on here. Lehman's Amish store. I put on here Shumways. Right? I'm always pushing gardens, order heirloom or open pollinated seeds. Open pollinated heirloom. If you're buying seeds that are hybrid or generic, those seeds are useless. Whatever you grow, you can't save those seeds. Okay? Big Berkey. So your static levels. I just bought one for my mom. Okay. They got a drilled well. She's got a drilled well. My house I don't have to worry about it. It's a shallow well with plenty of depth of filtration. Okay. Big Berkey water filter. This comes from Mike Adams. About three years ago he invested. He's got a lab down in Texas and he studied all the top water purifiers. Okay. The Big Berkey takes out 99.8% of everything. Including. I'm going to mess this up. Cesium? Yes. I got it? Cesium. Which is radiation from nuclear fallout. Okay. It comes with two filters. I just bought one. It came in like three days ago. Under 400 bucks. The two filters it comes with will filter 6,000 gallons of water. And I did the math. I'm like okay. My mom, my brother, myself. Half a gallon of water a day. I figured two. Two gallons per day times three. Sixty-five. Now this water filter is going to last for over six years. Okay. You can take pond water. You can take water out of the brook. You can take anything. Run it through this filter and you're good to go. I put in here naturalnews.com. They have tons of information. That's Mike Adams. Where he did this study on Berkey filters. You should consider getting iodine pills to help with radiation. Exposure. He sells those. Okay. Number five. Wellness company. This gets. I love it. This gets like people wound up. Antidote for the spike protein in your body if you got vaccinated. I was on this board. I gave an hour long presentation. And I just want to point out. Everything I mentioned about the vaccines has come to fruition. You may not like it. You don't have to. Everything I said was true. I got accused of killing people. Telling them not to get vaccinated. Everything I said was true. Nations of the world are banning all vaccines. For COVID. Because of the problems. Okay. Regardless. Your system. A genetically modified vaccine. Genetically modified. Is in your system. Your system can't get rid of it. Dr. Mercola. Who I met in Dallas two years ago at a conference. He started what's called the wellness company. Brilliant idea. He's spoken to almost every state legislature in the country. Giving information on all this. Okay. But he started the wellness company. And him. He was one of the top doctors in the United States. He got canceled. Because of his voice. Since then. And I just have to mention quickly. The FDA. They now allowing ivermectins. They're all now allowing hydroxychloroquine. Right. These were things I talked about here as a select board member. They would have taken care of you along with D3 vitamins. With COVID. So this wellness company. You can get him. Him and the other doctors and scientists have come up with an antidote to remove that from your system. Okay. Cost a hundred bucks. And it will remove that spike protein from your body. Now on top of that. And this is brilliant. Ten dollars a month. Anybody doesn't have health insurance. Ten dollars a month. You have access to health insurance. The top doctors in the country. And they all have a vent away from the chemicals that the pharmaceuticals are trying to put into your system. Okay. Ten dollars a month. You call up. Hey I've got this issue. They'll talk to you. If you need a prescription. You get it online. Okay. All this stuff. These things are happening under the water in the midst of the system. We're in. Okay. I think it's brilliant. Okay. In the last point and I put down three months minimum supply of food and I thought I've been talking about this for years. Right. Right. FEMA. All the government agencies have been warning people to have case of natural disaster and whatnot. Have. They. See. Government agencies. This actually say three to six months. Okay. I just mentioned three In a tail wire line. Here. One. I want the planning commission to sponsor this. I got shut down for years ago. I'm not shut down yet. But there were like three weeks away from our next meeting. And they think I should soften my top. No. I. No. No.

**Speaker 2:** dean you don't soften your dog you don't right right i have been accused of i have bad manner

**Speaker 1:** and tone okay but the point is i feel passionate about this stuff and i do get loud and i do get confrontational but it's it's all with a good intent behind it it's just the way i am right it just me so so i i'm at the point right now i just want to like pay the town enough to for the postage and then work what do you want to send out i want to send this with one may 13th letter out to every person in town right and i'll pay for it that's how strongly i feel about this and the emergency people if you think i'm stepping on your toes i'm not it's real resiliency the more people if you have less people to deal with just imagine just imagine and i gotta say this worst case scenario emp or that solar flare three days ago was it the size of the carrington event in 1849 everything gone and you've got 800 people in town who can't get water there's no way to get water in town the state of vermont or the federal government is going to come be able to supply that so my point is resiliency where the more people in town that i mean if only 10 people in town take take my advice that's 10 less people right i know myself in another person in town i'm not going to mention his name town okay the two of us could provide more than half the town with clean water grab the other person me no i got a big spray oh well okay add you to the list

