---
title: "Stamford Select Board — August 1, 2024"
date: 2024-08-01
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, 4 of 6 clusters unnamed
voice_ids: {"SPEAKER_00":6,"SPEAKER_01":33,"SPEAKER_03":62,"SPEAKER_04":3,"SPEAKER_06":1,"SPEAKER_07":2}
duration_min: 42
audio: https://townofstamfordvermont.org/mediaItems/Selectboard%20meeting%202024-8-1.MP3
audio_source: town local
minutes: https://townofstamfordvermont.org/mediaItems/Sbd%20Minutes%208-1-24.pdf
minutes_pending: false
present: [Nancy L. Bushika, Michael G. Denault, Kurt Gamari, Douglas Wright, John Dunn]
absent: []
transcribed: 2026-09-04 (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 — August 1, 2024

**Session:** Regular · **Duration:** 42 min · [Audio](https://townofstamfordvermont.org/mediaItems/Selectboard%20meeting%202024-8-1.MP3) · [Minutes](https://townofstamfordvermont.org/mediaItems/Sbd%20Minutes%208-1-24.pdf)

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

---
In the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Welcome to a meeting of the Stamp and Select Board. If you have a matter to discuss that is not included on the agenda, you may do so by addressing the chairperson and stating your name and address. You will notice that all our meetings are recorded, and this is to aid with the summarization of the minutes. Visitors are welcome, and we allow five minutes of comments per visitor and 15 minutes per topic. Discussions will be held in a common, civilized manner and respectful of others. Select Board members present are...

**Speaker 1:** Michael G. Denault.

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

**Speaker 1:** Douglas Wright. John Dunn. Kurt Gamari.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Will there be any adding of items that can't wait until the next meeting, or removal of items from tonight's agenda?

**Speaker 2:** I have a grant agreement for the Clean Water Act against additional agenda, additional correspondence. Okay.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Will there be any adjustments? Oh, I have one item, too, regarding the tennis court and the garden down there. Will there be any adjustments to the agenda, such as changing the order of items? And please note that... The agenda is recording the video recording the Select Board meeting, and it will be on YouTube. So, hearing of visitors. Hearing visitor. Do you want to address the Select Board?

**Speaker 3:** Yes, if I could, please. If I could have a minute or two of your time, that would be great.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** What is your name?

**Speaker 3:** I'm Michael Murphy, so I'm a former resident here. My kids are going here. My son now owns a home on Sportsman's Road. Right. And I just wanted to express, I'm here representing him, and just wanted to express his concerns about a project that's going forward, not in opposition, just voicing his desire to be included in any negotiations that go forward with regard to that project. What project? Oh, the sportsman's version. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, if something is, the stream is actually on his property, and his water affects his water, so he just wants to be involved in whatever's going on.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Well, you can look in a minute. And read the minutes and the agenda, and come to the meeting, and express yourself. We have not made any decision. Dave is not here tonight, so.

**Speaker 3:** Great. Yeah. So, as long as you're informed, just why not here. Let us know of our concerns and awareness.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** It looks like there's going to be a lot involved in it, so it's not going to probably happen

**Speaker 4:** right away.

**Speaker 3:** It's going to be snow. Yeah, I know that things, you know, the weather is changing, and things are problematic, and so it is an issue that's going on in a lot of places.

Okay.

**Speaker 3:** Thank you, Avery. Thank you.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Thank you, Marcia. Thank you. Reading and approval of records and orders. Is there a motion to accept the minutes as written? Motion.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. I mean, motion. Second.

**Speaker 5:** Oh, yeah.

**Speaker 1:** I'll second.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Dave is not here for road conditions, but is this where you want to do the grant agreement? Grants in aid.

**Speaker 2:** He met with Jim Henderson, and they decided, well, there's no deal on that. I know. But we have to do it. We have to do it. And they decided, well, I can't do it. You can't do it. I just have to deal with it. You can't do it. an area on Jefferson Road to replace two undersized culverts and some stone line ditches. They're thinking it would be a $7,000 grant with a town match of $1,750 worth and that that was a good place to concentrate on.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Motion to sign. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye.

**Speaker 1:** All in favor? Aye.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Thank you. Road conditions. Dave is not here, but he got last meeting he was going to call around to see who could give us quotes on removing the debris from the last storm, all the trees that are down on the town road. So he talked, I guess, Brayder Heights. Brayder Heights was down here and then John Dunn also put in a bid to remove some of the debris. So do we, where's the bids? I've got more information on Brayder Heights, but John do you, I can't ask you to recuse yourself.

**Speaker 1:** I would excuse myself, but I personally, like I've done business with Brayder Heights, I think they're a great crew and they're great people. They're great guys. If they can take care of it, I have no problem with them doing the work.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** But you don't have to recuse yourself. I'm just, now Dave called me this morning and I guess Brayder Heights got back to him and said, if you want us to remove the brush instead of chipping it on site there, they would remove the brush and just bring it up to our brush dump and it would be cheaper than that bid. So because John put in a bid, Dave did not want to make the decision on his own. That's why he said we should do it.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** That's fair.

**Speaker 6:** He felt uncomfortable with this.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** If this wasn't, if this wasn't John asking a big question of, you know, I guess it's a hard thing to compare quotes. You know, one guy drives around and says, this is what I think I got to do with the other guy. This doesn't seem like there's apples and apples there. So I wouldn't have a problem. It doesn't seem like you have a problem with this letting them do it.

**Speaker 1:** No, they have the equipment, the crew, they'd probably be done in a day, you know. Yeah. From what I've discussed from with Dave on this 37 whatever, that was them kind of going around with a picker truck. And just grabbing everything. So they make real short work of it. They're not going to be chipping the brush. They're just going to grab it, throw it in the truck and bring it back to the shop and probably throw it in a pile somewhere and be done with it. I was really, really curious that I would bring this to the board while we're looking at tree work. And we were discussing about tree work the other day at the top of the lane with certain trees. Is it worth, while we're having these guys do the work in town, is it worth having them look at any other trees? And adding it to the ticket and taking care of it while they're here in town doing the work. That's a good question.

**Speaker 7:** Yes.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** It would make sense. One of the things is did we ever get any response back from the letter that we sent?

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

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** We did.

**Speaker 6:** What was that response?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Dave spoke to the lady going up the lane on the left-hand side and everything was okay with removing those trees. That's awesome. Yes. And the fellow on the top of the lane had no problem, but Dave still got to get in touch with him because he had another question for Dave. He didn't give me the question. He wanted to talk to Dave.

**Speaker 8:** That, those particular trees right there are a safety problem.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I mean, if you go up there, you can see it. If John's idea is they're already in town, why don't we see if Dave can add that to it and see what the price is. And I have no problem with moves. I'm not going to move forward on what they've already quoted, but if they want to add to it and that looks reasonable, I think we should just give Dave permission to go ahead. Because an extra grand to take those trees down is nothing. I'm not saying that's what it's going to be, but those are big trees. There's a lot there. Do you guys agree? I totally agree. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a good idea. The quote's always going to be the last one. They don't have to come back. Exactly. They're here. I don't know where they're coming from. So, I mean, I don't know how you want to approach it. If you want to, John and I actually had a talk prior to the meeting on the way up to the site then. And to kick things around back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, it's not always in the best interest of the town. Bill just mentioned something before the town. We'll bring that up, too. But we've been kicking a lot of things around. If we know this is going to be cheaper, let's give Dave the permission to say, okay, look, I'm going to fall within an extra X amount of dollars and do those trees on the top of the lane. If it's just outrageous, Dave, he's good at it. Let him use his common sense. Now, if there's other trees in town, I don't know how much we can do. But if those two we already talked about, that is definitely a safety problem.

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

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Agreed. Is that a motion?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Go ahead, Kurt.

**Speaker 9:** I was hoping that was one.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Well, I can make the motion to, the motion, but if they want to go and just drop the brush off, I would say let's motion to allow Dave to negotiate this. You know, if this is going to go down by dropping, you know, use your best interest. So, if it's going to go up to our brush pile, by all means, go ahead. Right. And if they can do these other two trees. Yeah. If they can do these other trees with a reasonable cost, and Dave knows that. Yeah. It's not going to be. At Dave's discretion. It shouldn't double this number. No. No. So, let's say, okay, Dave, you know it's a reasonable cost. The quote's fairly low, in my opinion. So, let him. Yeah. No, I think it's fair. Let him go. Give Dave the permission to not to exceed the number if you want to. That's the motion. Whatever you want. Write that up. Nice. I'll second. Yeah. Yeah. I won't even give a number. Dave knows. Okay. Yeah. Give Dave permission to spend the money for this tree cutting. Yeah.