**Speaker 5:** all by 12 by six feet deep where you get water

**Speaker 9:** gravity gravity okay so you know what i'm talking about i know exactly where you're going and it's

**Speaker 1:** filtered right well well it's filtered from the soil it's filtered from the soil even radiation

**Speaker 10:** is going to filter out through that so so certainly the only thing i would question is

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** i people so first of all i would ask bob no you're in favor of what he said

**Speaker 11:** uh i think you said that at least can i speak yeah i'm on the agenda tonight for the emergency

**Speaker 5:** management as well yeah and i'm new to this position i'm not new to town so i i've got some ideas that are along the lines of what dan's talking about but probably not as extreme that's that's my opinion on it i personally feel that narrators should take care of neighbors people that are people that are in need of assistance elderly people should register with the care registry it's a state of vermont database that is safe it's safe with people's records and if there's an emergency at stamford i can callут the state watch person and they can share with me is that the people of Stamford that might need an extra assistance this is this is a this is a product that I was going to ask that maybe we could send out with the tax bills or something like that to get to the folks in town I am a believer in people taking care of themselves and helping with the solution not being part of the problem you know I do understand that sheltering people in this community is going to be very difficult we've got a school that we might be able to use we might not be able to use that we ready yet it's on our list as a shelter location the sheltering is a big project it is a really big project to make sure that you can safely shelter people and safely feed them and provide for them my my initial step but in an emergency is asking the residents do you have a family member that lives nearby that has electricity or that has heat or that has that can you can stay with them a little while until this thing gets over that I'm kind of the neighbors taking care of neighbors

**Speaker 12:** family taking care of family sheltering instantly makes you responsible for

**Speaker 3:** everyone that you're sheltering absolutely then you got the animals

**Speaker 5:** then you got people only the house without their animals and you got you know they're better off having a plan then being part of the being part of the solutions of being part of the time exactly all right and I feel that you know this does talk to the fact that you have animals there's probably a questionnaire that should be or could be made up and sent out with something like this it's something like Dan's proposing to all the residents of Stamford and to get them to start thinking about this stuff six months of or three months of food or six months of food because you can't go to the supermarket and find something that isn't gonna be outdated in a week right cans dry goods yeah but this is this theory I agree with that type of a theory where people should take care of themselves now this is the first I've heard this about Dan's plan all right this is the first I've heard about it but I just think that that's a situation as far as for town emergency management we would be better off educating our residents to make them succeed than having to house our residents when there is a situation it'd be probably cheaper they'd be more comfortable for the residents it would be a lot of positives on the outside of it than saying okay you can go to the school you can sit in a hard chair sleep on a hard cot you got no TV you got no this you got no that all right and we'll see what we can find maybe we'll buy you a pizza you know that's a

**Speaker 3:** modern spin on the old way of seeing things right everybody is a friend of

**Speaker 5:** it so that's that's my thought process I talked this over with Stuart and Sheila we went to a meeting Tuesday night up in Manchester for the county emergency management team and we talked about this one I told them this is this is my plan this is not necessarily take people out of their homes unless we have to and that we do think about their homes try to suggest that they have a plan that they can go to the relative or go with a friend or go to somebody else that may not be affected by the same situation the electricity outage on Mill Road that took that whole section of town off for two days yeah yeah we need to be checking on our neighbors we need to know what our neighbors capabilities are and we're stronger that way I was wondering

**Speaker 8:** because I have volunteered for the fall festival that the school puts on we did a really lovely event families kids all that and there's also people who are vendors for crafts and jewelry in that and I wonder if we could have set up a section that starts to initiate some of these you know ideas have people be you

**Speaker 5:** know that would be yeah purpose yeah yeah have an opportunity for me to meet people and talk to them about my ideas as far as standard emergency management and so on so that's pretty much all i wanted to say about all about that and and you know i i'm not personally i'm not like and these are all personal decisions of what you do with your body that's that's my opinion on it you know if i want to take iodine pills i'll take iodine pills but i'm not gonna right now that's just me but you know i i feel that that's that's my approach to emergency management if we have a gasoline tanker tip over in the middle of town and we have a catastrophe of 10 houses that's a different approach but that's that's you know is the emergency an environmental emergency is it a hazardous materials emergency is it a forest fire that's that's going to burn there's a forest of dry they're they're worse than they've ever been before it's going to burn people out of their homes there's there's a type of thing i i can find it hard to believe electricity is the biggest thing that is our biggest