**Speaker 8:** Both the one from the storm damage and the.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Top of the. Top of the lane. Now, Deb had her hand up.

**Speaker 8:** Do you think there's other trees in town? I would assume so.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Okay. Yes. Oh, yeah. So, we can. I've been talking about this for years.

**Speaker 10:** Yeah. There's one on Jepson. But these are trees that aren't falling down yet, but they will be something.

**Speaker 11:** Oh, yeah.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I mean, just East Road. Just East Road alone.

**Speaker 10:** It's a minefield just needing to be set up. Yeah. Yeah. That's where Dave was talking. Where does the town have the tree, you know. Right.

**Speaker 1:** I mean, you go. For the town. For the town. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. I mean, you go. For the town. What's our program for tree removal in Stamford?

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** East Road's got a ton of them. Because we can get carried away. That's right. How much coverage do we need? We don't want to get too carried away.

**Speaker 7:** How much do we need?

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** We want to make sure that. And Jepson Road's got some real old trees on that road. They're old. They're dead. They're in rough shape. Yeah. And they didn't get. All like the original roads.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** And they didn't get blown down in the storm. That's.

**Speaker 6:** All right.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** The big old maples that are just starting to come down.

**Speaker 8:** Yeah.

**Speaker 12:** Yeah. Okay.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Those large trees.

**Speaker 12:** Mm-hmm. The last store on Jepson.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Anything else under roads, Laurie? Do you know? Tree. Tree. Okay. Recycling. Nothing.

**Speaker 1:** I noticed the steel bin is chucked full by. How often. That might be on the docket to get swapped out. Yeah. I don't know who gets that. How much. There's not much. Dave, you just leave it to me. It's not worth the.

**Speaker 13:** It's not worth the labor you put into it to get the money out.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** It's the steel. But I don't think it's anybody's fault. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. That'll do. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. I got you. Yeah. Thank you very much. One thing I forgot to do and someone mentioned air conditioners, I did not get a hold of that guy about the air conditioners. I apologize, I will try to do that again and see if they take them. I don't know if we wanted to just take that right off. Did we do not collect air conditioners or do we want them to sleep or?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** We'll wait. Yeah.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Emergency management, nobody's here? No, but we did mention the hazardous ventilation. They do not. They just had that in place. Well. Sorry. mitigation plan that hasn't been signed so you did say that a person's going to come next week

**Speaker 2:** or next meeting next meeting to the next meeting um i have the resolution and i have the agreement

**Speaker 14:** she's faxed them to me but she would like to come present them okay so i don't want it to go any

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** farther than that guys because we're missing out on grant money so we've already missed out on five percent correct of a 20 000 so that's a thousand dollars so and you're saying there's other grants

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** correct what what grant was that that we missed out on on the oh the fema reimbursement right the

**Speaker 12:** fema percent yeah so we lost that and there are several other grants that are still pending i

**Speaker 15:** thought um the other ones that dave has aren't aren't female grants but it could

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

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** come up at any time did i read somewhere that if we're in the process of updating our plan

**Speaker 6:** that maybe they would be retroactive looks like fema didn't think so right but at the end of the

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** day we're gonna approve whatever they approve if we're not we're not gonna change if dara sent you

**Speaker 12:** a resolution why can't you accept the resolution let her come and explain it yeah

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah we can do a two week resolution and she's died

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** in two weeks

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** i guess we didn't figure two weeks would matter and she wanted to she wanted to be here i don't know if this is part of her well i don't know if two weeks doesn't matter because there's no grants available right now that's fine but i don't want to go further than that so you know let's keep this out on the back burner then and say look let's don't kick don't kick this down the road and kick it down the road because we're going to move down who's kicking it down the road we are or she is well i don't know that's right it sounds like

**Speaker 16:** we we have to wait it always seems like we're waiting for others we should kick some things

**Speaker 2:** back sarah answered them well the state went back and forth with her like five times so she really

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** did stay on top of it trying to get the biggest delay was hoping and losing people that were

**Speaker 3:** working on it and we're not doing the pushing we shouldn't penalize for it no it's not you guys

**Speaker 2:** felt really it's not like you've been sitting on this for a long time and fema only does 75 but the iraq through the state of vermont does extra if we have hazard mitigation and if we have all these other things in the road because we don't vermont isn't taking in that extra 10

**Speaker 6:** okay you had a question too that was it but just let's not let

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** it go too far once we sign if it's in our hands

**Speaker 17:** five years eight years it's good for it yeah the ratio of the plan

**Speaker 12:** yeah it was supposed to be

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** the other thing under emergency management uh i did see on uh media there social media bob mentioned something about signing up for the vermont alert alert system just keep putting that in the minutes uh it's a good system it's if people should do that you'll you know it's just that one other

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** tool that we can have moving on to discussion offer to purchase lot 188 in alcohol so i received an

**Speaker 2:** email from aaron tyler who would like to make an offer of 500 for lot 188

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** we got a tax sale for a couple thousand do we want to ask him for more or do we want to

**Speaker 18:** accept his five hundred dollars is it just a landlocked property with just trying to add on

**Speaker 2:** it's just an alcohol property we brought a tax sale but you guys usually just it's not

**Speaker 15:** making any money sitting in our hands so is he in a butter i don't think he owns any right now

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** one of the things that was brought up a couple years ago is what especially the with COVID, people were buying land up in Stamford, buying land at the wall, and they were flipping it. They were buying it, and then they were saying, okay, I bought it for $500, I put it up for sale for $10,000. And you know, you get $5,000, you say, cha-ching, I'm happy. If that's happening, good, go ahead. And if you guys, anybody else wants to do it, go ahead. But in my opinion is, and I agree, we sit on things, we go back and forth for, where are we going to go? About $500. And in the meantime, we don't get exactly where, so the town doesn't get the money, and we're not getting any taxes. The minute we put it back down in the tax roll, we start getting taxes. To me, like you said, we don't get the money. Why play the game? I'll make a motion we accept the $500. Second.

**Speaker 6:** All in favor? Aye.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Correspondence, Lori, or anything else in this discussion?

**Speaker 2:** You're going to do the ARPA stuff later?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Sure. You want to do it now under correspondence? Yeah.

How about the ARPA

**Speaker 2:** DB driver? Yeah. When you being out this week and whatnot, I don't know if I made copies for you guys. I know I emailed it to you, so if you want to make the copies, I can do it.

**Speaker 1:** No, I looked at the email. I talked

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** to Lori yesterday about the documents, and I called DB Fiber to say, are these all we need? What else do we need? Because it seems like they're throwing stuff at us the last minute. They gave it to us all at once, and we haven't done it. They didn't get back to us. Lori and I looked at the form, and we removed some stuff because it didn't pertain to Stamford. What's the first one here? Use of ARPA funds. We're going to allow the customers to self-certify that they are in need of financial support to complete the fiber installation on a first-come, first-served basis. That's what we discussed at another meeting, and we put it on our form that people can apply for financial assistance. And then the balance of the cost is the owner's responsibility.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Maybe, well, you're mentioning the word ARPA funds. Is that where this money's coming? Or I thought we already kept that money.

**Speaker 2:** We put the money in the pot, but now we have to authorize TAMO Fiber to release it to our residents on these terms.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** And that's where it originally came from? Yeah.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** And we're going to allocate an amount to each customer up to $500. Now, Lori, I was reading over that form. If you're reading the first paragraph, it says financial assistance for conduit. We said they could do a one-time connection, whether it's conduit, whatever it is. Just a one-time connection. So I think to go along with our form for the funding application, we said a... We're starting with the use of ARPA funds.