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** one of the things bob what i believe that's one of our biggest emergencies is snow storms believe it or not it just happens to be a snowstorm in vermont knocks the power out yeah just like you said if we if we push to have people come here it's they're part of the problem most of them i'm not trying to put them down i'm saying to go get some on a road that's not cloud david's out plowing and now this place wasn't proud and here there they might get

**Speaker 5:** an accident because they left their home because the road was around so now you got the fire so you're responsible for other needs i got some other ideas travel around up here that i don't want to bring out public right now right now what do we do with people i don't want to bring up a bunch of people that have a problem with me out right now what do we do with people? I'll talk with you guys individually so we don't have a quorum problem. So, you know what I'm saying? But that's my thought process in a nutshell. And I like the idea of in the fall having, and that gives several months to plan. And Dan can put together his ideas and present them to the people. I'm just looking to try to get people to start thinking about what would they do. What would you do with your animals? If you've got horses, what would you do with your horses? What would you do with your, you know? People need to be...

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Depending on themselves.

**Speaker 5:** And if they have special needs that the fire department or the EMS or someone is going to need to know about, that's what this is for. This isn't for just elderly people. This is for every people. Right. Right? And we'd like to know that type of stuff.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** So I think that this letter, Dan, and the emergency management are similar but separate. Yeah, yeah. This is just a suggestion. There's nothing on here that says do this. I'm an expert doctor or anything. It says you should consider. These are my thoughts. So I don't have a problem with this.

**Speaker 10:** I understand.

**Speaker 1:** I want to point out, I love what Bob is saying. I just think. And Bob, you don't know me, but if you look, that's why I give out both letters. How can you not know, Dan? In 2020... I've heard a lot. In 2020, in my letter of 2020 on COVID, I was talking about a lot of this stuff. And going back before that, I would talk about gardens, heat source, wood stoves, backup, whatnot. Okay? And, but to your point, Mike, I'm just feeling like I love everything Ben talked about. I like what Kurt talked about. I like what you're talking about, Bob. And that's stuff down the road that can... I feel like this is so important right now. I'm... I'll pay for it. Okay? I'm a town person. I love the word time, right? That's right. I figured that's what you were going to say. I'll pay for it. Kind of. Because every person who gets a big Berkey, every person who gets a hand pump...

**Speaker 5:** Even if there's one in the neighborhood. Yeah. Even if there's one in 10 houses. Exactly. For that effect. That area is community and sustainable. Right. Right. Okay. So what I'm asking...

**Speaker 9:** You all know.

**Speaker 1:** Lisa. Okay. Right? You all know me.

**Speaker 2:** I've made a lot of enemies in town.

**Speaker 1:** Okay? Yeah. Well, my daughter married your son, so I... In front of me. In front of me. In front of me. In front of me.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** So, I mean, if the letter has to go out in my name, it has to go out in my name.

**Speaker 1:** It has to go out in my name. It has to go out in my name. It has to go out in my name. It has to go out in my name. It has to go out in my name. I'll do it. Yeah. But you realize a lot of people are just going to look at my name and they're going to be like, I can't stand this guy. I mean, probably with good reason. You love me so far tonight. There's two things that... There's two things...

**Speaker 13:** This is where you're going to probably yell at me.

**Speaker 3:** But there's two things here that I would say are maybe concerning to some people in town. And it's the mention of the radiation bills, and radiation exposure, and any mention of the vaccine. I just think those are like political hot benefits. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's where my reaction to that comes from. I don't know. .

**Speaker 1:** But your cola choice is the choice. Yeah. Like, I don't have the ayuritan pills. Yeah. I don't worry about it, cause I know how to defend against it. Right. Right? But to have the ayuritan pills in your house, in case...