**Speaker 12:** Just in support of what Nancy's saying, it's possible that they might need money to support a second phone call meeting. Yeah, keep it. It's the installation. It's the possibility they could get the additional $175 of wiring inside their house. If it falls into $500, there's no reason not to allow it.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I mean, I looked at these numbers. It's very difficult for anybody to actually... I mean, if you get into these numbers, you should help them out. These are low numbers.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** So on our application for financial assistance, it says, I'm requesting funding for the following project. Installation of DV fiber and or conduit at home address. So we keep it the same as that. And there's three spots where it says conduit. Because we don't want to limit it just to that. Yeah, that's fine. And on the use of ARPA funds, we're going to give it to people of financial support and allocate an amount to each of the each customer up to $500. Should we be more specific and say the ones that have been approved for financial support? Because otherwise, it seems to me, it says allocate an amount to each customer up to $500. So it could be any of us.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Oh, it says the form actually has to be filled out. To each

**Speaker 19:** approved customer? Yeah.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Yeah, each approved.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** There is a form with it. That's fine.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** And then the other thing, assist customers in the process of hiring a contractor. It is the customer's obligation to hire but DV Fiber will directly pay any town approved contractor's invoices. How are we going to assist the customer? Can we just say, here's the list that DV Fiber supplied for us, but you can get your own contractor if you want.

**Speaker 12:** You can suggest

**Speaker 20:** a list. These are suggestions.

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

**Speaker 12:** There are other local contractors. Right. People who can do this locally. The number of people the last time I looked at the list were not close by.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Right, and they probably did some more in their area of Vermont, and we're closer to them. On the second form, instructions to DV Fiber regarding use of town park funds. It's the same thing. We're going to say yes, allow customers to self-service, allow customers to self-service, certify, and complete the financial paperwork to complete fiber installation on first-come, first-served basis, and allocate up to $500. It's kind of like duplicate here. That's why I didn't know why we have all these forms. And then... Yeah. And then use of remaining funds. This is what you've always asked. Any funds remaining after the chosen... Any funds remaining after the chosen... option for distribution above is completed, shall be distributed as follows. Should we expand the use of funds to the approved applicants to reimburse the applicant for installation costs? Meaning, if there's only one person that applies, gets the $500, but it costs $2,000, do we give them the money?

**Speaker 12:** Are you going to make a cut-off fee?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Well, we know we said that we're going to...

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** If we don't, if we don't, how long is the fiber company going to keep this money and wait for people five years from now? They don't want to. Right. They don't want to keep track of this. We're talking $7,500.

**Speaker 6:** That's minimal.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** They don't want it. What other options

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** do you have? Return the remaining to Stamford.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** For the purchase of a side-by-side, so it's less...

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Or just let DV Fiber keep it in their pocket. Or let DV Fiber have it.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** We take it, or they keep it?

**Speaker 6:** Yeah, there's any other...

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Most of the choices. Well, I think that's... I'm going to, for the town, I'm going to say don't let them keep it. I don't... I think if we had a cut-off date of a year from now, or whatever you want to do, I mean, people either are going to hook up, or they're not going to hook up, and if you need more, and if they need more, which, if it's $2,000, give them the money. But if it still comes out where there's still money left over, then just give it back to the town, right? That's it.

**Speaker 21:** I got a problem. The only problem we can

**Speaker 22:** make is, they're giving you back ARPA money. We'll put it back in the ARPA fund. How long do you have to use the ARPA money?

**Speaker 23:** We got time to use

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** the ARPA fund, but we have to designate it by the end of this year.

**Speaker 22:** Okay. So, unless

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** you're going to set a date... So we would have to have a date come up before you have a share.

**Speaker 12:** By December 25th of this year, for people to have applied, then you've got to say, grab it back, and allocate it.

**Speaker 24:** So we'll have to know where that is.

**Speaker 1:** You can allocate it anywhere. Just put it towards the town garage and they move it up there. Right, but it has to be down at the town garage or somewhere like that.

**Speaker 25:** December 1st.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Yeah, I would say give us a little leeway. December 1st, give us a month to play games.

**Speaker 2:** Yeah, you're going to have a run-out period.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Yep. So I would say, you know, do this, what's it, August, today's August? August 1st.

**Speaker 16:** Yeah, so...

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I'd say, December 1st, you've got to apply, and then whatever money's not spent, it goes back into the ARPA, and we'll spend it.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Okay, so they're applying by December 1st.

**Speaker 6:** But they're not going to get the

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** bills, they're not going to get hooked up and get bills before the ARPA money comes back to us. There's no way.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I've got a question. So we have ARPA money in the fund right now. Yes. Do we have to spend it all by the first of the year? No, we have to designate it. Okay, so if we ask for the money back, put it in our ARPA fund, right, and we spend it before the first of the year, and then we set aside $7,500 for this project and don't have to re-fiber, do any of it. Can we do that?

**Speaker 2:** Can you, if you just allocate all of your ARPA money to something, then if you get it back and it's part of ARPA money, it's allocated to the rest of it.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** So we have to allocate something by the first of the year. If there's money, we can use that money towards whatever we allege it towards. If not, then we use the other money.

**Speaker 12:** If you've done it for renovation, you're clean. By the first of the year, you don't have enough. You don't have enough money to do everything that you might like to do with the garage.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Right, exactly. You're safe. Okay. So then, we can still say by the first of the year then, because it doesn't matter now, the number, we know that we're going to get it back. At the most, we're going to get $7,500 back. Right. So we've already allocated and have to spend that right now. We already get it on the ground.

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

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** So if we get it back, we spend it. It's not going up. Okay. All it has to be is on paper.

**Speaker 6:** Yep.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** And it doesn't have to be spent for two years after.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** So there you go. Yeah, as long as you have it allocated, right? Allocate by the end and then spend by two years. Because we didn't spend it on this. What are we going to do? Give it back to the state? No, of course not. That really doesn't happen. And then they're going to give us some more?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Okay, so we're going to ask them to return remaining to Stamford. But we still have to have

**Speaker 8:** deadlines.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** That's what I'm asking. Where are we putting this deadline? Should we put it on the form?

**Speaker 8:** Apply by? December 1st.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** December 1st and then we'll go from there.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Got to revise the form again.

**Speaker 12:** And then tell We've talked to people. We put it out in the select board minutes on and on about FUD. We would have been in a tougher place if anybody had showed up and responded to that because we didn't have any forms to do it with.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Right. Now, wasn't there like five people that were maybes?

**Speaker 12:** There were five people that were maybes. One person, I'm not sure whether that's within the five or not. I got the name. It turned out they had gone out to the people's house. The extension for Conduit is 1200 feet. I talked to them personally. They would not have met the self-certification rate. So that's gone by. I've gone back to Gabby, the director for AD Fiber. And she still hasn't given me specific locations or specific names. But it looks like Keith, who's been the one in touch with the engineering staff that are actually doing the installations, went out on his own and contacted these people and reviewed. If they get around to giving us the other five names, Bob or I will go out and see if we can help these people. I can be sure that they're aware that there's help.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** The other deadline The forms are very easy to fill out.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** But like you said, the communication is saying, hey, you know there's a form here. The other thing is we need to give the fiber company a deadline that the bills need to be submitted. So if we give the person a deadline to do the forms, but then they don't do the work because it's going to be wintertime. They're going to have to do the work. That's correct. Six months.

**Speaker 12:** We have two portion of that arm of funds. Okay. If it sticks at 500 and later on go over it, that's on them.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** So no one has applied yet or even talked to you about this,

**Speaker 15:** Lori, right?

**Speaker 2:** So the box that says maybe we would pay additional funds above the first 500, we're not going to do that. We're just going to have everything back to Stamford.

**Speaker 12:** If they get back to us by December 1st. Yeah. I thought we said we would. Make that decision on December 2nd.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** And do you want to wait until next meeting to approve it or do you want to approve it with all changes?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Approve it with all changes.

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

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

**Speaker 12:** I second. I have another meeting next Wednesday. So I'll push again. The mysterious people.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Are you available tomorrow? I'll talk to you later. Okay. Next week. Any other old business?

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Nope. We just did a county road site visit. And we were going to change it from a class 4 to a trail. It looks like after the public meeting that we did afterwards, we decided that we would leave it alone at this time. And I just want that to be in minutes. We were going to leave it to a class 4 road at this time unless other information comes up to change that. But at this time, we're going to leave it.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Okay. Did we do a motion in the public hearing? We did. Well, we didn't. No, we did.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I'll make that motion now that we leave it to class 4 at this time. Second.

**Speaker 10:** All in favor? Aye. Heads up. I know the motion is there. Weren't you going to talk to Dave first?

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Well, like I said, at this time. So if more information comes up, we can bring it back up. Just so it's behind us. If Dave said that, that's fine.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Lori, how are dogs coming in? Last time, we had 10 dogs left.