**Speaker 7:** Yeah, but everyone that receives this letter reads it differently.

**Speaker 3:** And, everybody has a different reaction to it. I can't help that.

**Speaker 1:** That's what it is. If my kid is running out of pills. It's normal. towards the road right and there's traffic coming and I scream y'all stop and he's like oh dad I take offense to that the way you your manner and tone frigged me up so I just ran into the cars

**Speaker 7:** I mean it's your letter but it's just a suggestion no no no I hear you I hear you

**Speaker 1:** but it's like if people don't have most people don't have the knowledge okay I have the knowledge I was trained in this stuff in in the military and my whole life since my house I built in 1998 was for these times okay I set everything up 1998 for the possibilities of this okay

you

**Speaker 1:** and I've done everything I could locally to get people on board and now I can't hold your hand I can't that's why I started with Ezekiel it's like that's in the Old Testament it's like the Lord puts a watchman on the wall right and that watchman's job is to warn people and if I don't warn I will be held accountable if I warn and you don't want to take the advice that's on your head but if I don't

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** it's on my head dan can you hold off a minute because lisa's been raising her hand she's got

**Speaker 14:** a question here too concerning this well i want to um i back what kurt said so we covered some

**Speaker 15:** of what i was going to say but the second thing is i've been working on dan this since monday since the planning commission and my understanding was because it's confusing because you're handing out both of these letters no just one oh well he's been hit like at the planning mission it went out to the audience like it did now and to the whole board so i've had both letters and i'm trying to work with both of those but so i'm not understanding why we're getting the 2020 letter at all if we're not if it's not relevant to what we're doing and so that in on in defense of the planning commission you know we we're working on the softening of the words like

**Speaker 16:** radiation and vaccine they're tough words well like a catastrophic event yeah it's just trying

**Speaker 15:** to soften that a little bit i think

**Speaker 16:** certain necessities need to be in place and i'm just not sure why we're getting the 2020 letter like what are we supposed to do with that we're interested in and then point them in a certain

direction i mean i agree with everything you're saying i don't disagree with what you're saying

**Speaker 15:** so is the planning commission going to send this letter out well we left it that we were going to work on it but it was my understanding that i'm i guess i'm not understanding why we're

**Speaker 17:** getting the 2020 letter at all well why why you're getting the 2020 letter

**Speaker 1:** just to show that i've been giving out information over the years okay that kind of confused the

**Speaker 18:** situation so i did ask dan which one which one you wanted yeah right yeah yeah that was no no

**Speaker 1:** just to show that and i've been trying to yeah it's a comparison and some of the things are the same in the 2020 letter um but but just to show that he's been on my mind for for ages i mean let like i said earlier it's like this is my town right and i don't care what your political persuasion is this is more i don't know if i don't know how to put this um i don't think we have three weeks for the next planning commission and then soften it and i'm probably not going to agree with it um because i don't think it needs to be softened i mean if you don't like something i

**Speaker 15:** don't think we need the military stuff i i applaud all of your experience that you bring to it don't get me wrong if i think when you start with a biological chemical blah blah blah you know applause for that but i think when you put that in the letter it's going to kind of that's the these are the parts that are more scary to residents i think from my perspective here's

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** my thought from the book i don't know what the board feels but dan if you want to send this out and not wait for three weeks this is your prerogative to send it out yeah uh if the planning commission wants to send something in three weeks it's up to them but um i know you brought this to us many times many times even before 2020 right this was always your baby and you brought this to us several times um so i think it's up to you um i don't know how the board feels about sending it out my personal thing from the board's point of view if we send this out from the board fine but in two weeks somebody's gonna come and want a letter saying i don't believe in guns that stamford should outlaw all guns so do we have to send that letter out too just because somebody wants to send it out that's no i hear what you're saying that's why i offered to pay for it i know i'm looking at it from here no i understand so i said send you can send it out into your name and hopefully people

**Speaker 19:** would prepare with the food and if they want the uh yeah you should uh reach out that word

**Speaker 20:** where if anybody's interested in being better prepared in a catastrophic event you can reach out to me personally and i will point you into the right direction to help you become better prepared okay and then you can start you know explaining to them on one on long terms i know it's going to probably be a lot depending on how many people come

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** forward but and keep all your bullet points there because they may want to look into that

**Speaker 4:** themselves too because i never really need promotions there there's just a little nuances

**Speaker 3:** between being informative and being scared i guess you want to you got to walk that line and you're not wrong i hear that you've got a little i agree with everything you're saying

**Speaker 21:** almost sprinkle sugar on it because you want to make it appealing you want to make it appealing

**Speaker 8:** your mission and your desire are great you want to make it appealing you want to be like come with me as opposed to people who are being like yikes and not listening

**Speaker 1:** no no that brings up a whole other discussion but sometimes good healthy fear makes us get motivated right and we'll lose it or scared about it's like i raise my voice and people are scared it's like come on give me a break you'll have a gun pointing in your head

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** sitting one day discussing who had more power the man was walking down the street in the sunset the wind said i bet you i can get him to take this coat off before you get sun and the sun said i'll take that back and the harder the wind blew the more that went the man held it tight the coat tight and he gave up and then the sun just came out and shining again but

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Can we start moving on? Dan, 45 minutes.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what I'll do as a board member. I'll help you pay for it. How's that? Do you want to send it out? I'll pay for half of it. Okay. Larry, you got it? Just send it to Mike tomorrow. Then you don't have to worry about it. Okay. You and me. All we got to do is get that out.

**Speaker 22:** I can give you addresses, residences, not camps, second home owners, just residences. Does that mean it goes on? I can stop working on it.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Well, I think if you're planning a commission, wouldn't you like to send something out in name? I actually think it should go through emergency management. I do too. And I think that when you really get something where everybody's kind of happy with it, it's more. So Bob's saying he has other things he wants to get out to people. That could be a nice package that we can send out and say, okay, this is what the emergency management suggests. Part of it can be part of some of what Dan suggested. Part of it's over here. Mara's got something.

**Speaker 23:** Mara had some ideas.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** There were other things that we're trying to incorporate. That we send out a package. It might not be in time for what Dan's talking about, but, you know, nothing against you, Dan, but we thought about it in 2020, and some of this stuff didn't happen, right? So we might have time. But if we don't, hey, get this letter. But in the meantime, we can have all this emergency, I mean, Bob's the new manager, we need to start slow and put things together, right, and kind of get to know each other and see where we're at, and I think that's, you know, go over to the school and talk to them, because right away, when you said, I got to go talk to Randy, I know that you said Dan, you don't know Dan that well, I've been talking to the school before Randy was here about access to that, that room. That was school, that room. And it drives me crazy that we can't just walk over there, when Kurt was a little guy, he'd go over there and, you know, walk in any time he wants. He has the keys to the school on my own.

**Speaker 24:** Exactly.

**Speaker 22:** Bob, you had a question?

**Speaker 5:** Yeah, and I'm in agreement with putting together a package. I'm not at the level that Dan's at with having something written up ready to go. Maybe if Dan sends this out on his own. And then sees it again in the fall when we have a fair type of thing, all right, that kind of stuff, oh, I saw that once before. Now I can learn a little bit more about it. Right, solidify it. You know what I'm saying? I do want to get out into the community and talk to people about my ideas on how to let them think about what would they do if. That's, you know, and that's not something that happens. Like that, yeah, this is going to be a slow moving thing for me, but, you know, I'm trying to make sure steps that are that are sustainable and not just come out and change everything's old niche, because I think Bill's got a good foundation on emergency management. Right, so, you know, and as far as the school thing goes, that's, that's, you know, only it's going to be a bad situation if we're in the school.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Chris, hold on, we can't hear Bob.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** One of the things we, you did go way over your five minutes and way over your 15 minutes. I know. My point is, my point is, the emergency management, though, it just ties into our emergency management. I love, I love you. And that is on the agenda, so I'm glad we brought it up and Bob got a chance to talk and come up with an idea that we can go down the road and start. It's got to start with something, right?

**Speaker 3:** Yeah. I mean, for once it seems like we have. We should have a positive conversation on that. Yeah, yeah.

**Speaker 25:** We're talking about something like that. Great. Ollie? I just wanted to mention that the state just this week came out with a whole new set of rules for emergency management. Did you know that? New set of rules? Yes.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Was it this week or a couple months ago that they came out with it?

**Speaker 25:** I believe it was this week.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** I saw so many.

**Speaker 25:** It passed a whole bunch of new standards.

**Speaker 5:** Well, they didn't talk about it Tuesday night at the regional meeting. There's a lot of resources out there.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I think we should segment right in to emergency management right now. Yeah, we're ready to go on. You know, that way here, I think we have that plan, Bob, and I've seen it before when we were talking with Bill. It's not much different than Bill's. Is it detrimental that we wait? To look at it again, or I know you wanted to sign it tonight, but there's a few slap boards that didn't see it before, and we got it, what, yesterday or this morning?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** I got it about 5 o'clock tonight.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I mean, if you need to for some grant money or something.

**Speaker 5:** No, it's just a link with it.

**Speaker 11:** It was supposed to be in the beginning of the month.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** If we can wait until the next meeting, it'll give us a little bit more time to dig in. I've seen it before with Bill.