We might have one or two more. It hasn't been that

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** much since the last meeting. Depends on the dog.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** I will email you the status on this. New business, Lori. Or anybody. I would just like to remind

**Speaker 2:** you guys that August 13th is the state primary election. You guys and the Justice of the Peace are counters after the election. So you could plan to be here at 7.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** On a Tuesday night?

**Speaker 2:** On a Tuesday night. 7 o'clock. No meeting. Do you have time

to count the ballots?

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** It probably won't be long. The ballots are sparse. Under new business, this is regarding the tennis court. Fran Busa, who is a preschool teacher, was sad to see that we're taking the tennis court and the garden apart because she was running a program for pre-K through 4 for pre-K gardening. She would like to know if she could bring the boxes and the soil up towards the school and use it here. I said I'll run it by the select board, but I didn't see any problem with that. She would like to put maybe some down by the basketball court. I don't think there's any problem with us. Was there two picnic tables

**Speaker 3:** down there or one? There was at least one.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Maybe we could leave one down there with the building because the building is in pretty good shape. Leave one picnic table there and bring one up here so they would be happy to use it. She just needs help and if Dave could help her. I don't see why he couldn't help bring that up. Question Dave.

**Speaker 8:** Exactly.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** I'll run it by him.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I think it's a good idea. With gardens and stuff, I think you should allow them to do that. Better than some of the things they were talking about. I did notice this is just off the subject but I did notice the school the dumpster. Yes, I noticed that too. Seemed like a lot of stuff was in that dumpster. I know that's their meeting so maybe I'll go to that meeting and bring it up, but I was wondering all that furniture and books kind of seems like that's taxpayer money so I was wondering why they didn't notify anyone if anyone wanted to take a book home.

**Speaker 6:** Could they put it out on the lawn for free?

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I'll bring that up at the school meeting. I would like to know who's in charge of that. It just seems like a big dumpster full of stuff.

**Speaker 1:** It's a shame to throw it all away. That's my opinion. Third world country somewhere that could have used it and donated it or someone.

**Speaker 10:** It's just an opinion. I couldn't donate kids books. I couldn't donate them here, Leedsboro, any Pittsfield. No place is taking books. It's really tough. So if you've got a third world country to ship them to

**Speaker 11:** I know that parochial schools are always looking for

**Speaker 1:** projects like Kona for instance I think they utilized all the old desks and stuff. They went somewhere

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** and they loaded them up.

**Speaker 6:** Same thing with desks.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Somebody could have probably used a desk for home

**Speaker 6:** kids desks.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I'm just saying it would have been nice to have a little bit of a notice. It's an opinion. I'm not putting them down. I like to look into it more. Is it already done? Yeah, it's already done. When the school gets, who does that? Who makes that decision? Is it the school board or is it the union? I don't know.

**Speaker 3:** Let's see if there was outdated textbooks or something like that.

**Speaker 1:** It looks like there was dust in chairs. But I'm assuming they're going to have to buy all new stuff. It seems like we just bought some school desks. And then there's this whole big budget thing and they're throwing out dust and buying all new stuff.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I'm not saying this is done. You're right. But in the future if it comes up maybe we can have a little bit more notice. And there are homeschoolers in this town right now. So everybody wants to offer it at least. It's a job

**Speaker 6:** bringing up at that meeting.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** How about some table on tables like that?

**Speaker 6:** Like this?

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** These are nice. I wouldn't mind having a couple of these.

**Speaker 12:** Yeah, folding tables. That's a nice table. I wonder how much it's going to cost to replace them.

**Speaker 21:** Well I don't know.

**Speaker 12:** Yeah.

**Speaker 16:** I'm sure they got it all figured out.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** Was that a school board meeting? Do you go to school board meetings?

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** I haven't gone in a little while. Again, I'll bring it up there. It's my understanding that the school board is in charge of the finance department. Of the buildings.

**Speaker 2:** Principal and staff who didn't want it in their school room anymore.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** I don't know. I'll ask. Any other new business? I have executive session on here but I don't know why we had it on there. I didn't catch it when we had it. The school board always has it

**Speaker 6:** on there.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** I had no reason to go in.

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** Just in case you get out of line.

**Nancy L. Bushika (Chair):** So if there's no other

**Michael G. Denault (inferred):** business, do we have a motion? Motion to adjourn. Let me turn this off.