**Speaker 5:** Yeah, I basically took the old one, and I changed some names. I added a different EOC, which would be this room. So EOC is Emergency Operations Centers. One would be this room, and an alternate one would be the firehouse. Now, I feel that, just to explain that, I feel that if we had an emergency in town, the emergency management operations center would be the firehouse. The operations center, a piece of it, might be in the way at the firehouse. And here, if we're here, and we're all together trying to handle an emergency, Lori's got all her records. She's got her phone system. She's got a lot of resources here that we wouldn't have at the handy at the firehouse. So I did take out some names and phone numbers of people that I did. I think there was some information. There was some information in there that didn't need to be public record, and I went with that. And that's pretty much the most of it, of what I've done. I've added, I talked to the fire chief about another location for public information location at the fire station. So my plan is to build or buy an exterior signboard that we could post things in. So that would be three locations. We've got the town, which is what they're recommending. We've got the town hall. We've got Pearl Mots at the fire station, at the exterior of the fire station.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** I think there's something, oh, recycling, but that's only on Sandy.

**Speaker 5:** Yeah.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Yeah. I wouldn't use that as our posting. It's nice to have that up there for those people, but less than half the town actually go there to determine that before.

**Speaker 5:** Yeah. I thought maybe people would go. To the fire station if they're looking for information, and unfortunately the fire station is volunteer, or it's, we're fortunate that we've got a good volunteer fire department, but as far as the, nobody being there most of the time, which is the way we like it, right? That means we're not having problems. So, so those are some of the changes I'm making.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** What would be your position if there was an emergency that the fire department was involved in? Yeah. But we were. If you were here, would you come here?

**Speaker 11:** I'm only a member of the fire department.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Right.

**Speaker 5:** I'm not an officer. I'm not a, you know, I wouldn't be more involved in this. Yeah. If they needed you. As needed. Yeah. And, you know, Paul Ethier, who was listed in the other one, many, many locations, I've changed that to be more fire officer or senior fire officer or his designee, because they're going to, they're going to work within their system as well. And that's how I feel about my, my whole philosophy on this as a team between me and Stuart and Sheila, any of us can kind of do anything, but I'm just trying to try and steer the boat. You know what I'm saying? So that's, that's in short, that's the changes I made in this. Thank you. Thank you.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Yeah. We didn't look it over.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Yeah. I think one more session. We should do a lot.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Status of joint meeting with school directors. I have two dates from Erica, May 29th or June 5th at 630. What day is May 29th?

**Speaker 25:** Wednesday.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Wednesday and June 5th. That's probably Wednesday also.

**Speaker 22:** Okay. So the 6th would be your first meeting.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Yeah, 5th.

**Speaker 22:** So 5th would be.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Okay. Okay. Any, any ideas?

I don't care. I'm going to do it. So whatever it is. Sure. Whatever works. All right. You have the chance. 29th at 630. Sure. I want to get back to work.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** In your packets, Laurie gave us the first four financials. We'll come over. If you have any questions, you can ask Laurie at the next meeting. I had a chance to look them over earlier and nothing major corresponded. Correspondence, auditor's letter, auditor's engagement letter, this is saying I've been hired and complied with what they asked for.

**Speaker 22:** Do you don't know, do you?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** No, I wanted to stay away for a while. Oh, that's what I'm saying. I just want to look at the fees.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** It's nothing that we're going to be able to understand. No, it's okay. It'll be later. It'll just be, yeah.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Yeah, I was going to say, the fee is what we budgeted, so. They didn't happen to say when they would give the audit to you. Well, they've been here already, so this is kind of. We already had to put the parts in the divorce. We hired them, they were here, they did all the work. And you have sent them tons of material.

**Speaker 22:** I had to start from the square one. Okay.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** So, can I have the motion to sign it? It would be $10. Do we need to sign both copies?

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** So, that fee is what we budgeted, that's the number?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Yes. Yes.

Okay. Motion to sign. Make a motion to sign both copies. Second. All in favor? Aye. The question is just fine. Thank you. I need to sign that one. Oops. That's the wrong one. I'm sorry. When the auditor is here and I'm next, would you sign that one? No. I would then worry that you have some suggestions that are going to. Do you all want to sign it, or are there three of you or five? No, not just this. I thought it was Mr. Nancy. No, don't do this one. We're going to have a meeting. We're going to have a lot of truck and what else? I mean, I don't know if it's a man or a cat. Who's the man? Truck and bridge. There's a lot of people. A lot of her? Yeah. There's, yeah, this part's a lot more than all of the new commissions and the boards that they're having. The retreat.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Well, we talked about the, you want to have all three of you sign it, or is it not a matter? I was talking to one of the firemen, one of the officers the other day, and he said, I think it's in price, and we'll probably, if we all hadn't done it, we'd probably have more. Oh, man. Is it more, or what's your point? We, but we, but we like it here. Oh, oh, okay. Just the motor, man, was a hundred reasons.

**Speaker 25:** Yeah.

Yeah.

**Speaker 20:** Text or email or whatever your, email might be.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** You guys can sign if you want.

**Speaker 20:** Oh, I'll sign this figure, three lines, you guys got it. Oh, wait a minute.

**Speaker 1:** One for all of you. It is legalese.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Thank you. You're gonna jumble off the side of the board.

**Speaker 25:** M-S-G. W-O-M-S-D. Wait a minute, Tom.

F-I-R-E-2. Two.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** We have two more openings, two more vacancies on the conservation commission and we have

two people that are interested in serving on the conservation commission.

**Speaker 3:** I don't know if I'm in charge of having a reorganization meeting.

**Speaker 8:** I'll have a reorganization meeting on Monday.

**Speaker 26:** Lisa, you, and who else is on it?

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Dave. Sheila, right? So Lisa is going to be the first person on the board.

Yeah.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** A couple of youngsters there. Well, let's see who else is coming on. Like you guys already said, a couple of youngsters are coming on.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** So we have a vacancy for a four-year term. It expires in 2025. And a vacancy that expires in 2028. They're both four-year terms? Yes.

Okay. I made a motion. I made a motion that we, for Sheila before, for the first one you mentioned, and for seven-year-old for S.T. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second.. failed it. It's then. Here she comes.

**Speaker 22:** Thank you for giving us space to talk about this. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you everyone. Yeah, thank you so much for coming in. Thank you for having me. Great. and deed and make the pastor complete. Okay.

So, Nancy, you can sign your life away. Again.

**Speaker 22:** We need two witnesses.

It's your job. You're our witness.

**Speaker 20:** Witness sign. Witness Doug sign.

**Speaker 3:** What law is this for?

**Speaker 22:** 384.

**Speaker 3:** That's on me, really?

I don't know. Oh, I'll do it. Oh, perfect. Oh. It's got a check. 384? 384, yeah. I appreciate that. There's one left in my email. You wrote, said you have a check in the mail next week. Oh, good. Three lots, yeah. We probably don't own as many more lots now. I'm thinking. We have about three and a half a lot that we own. Yeah. Three or four lots. I'll have to check to make sure, I guess. All right. All right. All right. What else do you have to correspond? Yes, Lori. Just look at the place that you're at. Okay. All right. That would be the under new business, then, I guess. Last week, the last select board meeting.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Here, I'm sorry. Last select board meeting, I asked if you would look at the garden down there and the tennis court, and what do you think about that?

**Speaker 3:** I mean, it's, the court itself is in pretty rough shape. The river's starting to then feed off of the bank, and it's not that far away from the court. There is a shed down there, a bunch of gardening boxes. I mean, there's blueberry bushes, but I mean, I don't know. I would suggest that maybe we reach out to the people that originally owned all that stuff and see if they want it. If they don't want it. So, they have tools and stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, yeah. John had an idea. Maybe we could use a doctor to offer something. Yeah. Or they could, or they could auction it off, because it deserves. They could auction it off, because it deserves. If they don't want it, I mean, if they just say, no, I don't know, they'll leave it there, then we'll have to do something about it. Is this just a water tank? I mean, there's some decent, solid, cool stuff.

**Speaker 22:** I'm guessing it's not any of their personal stuff. I imagine it's stuff they've purchased through grants that they got as the Seasafers. Yeah.

**Speaker 3:** So, I mean, the shed is a decent-sized garden shed.

It's got a building over it. Yeah. I don't know. There's still only an inch, probably.

**Speaker 3:** Yeah. I don't know if there's something to do with that.

**Speaker 1:** Your son and my son helped build that. I know.

That's right. Yeah.

**Speaker 3:** But the garden itself is not, I mean, oh, we were, I mean, we were going to get rid of it years ago, right? It just cost us like two grand a year to steal the thing.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** What scares me is the buckling of the tennis court, and it's really a trip hazard if anybody goes in there, even if the Seasafers start using it again.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** So, what's the status of the Seasafers? I mean, I know nobody's using them. Nobody's down there. When we started, when the Seasafers started, they came to this board, they asked for permission to use it. It's not a town committee. Correct? Right. Unlike the... The RIGG? The sign committee. The sign committee, or whatever they call that. Community committee, I think it was called. This was their own entity. They didn't want to use any town money, anything like that. They're not using it anymore. I would say, you know, as a board, we should say, maybe reach out to them and say, you all sat with us. We're done. We've decommissioned.

**Speaker 3:** I don't know how we acquired it in the first place. If it was a grant or a town grant or something, it's probably our... Well, the tennis court was a town, was a recreation.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** The tennis court, but the stuff down there, the Seasafers did it all through their own... They purchased it all themselves? Yeah. They needed the town, in order to get some grants, I believe.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** I don't think we signed anything. I don't think, yeah.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I mean, I know they had a school program one year. I don't know if they got a grant for that. Maybe that's what it was. Yes, the summer camp, that's right. But I don't think it's any affiliation at all with the towns. I think we can just say, okay, you know, be polite. Ask them. I don't think they're going to do it anyway. Ask them to say, okay, they're done. I mean, it's just going to rot away. Yeah, they're done, and then we can say, okay, well, there's things done that people want, or if they don't want it, whatever you want to do, we want to put it out and say, if someone wants it, this is what the price is. Or it's free, or whatever you want to do. I'm sure they mulch or something. Get it out.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Those garden beds are pretty good.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Then we have to decide what's going to happen, and that's when we can, when we have this joint meeting with the school directors, these things can be brought up. Emergency management, what you want to do with that, down there, you know, and so on. You know, there's probably three or four .

**Speaker 3:** So, if you want to make a motion, have Lori write a letter, a letter. Yeah, I'll make a motion to write a nice letter to the Seed Savers. What's the status? You know, what's the status of the stuff, basically? You know, we're going to .

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Especially, I started off the trip as . Yeah, because we're going to get rid of it. We're going to get rid of that. Right.

**Speaker 27:** Liability.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Good, liability, got it. Yeah.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Are we still paying insurance on it? We used to.

**Speaker 3:** On what? On K-Score. We got rid of the K-Score. Probably wouldn't have heard about some community provider for back there to stabilize it a little bit. It's got steep drops. Yeah. They drop off, and then they have more open space around the corner, where the K-Score are. I think they are .

**Speaker 1:** I can bring the excavator down and just push everything into the river. What do you think?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** I've heard the excavator, but I don't want to hear the rest.

**Speaker 3:** At one time, that was filled in back there. I don't know how or when, but we used to literally jump off trees back there into the water. But you were little then, weren't you?

Oh, okay. It sealed in?

**Speaker 1:** It sealed in. Can you lend me quickly? I don't know how's it stabilizing the bank. I think the best thing is, somehow they got a permit to raise up the river over here. Oodin? State. State? State. Town? State? Well, it's State. Yeah, yeah. Clarus. Here it is. rivers are eroding in, you've got to pull all the stone into the bank and open up the channel. I hear what you said about the trees, but what ends up happening there, if you don't have everything pulled up, then it just undermines and then the big trees fall into it.

**Speaker 3:** So the differences are trees are something you can actually do? The state's never going to permit you to go on that road? They just let this? That's the state?

**Speaker 1:** Coming out on a Friday night in the dark, I'll have to take you care of. I just talked to a fireman who wasn't here.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I think he actually did it. I think he actually did it. What would you do with that? I would say, there might be a stipulation you can do so much without the permit. So I'm not sure, but I'll look into that. There is a certain amount of revocable. Yeah, you can do it.

**Speaker 28:** You've got to reach out to that river border.

**Speaker 29:** It's very minimal.

**Speaker 20:** Yeah, it's so many yards. It's minimal. Dave would be a good guy.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** And I think it's got to stay on the road lands.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Yeah. Maybe it's an emergency type thing. Maybe it's a school. Safety of children, you know what I mean? It's all in the minor language. Soften our language. Soften our language. Soften our language. All right.

So the motion to write a letter. Second. Second. Second.

**Speaker 22:** Second. Second.

Second.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Second. Second. Second. discuss this in the executive session or not because it is an employee of the town yeah you know we did hire out um yeah there's letters of letters and i'm not saying they're not true i'm just saying we i would like to reach out to the employee or the agency and talk to them too two sides of every story um but it is disturbing that we do get letters like that so if there's nothing else

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** uh can we have a motion to go into executive session for employee review and also a legal matter

i just want to say thank you thank you i had a good time

**Speaker 1:** no i i miss being here